MAROONED ON A FARAWAY ISLAND - part 2

The story of two sisters, young girls who took a flight from Eretz Yisroel and instead of arriving at the Rebbe for Rosh HaShana, landed in Newfoundland, Canada. * A first person story told in two installments about shlichus on the way to the Rebbe.* Part 2.

By Nechami Genuth

CHASSIDIM EIN MISHPACHA

When I woke up in the morning it took me a few moments to figure out where I was. I was in S. Johns, a small, isolated city on a large island called Newfoundland.

I sat on the mattress looking for negel vasser, which is always at my bedside in the morning, but there was none, because we hadn’t found a suitable cup and bowl. We left the small room with a cup we had gotten on the plane and looked for a faucet so we could wash our hands and face. We did not have to look hard; just a short walk in the hall and we found a bathroom.

Back in the hallway, we approached the stairs which were open like in a big mall, allowing us to see what was happening on the floor below. The place which just last night was so quiet was now bustling with people.

We felt we had been saved. The thought that we could have been down there with everyone else made me shudder. I looked at my sister and we both were thinking the same thing, that Hashem had sent us R’ Garelik like an angel from heaven.

“Do you think we would have managed on our own with our English?”

“English I could have managed, but even if they spoke Hebrew here, if they would have asked me last night where would you like to sleep, after thirty hours without sleep, I would have definitely answered that I don’t care, they should decide.”

We went back toward our room and near the door we met R’ Garelik. We told him we were returning after washing our hands and he surprised us and said with a smile that he found a creative solution to this problem. In the hallway he had found a plant in some kind of bowl and he had taken the bowl and had prepared negel vasser for himself.

R’ Garelik, without words, gave us the strong feeling that we were not there alone. He treated us like an older brother would and we understood the meaning of “Chassidim are one family.” We went back to our little room, closed the door, and appreciated our privacy.

We davened Shacharis with concentration and a sense of shlichus. Who knows when, if at all, since the creation of the world, there were Jews who davened here before us? Were there ever Jews here at all? We did not know.

There was a knock at the door. The frum people in the next room had brought us kosher food. It wasn’t much; it included a big bag of potato chips, so big it was almost the size of a pillow, soy franks that did not need refrigeration, and some granola bars. There was also something dairy, but since it was not Chalav Yisroel we skipped it. Despite this, I was surprised. I hadn’t thought that on this forsaken island there was a chance of finding products with a hechsher and maybe we had been mistaken about being the first Jews here.

We decided to look around. We left our room and realized that the building had been previously used as a school. But now, in nearly every classroom there were exercise mats. In what was formerly the teachers’ room, dozens of telephones had been installed, one of which we used to call home for free. We had slept in a side room which was used as the music wing of the school. This wasn’t the first time in my life that I had slept in a school, but the previous times I had slept in Chabad schools in various places in Eretz Yisroel with my classmates around me. This time, I was with thousands of non-Jews from all over the world.

We went downstairs and in a large room were tables with plenty of free food. We knew that some of the food was definitely treif and some was questionable, so of course we did not touch it. In another area were items like cosmetics and things to occupy children (there were hardly any), all gifts from the locals, and since our suitcases remained on the plane, the locals gave out free shirts. It was a strange sight to see so many different kinds of people all wearing the same shirt. There were also some people, mainly from Africa, for whom a shirt wasn’t warm enough and since they did not have coats, they went around wrapped in the blankets they had received the night before.

Everything around us looked so strange. Now and then I pinched myself to see whether this was all happening or perhaps I had dozed off on the flight and soon I would wake up and realize it was all a dream. Everything we saw was so removed from our lives. Only the small Chitas we held reminded us of our natural habitat and we felt especially connected to it. When we learned that day’s Chitas we were surprised to see the verse, “if your outcasts are at the ends of the heavens, from there He will gather you … and from there He will take you and Hashem will bring you to the land.” We felt that in this particular place, we were able to “live” with the parsha of the week in the fullest sense.

