Rabbi's Message

As B’nai Yisrael arrive at Mt. Sinai, God summarizes the three months from the Exodus to that moment with a remarkable phrase:

 “You have seen…how I bore you on Eagles’ wings and brought you to me.”  (Exodus 19:4)  

Perhaps it seemed that way to God, but I’m not sure the Israelites experienced it quite the same way.  For them, it was the whole period of the plagues, anxiety as Pharaoh’s army pursued them to the sea, the splitting of the sea only after they went in up to their nostrils (according to Midrash), the lack of water in the wilderness, the attack by Amalek.  Eagles’ wings?  How do you explain that?  

Midrash explains the imagery:  the eagle is the strongest and swiftest of birds, flying higher than others and protecting its young by carrying them on its back.  But the Midrash does not explain why or how B’nai Yisrael might feel that they had been “born on eagle’s wing,” given all they had actually experienced.

Hold that thought for a moment, and let me tell you a story about a different flight. It is equally fraught, though the mode of travel is not the same.  

Over the last months, many of you have asked me about the situation in Haiti and the danger posed for the 70 children at Mitch Albom's Have Faith Haiti Orphanage. To answer this question, let me share part of an article Mitch recently wrote for the Detroit Free Press.

This is a story about saving lives, six seats at a time. That’s the passenger capacity of each Bell 407 helicopter that an organization called HERO Client Rescue flies nearly every day from the terrorized city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to distant hospitals and safer villages.

 

Week after week, month after month, these helicopters — three of them — are now the only way small numbers of people, many serious medical cases, are able to evacuate the capital city, which is overrun by gang violence. In Port-au-Prince, murders, fires, kidnappings — even being hit by stray bullets — are part of everyday life.

 

“Outside people don’t realize how serious the situation is,” says Stacy Librandi, 44, who created HERO 11 years ago… “The city is a war zone. And innocent people living in Haiti, just trying to survive, are left to defend themselves in a country where mostly it's only the bad guys that have firearms.”

More than 700,000 Haitians have now been displaced by the endless gang violence, as of last October. That’s 700,000 homeless people searching for places to live. Commercial airlines have stopped flying into Port-au-Prince, after gangs shot at airplanes. The roads out of the city are controlled by those gangs as well, as are the ports, so there is no driving or sailing away.
 

…Right now, the only safe movement is via helicopter, and pretty much the only helicopters operating are the ones that HERO bravely puts into the sky up to four times a day. They land on soccer fields, hillsides, hospital lawns.

 

I just returned from another trip to Haiti.  have written about the orphanage I operate there in Port-au-Prince, and the now 70-plus amazing children who have thrived under its care. A number of those kids require serious medical attention for issues such as cerebral palsy, seizures, malnutrition and brain damage. We used to fly them on commercial airlines out of Port-au-Prince. Now we must use helicopters for a journey to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien, site of the country’s only functioning international airport.

 

Our children have been strapped into HERO’s seats. So have many others. A 2-year-old baby who needed immediate open-heart surgery. A teenager with head trauma from a motorcycle crash. Cancer patients. Newborns. Adoptees….

This is everyday life for people in Haiti. HERO tries to give them a lift, literally and figuratively. And as someone who once needed to be airlifted out of Haiti in a chopper, I can attest, when you have no other option, you look at those whirling blades as more than just aviation. You see them as salvation.

And salvation should not be denied to anyone, even if it’s only six seats at a time.

Now, perhaps, we can better appreciate the feelings of our ancestors who stood at Sinai: relief, salvation, gratitude, and the blessing of freedom.  “You have seen how I bore you on eagles’ wings.”

We will soon sit at our Seder tables, recline, drink four cups of wine, tell the story of the Exodus,and then enjoy a sumptuous meal.  But even as we do all of that, we should remember that there are others who long to be borne to safety and security, to freedom, whether on “wings of eagles” or whirlybirds--helicopters.     

I know that all of us will say prayers at our Seder tables for the release of the hostages from Gaza.   You may also want to add a prayer for the children of Have Faith Haiti.  I know I will.

You can make donations to help the families of the hostages by giving to the TBS Am Yisrael Hai Fund.

To donate to the HERO Helicopter Rescue group or Have Faith Haiti, you can visit their websites or give to the Rabbi Lindemann’s Tzedakah Fund at TBS, and it will be sent on to those organizations.