Weekly Sermon

Rebbe Nachman taught: “The whole world is a very narrow bridge—and the essential thing is not to be afraid.” Kol ha’olam kulo, gesher tzar me’od; v’ha-ikar lo l’fached klal. Sing it with me, if you know it…

This is what the passengers on FlyDubai Flight 1073 sang as the plane was stabilized and on their way to an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia—after surviving one of the most terrifying moments imaginable. A hijacking. A tailspin. A cockpit under attack. A pilot bleeding out. A plane descending toward catastrophe. And yet—they sang. Because sometimes the narrow bridge becomes very real. And sometimes the only thing left is faith.

The story is so unbelievable—miraculous! An attempted terrorist hijacking was foiled at the last possible second by Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian pilot who—though stabbed repeatedly by his co-pilot and hemorrhaging—somehow managed to pry open the cockpit door to alert the passengers that something was terribly wrong.

The co-pilot’s name is being withheld, but Israeli investigators report he had undergone radical Islamic indoctrination and had posted online: “Kill the Jews.” He put the plane into a violent tailspin and as a result, part of the rudder ripped off because the aircraft was not built to withstand such forces.

Then somehow—inexplicably—it leveled. Just for a few moments. Just long enough for 10 heroic Israeli passengers to charge the cockpit. Long enough for 2 reserve pilots—sitting in the back, frozen in shock—to be shaken into action and take control of the aircraft. Long enough for those pilots to stabilize the plane and land in Saudi Arabia instead of crashing into the desert…or into an Israeli building in a 9/11-style attack as was the co-pilot’s intention. 180 lives—almost all Israeli—were saved. Truthfully, everyone aboard should be dead!

There are moments when history gives you no time to deliberate. You either run toward the danger—or away from it. Yaniv Hayoun, a plumber, ran toward it: “I jumped in there,” he said. “I pulled the co-pilot out of the cockpit. I started pulling the control stick back to level out the plane… I watch plane crash investigation shows—I saw this once—and then we got another pilot to take the controls.” A plumber. A man who had never flown a plane. Pulling back the stick and leveling out a Boeing aircraft in freefall. If he had pulled back just a little harder, experts later said, the plane would have been torn apart. Unbelievable!

One passenger told CBS News: “It was the scariest thing possible. People were shouting and crying and saying ‘I love you’ to their children… I held my family, telling our children we love them.”

The co-pilot was Omani—and should never have been allowed on a flight to Tel Aviv because Oman has NO diplomatic relations with Israel. An Omani aviation source said bluntly: “There’s no other way to put it. We hired a terrorist!”

I’m exhausted just telling the story. The good news is that there were many heroes.

-The 1st was Captain Machchhar—though critically injured—still managed to open the cockpit door.

-Yaniv Hayoun—despite crushing G-forces—ripped the co-pilot out of his seat, threw him out of the cockpit and began to stabilize the plane.

-Shota Musayev—an Israeli dentist—became an emergency battlefield medic, stabilizing the pilot and preventing him from bleeding to death. So many jumped into action.

You see, Israelis are built differently. If you needed a plane full of people who would run toward danger—who have military training, crisis experience, medical knowledge—you’d want Israelis aboard. Israel has a long history of fighting hijackers going back to the 1960s and 70s. It can be said—painfully, accurately—that the only invention of Palestinian terror groups is hijacking planes. But this time, they failed.

Bottom line: What we witnessed was extraordinary acts of human heroism. But it was more than that. There were a thousand ways this could have ended in tragedy—or in an international crisis. A thousand ways the plane could have crashed or been torn apart from G forces it was made to withstand. A thousand ways the cockpit could have remained sealed. A thousand ways the pilot could have died before opening the door. A thousand ways the passengers could have been unable to act. And yet—they lived.

Now here’s a bit of news analysis you won’t hear on Fox News or CNN. What was the flight number of the FlyDubai flight? It was 1073. Does that number seem familiar? 1073 or 10/7/3 indicating October 7, 2023! Coincidence? Could it be that an Arab terrorist took over an Arab airline to kill a plane-load of Israelis in an October 7th like massacre as the anniversary of that massacre approached?

On Thursday morning, as usual, I was at the 8 a.m. minyan at Beth Jacob. During Hallel on Sukkot, we recite twice: Ana Hashem hoshia na (Please, Gd, save us now). I usually say the 1st recitation mostly for Israel, and the 2nd for us. As I recited this, I was filled with a moment of deep prayer and revelation.

I wondered: What was happening in Israel at the exact moment Flight 1073 went into its tailspin the day before? I asked AI—or should I say SI—for the flight’s timeline. The tailspin began at 8:21 a.m. Saudi Arabia/Israel time. Then I asked myself: What was happening in Israeli synagogues at 8:21 am?

The weekday morning service on Chol HaMoed Sukkot is about 90 minutes long. And throughout—again and again—holding the lulav and etrog, we cry out: Hosha na, Hosha na—Save us, Gd, save us!

I checked a sample of Israeli synagogue schedules. At 8:21 a.m., as Flight 1073 was plunging toward the earth, almost every synagogue in Israel was praying: Hashem hoshia na. Hosha na. “Save us, Hashem, save us. Save us now!” Isn’t that astonishing?

There’s more. Why do we celebrate Sukkot? Rabbi Akiva teaches in the Talmud (Sukkah 11b) that we celebrate Sukkot and sit in the sukkah to commemorate that our ancestors lived in temporary dwellings for the 40 year trek to the Promised Land. Rabbi Eliezer maintains that there is more. We sit in the sukkah to relive the Ananei HaKavod (The Clouds of Glory) that Gd used to protect our ancestors in the desert. Clouds that shielded them from heat, cold, and danger. Clouds that surrounded them with Gd’s presence.

When Flight 1073 went into its tailspin, everyone was frozen in their seats. Only when the plane miraculously and inexplicably leveled off for a few minutes could Yaniv and the others storm the cockpit. What caused that leveling?

Scientists suggest a strong updraft, wind shear, or turbulence.

But on Sukkot—the holiday of the Clouds of Glory—could it have been something more? Could the clouds of the Ananei HaKavod have appeared once again, protecting Jews falling from the sky just as they once protected Jews in the desert? Makes sense to me!

Some will say: “We were lucky. Jewish guts, quick thinking, and a series of coincidences.” But as I’m fond of quoting Albert Einstein: “Coincidence is Gd’s way of remaining anonymous.”

My opinion? There was no coincidence here. This was Gd’s hand—clear and unmistakable. Today, 180 Israeli passengers are celebrating Shabbat and Yom Tov with their families. On this Yom Tov we traditionally recite the Shehecheyanu blessing—thanking Gd for keeping us alive, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this day. I’m sure many Israeli families recited it with tears in their eyes as they greeted their loved ones at Ben Gurion Airport.

So, my friends, today, instead of saying Yizkor for the passengers of a crashed Flight 1073, let us say together a special Shehecheyanu for the joy we feel for our rescued brothers and sisters: Baruch Atah Hashem Elokeinu Melech ha’olam, Shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higianu lazman hazeh (Blessed are You, Hashem our Gd, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this day).

As the plane that carried the passengers landed in Israel, all of them spontaneously burst into song singing: Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live. Let’s join them now: Am Yisrael Chai. Od Avinu Chai. No matter what—the people of Israel will live! Amen.