We saw R’ Garelik now and then. He went on mivtza t’fillin and he mainly found frum people who were thrilled with the t’fillin. It was an unusual mivtza t’fillin but thanks to him, a frum group came together which included five or six Chassidim. We did not see a single frum woman. We looked for the Israelis that we met on the plane but couldn’t find them and did not know where they had gone.

*TRAVELING BY CAR?

The idea that Moshiach is coming now was more tangible to me than ever with the collapse of the Twin Towers, surely part of the prophecy of the fall of the West, and it occurred the final week of a Shmita year and it says, “Ben Dovid [Moshiach] comes Motzaei Shviis.” We were sure this was the last week of galus and the first week of Geula. How would we get out of here? Would we fly on clouds back to Eretz Yisroel? Or would we fly via the USA on a plane? How much longer would we be here? An hour, two hours, a day, two days, or more? Nobody knew.

Then we met R’ Garelik who had a surprising suggestion. This was a Wednesday and it was close to twelve noon and he said firmly, “Get ready. A group is getting ready to travel

together to New York. We are leaving in another hour. We will cross the border between Canada and the US and by Friday we will be at the Rebbe.” He said this as though it was a one or two hour trip from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim. I thought I wasn’t hearing correctly, a two day trip by car? With so little warning?

Then, when we felt that maybe we were emotionally prepared enough, we met R’ Garelik again. He told us that the plan had fallen through because the United States had also closed off its land borders. So there we were, still in the same place, no flights out, no car, and clouds of heaven were the only option.

THE CONSERVATIVE TEMPLE

We did not know what to expect here and we kept asking ourselves, “What’s the point of this? Why had G-d sent us here?” My sister did not stop murmuring Tanya by heart, especially the end of chapter 33 which explains the advantage of Torah study and t’filla in the lands of the nations.

“If there are no Jews here, at least let us refine the place,” she said.

Then we met an Israeli girl who said she was living here for two years. She was sent by the Jewish Agency in Eretz Yisroel. She said that she was a teacher and taught Judaism.

“How many Jewish students are there?” I asked curiously.

“In this school there isn’t even one Jewish student,” she said, surprising us.

“Then who are you teaching Judaism to?” I did not understand.

“The non-Jews,” said she, as though that was obvious.

She told us that there was a tiny Jewish community of twenty-five people and they had a Conservative temple, which was a half an hour’s walk from where we were. R’ Garelik was listening to what she said and the information about the local temple interested him. He went back to his religious friends, banged on the counter, and announced, “If we have to be here for Rosh HaShana, we will take over the temple and turn it into an Orthodox shul!”

He said that with such Chassidic fervor and contagious determination. Rosh HaShana would be in five days and you can imagine that nobody wanted to celebrate this major holiday in this place. R’ Garelik seemed to be the only one for whom being here was more of a challenge than anything else. I did not understand how he planned on making such a dramatic change in such a short time, but he managed to get the new religious community he had formed to follow him. In the evening, he invited us to join him on a visit at the local temple.

The Conservative temple was something I knew about only from books and I pictured it as something bizarre. But when I actually walked in, I changed my mind. The place definitely reminded me of a shul. There was an Aron Kodesh, Chumashim, and Siddurim, and we even found a Siddur in Nusach Ari. What was missing was a mechitza.

The people welcomed us warmly and we spoke a bit to the ladies. We got the impression that they were happy to meet representatives from Eretz Yisroel among the many guests who were on the island. They were very generous and some of them even offered that we sleep in their homes, including an Israeli woman who was married to a local non-Jew in her second marriage.

After a while, R’ Garelik offered to blow the shofar and they were willing. He took the opportunity and gave a half hour lecture too. We were unaware at that time that R’ Garelik is a well-known lecturer, but we saw that the audience really enjoyed it. The message was Jewish, light and humorous, with the main goal being to get them to appreciate him so that the next time he showed up they would ask him to speak. Slowly, he would gain their trust so that he could make a drastic change on Rosh HaShana.

