Like a handful of other American Jews in their late teens, Ezra Schwartz graduated high school and headed to Israel before college.
Schwartz had been accepted to college in the United States but decided to spend a gap year in Israel at a yeshiva, a Jewish educational institution where pupils study religious texts.
The 18-year-old was volunteering in the West Bank on Thursday — delivering food to Israeli soldiers — where he would end up in the crosshairs of a gun-wielding attacker.
The assailant fired shots from his vehicle and rammed pedestrians at a busy intersection in Gush Etzion, killing three people, including Schwartz.
“Ezra came to Israel not only to study but also to be a part of the vibrant Israeli experience,” Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the executive for the Jewish Agency of Israel, said in a statement. “This makes his death even more tragic.”
Schwartz was from the Boston suburb of Sharon and went to high school in Brookline, Massachusetts, graduating this year.
“The whole school went into shock,” Lori Kipnes, a teacher at his high school — the Maimonides School — told CNN affiliate WCVB.
“We watched him grow,” said his rabbi, Meir Sendor. “It’s devastating. It’s heartbreaking.”