A Tel Aviv police chief told Kan News Radio of a failed city suicide bombing this week that “we are in a kind of miracle that the incident did not end in dozens of deaths.”

Worshippers at a nearby synagogue named for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, known by the acronym Rashbi, told JNS that they were in the middle of the silent prayer of the evening service on that Sunday night when just after 8 p.m., there was a thunderous blast, the electricity went out, and the synagogue’s windows shattered.

“Our first thought was it was a missile,” Yehuda Meshulam, who directs the synagogue, which also doubles as a study hall on the nondescript Lehi Road in south Tel Aviv, told JNS.