As a personal trainer, Adam Ezekiel spent his days helping people in Israel to get fit – until he was shot in the chest.
He was hit by an Arab sniper from more than half a mile away, while on a sightseeing tour organised by his shul.
Ezekiel survived – the bullet missed his lung by a millimetre – but that moment changed his life.
Before he even reached the hospital, he promised himself he was going to dedicate his life to something he’d always wanted to do – get the Jewish nation fit.
His own fitness had saved his life, he says, and he wanted to pass on that gift. A punishing regime of stretches and weights had strengthened his chest muscle and slowed the bullet.
The brush with death deepened his faith, strengthened his devotion to his family, and made him more grateful than ever for each new day.
“In the first few moments, I wasn’t sure I was going to survive,” says Ezekiel.
“Then I understood I might not be able to move my arm ever again, or that I could be paralysed, but I wasn’t going to die from this.
“As I was in the ambulance these thoughts came into my head: that I’d never fulfilled my potential, that I wanted to get the nation fit, but I never did. I decided I’m going to heal this thing, and I’m going to get the nation fit.”
That was two years ago. Ezekiel has since made a full physical recovery, he’s returned to work and he’s just launched Soul Active, a 15-minute-a-day exercise challenge designed to get Jews fit.
Taking care of your body is about far more than vanity, he says, it’s a religious requirement and he quotes Maimonides to prove it – “Maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of God.”
Members of Soul Active receive workout instructions and videos six days a week (Sunday chest, triceps and shoulders; Monday back, biceps and legs; Tuesday cardio, etc) and on Shabbat they rest. All they need is a pair of dumbbells or resistance bands.
“It’s a realistic amount of exercise that’s not overwhelming, and they can see how others are doing on the leaderboard, so it encourages competition,” says Ezekiel.
“I send the workout in the morning by WhatsApp. In the afternoon, they get a reminder.
“And at the end of the day, there’s a poll asking if they did it or didn’t do it. Almost everyone does.”
The structured programme Ezekiel now runs grew out of something more spontaneous – push-ups after shul every morning for the rabbi and congregation.
“I figured that if we can enjoy a l’chaim together on Shabbat, then it’s OK to do some workouts too during the week,” says Ezekiel, who lives in Ra’anana, central Israel.
With time and effort, Ezekiel went on to build a website that is developing into an online community and attracting subscribers from the US, Israel, UK, Mexico and beyond.
“Every scientist, every doctor, every professor, every single person in the world will tell you that exercise is good,” says Ezekiel.
“So why don’t people do it? Because it’s hard. It’s something they’re not used to. They’re scared they might get hurt. They might not think they have the equipment.
“But I give guidance. I’ve been doing this for 17 years and I explain every exercise very clearly. I encourage them. I’m always telling them that even one day a week is still better than zero.”
Ezekiel, who has just turned 40, genuinely understands how tough exercise can be, from his own fitness challenge.
For years he suffered a debilitating chronic back pain that nobody could cure. “I was the one trainer on planet Earth that couldn’t do a push-up,” he says.
He was eventually diagnosed with myofascial pain syndrome, a condition that affects connective tissue that surrounds the muscles.
Once he understood the problem, he worked out his own workout to solve it, which included one-minute “dead hangs” – hanging from a pull-up bar for 60 seconds at a time.
Looking back he’s convinced the 12 years of pain he endured, and the regime he devised to banish it, were all part of God’s plan.
“The doctor said the chest muscle I built saved my life, because the bullet was one millimetre away from my lungs. It was divine providence.”
Ezekiel was born into a secular family in Israel, moved to Toronto, Canada, when he was three, studied kinesiology (exercise science) at university and became a personal trainer.
He returned to Israel as a young adult, discovered that “Judaism was true and that God was real”, studied at a number of yeshivot (all with a gym) served in the IDF and learnt Hebrew.
Fast forward to the fateful day of the shooting in July 2024, nine months into the Gaza war.
Adam, now a married father-of-four (aged four to 13), was on a biblical history trip led by Rabbi Chanan Atlas (ex-Birmingham and Manchester).
They were at Har Bracha, an Israeli hilltop settlement in the West Bank overlooking the city of Shechem (Nablus) with 50,000 Arab homes.
“They were all pretty far away but I couldn’t help thinking that all the windows were facing us, we were standing on top of a hill and it would be so easy for someone to shoot us then just close the window,” says Ezekiel.
And that’s exactly what happened.
“All of a sudden I feel an intense pain in my arm like I’ve never felt in my entire life,” he says.
“It was so sharp and so intense I didn’t know if I was having a heart attack or a stroke.”
Ezekiel shares CCTV footage of the moment he was hit. He was standing in the shade of a pergola and he suddenly slumps to the ground.
What happened next is not like what happens in the movies. It took many minutes before anyone actually understood what had happened.
“I said, ‘I’m shot,’” says Ezekiel. “And the first person to hear me said, ‘no, you’re not.’”
People looked for other causes. Maybe he was dehydrated, maybe his phone had exploded. It wasn’t so much a moment of drama as one of total confusion.
“I knew there was something inside my body that shouldn’t be there,” recalls Ezekiel. He was in too much pain to explain, but his bloodstained tsitsit, with a neat bullet hole in the neckline, proved his point.
A postscript to the shooting is that the IDF discovered that four snipers had been firing at random towards Adam’s group. They tracked them down, killed three and injured the fourth.
The bullet remains in place. It disturbed Ezekiel’s sleep at first, but now he’s used to it. Doctors say removing it could damage nerves and limit the use of his arm.
And a postscript to the postscript: The Ezekiel family now hugs more.
“We’re closer. We hug more, that’s for sure,” says Ezekiel.
“When I say goodbye I often think that this could be my last goodbye.
“And I think that they feel that too.”
For more details about Ezekiel’s programme, visit: soulactive.health
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