A 20-year-old Lubavitcher bochur who grew up in Texas and recently learned in Brooklyn for a year was shot twice during Sunday’s massacre in Sydney.

He underwent surgery and is being treated in the ICU, where he is in critical but stable condition. He suffered a significant amount of blood loss and faces further surgery for shrapnel stuck in his abdomen and upper thigh.

Leibel Lazaroff, 20, one of nine children, grew up in Texas, where his father, Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff, serves as the campus rabbi at Texas A&M University in College Station.

He learned for a year in a yeshivah in Crown Heights before moving to Sydney for shlichus only two months ago.

On Sunday, he was assisting Rabbi Eli Schlanger, H’yd with the mass Chanukah celebration when the terrorists began their shooting spree. He was hit twice, in his abdomen and right thigh.

Following the news of the massacre, Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff flew to Sydney, writing on X.: “Sitting on a very long plane ride to Australia from Texas, while still grappling with the lives lost & communicating with the hospital as my son Leibel goes into multiple surgeries for his life-threatening injuries.”

“Leibel was spreading light, helping a community thrive, and volunteering his year to bring joy to others. While doing so, a father & son duo, filled with an ideology of Jewish hatred, hunted him & his fellow Jews down. This is about good vs evil, light vs darkness, and upstanders vs bystanders. It’s your choice to make. Who are you?”

The public is asked to say Tehillim for the refuah sheleimah of יהודה לייב בן מאניא b’toch sha’ar cholei Yisrael. Rabbi Lazaroff asked specifically to say perakim 20 and 21.

Tehillim should also recited for other injured victims:

Yaakov ben Ettel

Chaya Mushka bas Shterna Sara

Yosef ben Shterna Sara

Reuven ben Manya

Yaakov Dov ben Penina

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)