Maariv began and the religious Jews went to a side room while we remained in the hall. When davening was finished, we went back to the school where we slept. We tried to imagine how we would be able to keep Shabbos there without wine, challa, and not being able to cook. And where would we light candles — on the piano? And would we arrange a table on the floor of our room? Or in front of thousands of non- Jews? It seemed altogether unrealistic. I wanted to ask R’ Garelik whether we could look for a Chabad House less than thirty hours away, but I was reticent since we did not have the means to contribute toward the expenses of a trip. On the other hand, he had my full trust. If he thought it was possible, then he must have a solution. We went to sleep early, with the thought that the upcoming Shabbos and maybe even Rosh HaShana that followed it, would be spent by us in the strangest way we would imagine.

KNOCKING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

At three in the morning we heard knocking at the door. We opened it and there was a local Canadian girl who told us to go downstairs because our plane was returning to Belgium.

People slowly gathered in order to board a bus for the airport. I had no idea what we would do in Belgium; every place beyond our small country seemed hard to deal with. We expected R’ Garelik to join us but he said he was staying. “I must try and get home as soon as possible, but I think you should go to Belgium.” He took a small paper out of his pocket and wrote the names of two shluchim in Belgium on it, one was R’ Chaikin and the other one I don’t remember. He said that when we got there we should look up their names in the phone book.

We said goodbye. This seemed too hard for me. Who was I going to ask for a phonebook and how would I manage in Belgium, but we relied on Hashem to help us. We boarded the bus and after a short ride we were at the airport.

The airport did not look like a terminal at all. It was a one- story building that reminded me of our local medical clinic. We waited there from the morning until the afternoon. Fortunately, the time passed quickly. Most of the Israelis were there, the ones we knew from the flight. The black athletes and most of the gentile passengers preferred to remain near the US, so the atmosphere was Israeli. We got a little bit of an explanation about the place and mainly, it created an opportunity for a sort of mivtzaim that could be done there in particular.

S. Johns is the city farthest east in North America. The size of Newfoundland is five times that of Eretz Yisroel, but 99% of it is not settled. It is hundreds of kilometers away from other settled places. This island is one of a chain of islands in the Canadian North Sea and from there you can travel to the rest of Canada by car, via bridges and highways.

The airport was built for military purposes in World War II, but serves the locals now, and sometimes is used in an emergency. The city has a hotel which was only able to accommodate a small number out of the huge numbers of people who had landed there and it was decided to give it to the pilots. All the other travelers had to go to the local university, the high school and other public buildings. The locals took care of food and bedding. The Israeli contingent was somewhere else. They went touring together and went shopping and most of them refrained only from the meat. They were impressed that we had stayed away from all food that we did not know for sure was kosher. They asked us questions like what we would do if the plane would be going back on Shabbos. Would we go? We explained to them the concept of pikuach nefesh (danger to life) and they were amazed that it was so clear to us that we would not fly on Shabbos even if that meant we had to remain in this far-out place.

GOING BACK

After six hours of waiting we boarded the plane at noon. The plane left North America where it was daylight and after two hours of flying, it was nighttime. The plane was half empty and most passengers slept on several seats including the stewards. (Since they could not load the plane with food before the flight, the flight was quiet and the stewards also slept.)

We arrived in Belgium late Thursday night and were given food in the airport. Of course we chose kosher meals. My sister pointed out that our position on kashrus had gotten other Jews to choose kosher meals too. After the food was distributed, we parted from the other gentile passengers and only the Israelis remained. We stood on a long line and I have no idea how we managed to be first.

We were asked, by officials, whether we wanted to remain in Belgium or return to Eretz Yisroel. They explained that we have the option of leaving early Friday morning for Switzerland and from there to Israel and we would arrive there in the afternoon. When the US was open to foreign travelers again, we could fly there at no charge. We agreed.

I naively thought that most Israelis would do the same as us, but I was wrong. Most of them decided to remain in Belgium and only five other people decided to return to Eretz Yisroel. In the meantime, until the next flight, they put us up in a hotel. We traveled by mini bus together with the other Israelis. I was still holding the paper that R’ Garelik gave me. I did not want to throw it out as long as I was in Belgium.

