Stuck In The Middle

In the beginning of my front-page column on the situation in Israel, I referenced my unpacked suitcase that sat by itself in another room in my house. Neither I nor the valise made it to JFK or to Israel as previously planned.

Over the last few days, however, it seems that what started out as a major disappointment turned into a blessing in disguise. When contemplating the current scenario, with so many people stranded due to the airport shut down, I am reminded of the old children’s game of musical chairs. That is, when the music stops, everyone scrambles for a seat until someone is inevitably left standing.

In our case, it’s not about music or chairs. It’s about missiles and the constant bombardment by the Ayatollahs and terror merchants of Iran, whose days are most likely numbered. But in the meantime, as these words are being written, they are still running Iran and Ben Gurion Airport is still closed to passenger traffic.

So, this idea of where we stand when the music stops is more than anything else about the concept of what if. As in: What if our flight was last Wednesday night and Israel had begun their shelling of Iran’s nukes after we arrived? Well, like so many others, I would be writing this article from my hotel room in Jerusalem rather than my office in the Five Towns.

So, here are some examples of “what ifs” that might have occurred given this scenario.

This past Sunday, Ishay Ribo performed beautifully at the home of Benjy and Adina Goldstein in Lawrence for the benefit the outstanding Yeshivat Shavei Hevron. Here’s a small anecdote about how events might have resulted if the sold-out benefit concert had not been able to take place.

Participants at Ishay Ribo Lawrence event

Ribo was in Brazil at the start of last week performing as he does almost every week somewhere either in Israel or around the world. His band members and team were heading to New York from São Paulo to spend Shabbos and await the Sunday night event.

My information is that Ribo (who travels by air the way most people travel by car), was planning to return to Israel for Shabbos to be with his family because his wife recently had given birth. He was planning to land in Israel on Thursday night and catch a flight on Sunday morning back to New York. Sounds like a plan.

The El Al flight back to New York was diverted to Paris because the air pathways around Israel were considered too risky as the Iranian missile bombardment had already gotten underway. Once in Paris, Ribo scrambled in order to find a flight to New York, where he landed early the next morning. The show must go on and indeed it did in very high style.

For us, it has been decades since all of us were temporarily frozen in place. Even during the COVID crisis, we managed with a bit of ingenuity and circuitous planning, to make our way back and forth to Israel.

With each passing day, we hear from friends and acquaintances who are one way or another stuck somewhere: either stuck in the States trying to get home to Israel, or stuck in Israel trying to get home to the States. We all know of friends or family who are being impacted by the current situation, which is the ongoing shelling between Israel and Iran.

Our friend, Gidon Katz of International Media Placement, who we’ve known for two decades, tells me that they are getting an average of two hours of sleep a night before being alerted to move to the building’s bomb shelter. He related to me that on Friday night, there was a direct hit of a missile on a building on the border of Bnei Brak. The house it hit was destroyed and the shrapnel of the missile significantly damaged other apartments in nearby buildings. He says the family whose home was destroyed was eating the Friday night seudah at a friend’s home. Small miracles.

Damage from a missile impact in Bnei Brak

Aside from the physical injuries, Gidon adds that many of those who are being hospitalized is due to the trauma caused by missiles impacting Israeli neighborhoods. On Tuesday, I asked Gidon if he can send me some photos. He messaged me back saying there was a siren sounding at the moment and he’s in the “safe room” and would send me some photos afterward.

Over in Jerusalem, there are sirens also, but the damage from missile strikes has been minimal. The theories as to why the Mullahs are not targeting Jerusalem varies widely. Some speculate that it is because of holy places like the Temple Mount. Others say it is because of the large Palestinian population, even though earlier in the week four members of an Arab family were murdered in Haifa.

Our good friends from our Brooklyn days, Dr. Bernie and Iver Kastner, live in Ramot and relate that in central Jerusalem where he has lived since 1999, while he can hear the missiles and the booms intercepting them, for the most part it is quiet. Of course, there are safe rooms and shelters which people can utilize for precautionary purposes.

On Tuesday, as I exchanged voice notes with Bernie, he told me that he was receiving a 15-minute notice that indicates that the siren will begin at which time there will be a ten-minute-warning to make it to a safe place, which is either a shelter or a safe room in your house.

Moshe Frankel of Lawrence with a young sofer in the Gaza Envelope who writes sefrei Torah for the zchus to have his brother come home from Gaza

The Sofer’s Brother

While we were speaking, he said that the notice of the impending sirens was cancelled. This means that the authorities determined that the fired missiles were either going to land in a distant part of the country, so no further action was required. Like many others, he has family in Israel who are trying to get back  to the States, and relatives who arrived in Israel last week for a simcha, leaving their children in the care of relatives or friends, and are now trying to get back home.