Then Chani, one of the passengers, asked me where I planned on being for Shabbos. Chani’s parents were divorced and her father, a Chabad Chassid, lived in New York. She was raised in Eretz Yisroel by her mother who was not religiously observant. In the period before the trip, she had started attending classes on Kabbala and had met someone she wanted to marry who wore a kippa. She still wore pants but had started keeping Shabbos and wanted to do it right.

I realized that the paper R. Garelik had given me would come in handy and I gave it to her and explained what she should do. She had to find a phonebook and be the guest of one of these people. Who knows, maybe thanks to that Shabbos, we gained another Chabad family? In any case, for us, a Shabbos with the shluchim in Belgium might be an option some other time.

A minute before we entered the hotel, one of the passengers made a request: Try not to cause any embarrassment for Israelis. To us, it was a double responsibility - that they shouldn’t say that religious people caused any embarrassments.

We entered a magnificent hotel. We showered, changed our clothes, and rested a little. At five in the morning we headed back to the airport. We left in two taxis, one with a religious family and the other with my sister, myself and another Israeli. He was married, close to thirty. When it came to the luggage, he acted like a man, but all the way he cried like a baby, “That was a nightmare. Why did this happen to me?”

We appreciated our Chassidishe chinuch thanks to which we always looked for the shlichus angle and did not focus on the hardship. A minute before we parted I said to him, half seriously and half-jokingly, “I wish I could speak to G-d and ask Him what exactly I lost there that I had to go retrieve.”

He asked me with the innocence of a child, “Can we speak to G-d?”

I told him that it is possible to pray and we see the answer from Hashem in how things work out.

Who knows, maybe from then on he started praying…

EVERYONE WRITES TO THE KING!

We arrived in Eretz Yisroel two hours before Shabbos and contrary to all our expectations, we spent Shabbos and Rosh HaShana not in America, not on an island, and not in Belgium, but in the most familiar place to us in the world, at home. We then flew back to the Rebbe on Tzom Gedalya.

When we arrived, we met R’ Garelik who told us that he had spent Shabbos on the island together with some other frum people that he found there. Before Shabbos, he checked all the bakeries in the place and determined that there was no way to obtain kosher bread. So they divided a box of matzos that he always takes with him when he travels. For kiddush, he made grape juice from grapes that he squeezed by hand. We did not ask about the rest of the menu. He told us that on Sunday, air space over the United States was opened again but some of the passengers no longer had a reason to go there. For example, some had missed a family wedding. Others were unsure whether to go to the US or return to where they had come from. Although they each belonged to a different Chassidic group, they all wrote to the Rebbe and based on the answer they opened to, they knew where to go. In the end, he boarded a plane and paid $1200 for a one hour flight.

NOT THE END

We thought the story was finished but when we wanted to return to Eretz Yisroel and went to the airport, they told us that there was only a flight to Belgium because the flight back to Eretz Yisroel already took off. They spoke about $900 extra dollars and I realized that for that price it might be worth remaining until the following Tishrei. I began saying a chapter of T’hillim by heart. Then we discovered Shir, one of the Israeli passengers with whom we had become friendly. She ran over to us and asked whether we had a T’fillas HaDerech, which of course we had. She resolved our problem within a few minutes. She went over to the right official and they printed for us another ticket on the spot. After we boarded, we said the T’fillas HaDerech together with great concentration.

A week later there was a farbrengen in our seminary for those returning from the Rebbe and they had me tell this story. When I was done, Mrs. Sarah Greenberg (former principal) told me that we had conducted ourselves properly but the next time we should not rely on miracles and should travel with an organized Chabad group.

Why Hashem chose us to land in Newfoundland, I don’t know. What I learned from it was that if you truly want to, you can keep the Torah anywhere. I wish for all the Jewish people that the next time we read in the Torah, “your outcasts at the ends of the earth,” that we merit to see all the outcasts, physically and spiritually, at the third Beis HaMikdash in Yerushalayim, together with the Rebbe.