Moshe Hirsch, the owner of Central Perk Café in Cedarhurst, along with his wife, Dini, his daughter, son-in-law, and their six-month-old baby, went to Israel for a wedding and sheva berachos last week and were scheduled to return to New York last Saturday night. But as you know, all flights have been cancelled, although Israel is under intense pressure to get people in and out of the country. This concept of being frozen in place can only go on for so long. We have already reached the point where something needs to be done.

Moshe Hirsch exiting through Egypt

But waiting without a plan is not for everyone. “My daughter left her three other children at home with her in-laws,” Moshe said. She was anxious to get back to her children, but there was just no way to accomplish that last week. Moshe explained that he met another man who was planning on taking a taxi to the border of Egypt and heading down to Sharm El-Sheikh, where he can catch a flight to Europe and then to the United States.

Moshe explained that he was hoping to check into a hotel overnight in Eilat, and in the meantime, book a flight the next day to somewhere in Europe. He explained that from the time he signed online and saw a flight he wanted, by the time he finished registering the seven people in his party, the flight was sold out.

His taxi driver, who is an Orthodox young man, told him that if he finds an available hotel room in Eilat, it will be very expensive and he should not be afraid to cross the border into Egypt. Moshe says his wife and daughter were reluctant to agree, but the taxi driver reiterated that it was absolutely safe.

He needed four rooms and while this was not the time to go bargain hunting, his wife and daughter decided it was okay and they crossed into Egypt, where he says they got four beautiful hotel rooms for $170 per night each, compared to the $1,000 they were asking for in Eilat.

Moshe adds that the hotel was beautiful and there was very tight security. The next morning, he took another taxi to the airport in Sharm El-Sheikh, which was about 90 minutes away. He described how they stopped for gas at rest stop and how he observed a woman in a tichel and a man in a black hat on line for a soda at the rest stop. If you gotta go, you just gotta go.

At the end of the day, his party was booked on an EasyJet flight to Naples, Italy, where they took a taxi to Rome. He said he would have traveled by train from Naples to Rome, but there was a one-day train strike in Italy on Tuesday. From Rome, they were booked on an American Airlines flight to JFK.

Since I related this story on The Daily Thread on Tuesday, we’ve received several emails asking us to put them in touch with Mr. Hirsch, saying that if it goes well for him and his family and the skies don’t open up soon, they may try the same route back home.

This process was repeated over the last week with a few adjustments here and there many times. Some travelled by ship to Cyprus, while others crossed over into Jordan and booked flights on Royal Jordanian Airlines back to New York.

Earlier this week, the streets of Jerusalem were mostly empty. There were few cars on the roads. If you were in a hotel and wanted to go for a walk, you were most likely the only one on Israel’s usually busy thoroughfares. Almost all the stores were closed, though someone reported to me that they found a pizza shop open on King David Street.

Lawrence and Sam in Brooklyn

Mid-June is also Taglit-Birthright season, and there are thousands of students who were hoping to tour the length and breadth of the land but are now in limbo. I spoke with two 19-year-old boys from Brooklyn, former students of Yeshiva of Flatbush, Lawrence Warren and Sam Silvers, part of Brooklyn’s Syrian community. They arrived with a group of 36 students on Wednesday, June 11. By Thursday night, they were confined to their hotels, shuttling between their hotel rooms and the reinforced shelter in the basement of the hotel.

These are just a few slices of life and a look into some personal anecdotes over the last ten days. For those of us who are accustomed to traveling to Israel with ease and comfort, today’s contrast is startling.

The events of the last ten days are not just about Israelis trying to return home to Israel or Americans trying to get back to their families, it’s about the increased anxiety and stress and the disrupted daily life. As I’m finishing this essay, I’ve heard that more than 15,000 homes have been damaged by Iranian rockets to some extent, and over 3,000 people have had their homes demolished.

On Wednesday, some planes have started flying exclusively to bring Israeli residents back home. These flights originated in Athens, Paris, Rome, and Cyprus. Also, businesses around the country were allowed to reopen starting on Wednesday, provided that they have access to a safe room or a nearby shelter.

The hope is that the U.S. will get involved in this war to provide a final punctuation to this violent, sordid, and destructive story. The tale of radical Islamic terror is writing its last chapter, and as the popular tune relates—Od Yoter Tov—there are better days ahead. n

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.