By Captain Sholom Neistein, USA
In late 2020, I found myself deploying to Romania. At the time, the Covid-19 pandemic was at its zenith and everyone was still frantic about face masks and quarantines, so we all had to get tested before stepping foot on the plane. To our dismay, when we landed in Ireland on a stopover, we found out that someone had tested positive. It was really late at night when we got off the plane and, instead of being given hotel rooms and vouchers, we were immediately all locked in the terminal. We would stay there, under guard(!), for 24 hours while the Army, the Irish, and the Romanians figured out what to do with us. (Later, we realized it was a total Covid outbreak—we all got it, myself included.)
Between 200 to 300 of us soldiers were quarantined in the terminal together, and they soon started to bring out food. We were offered chicken sandwiches and pork sandwiches, and as an officer, I wanted to have all the soldiers eat before me. Alas, when it was my turn, there were only pork sandwiches left—but I wasn’t going to eat that [stuff].
I messaged my family chat: “Sucks to be me, guys! Guess I’m not eating tonight.”
My sister told me to message Aleph’s military personnel liaison, Rabbi Elie Estrin, and without hesitation, he told me: “Let’s see what solutions the nearest Chabad rabbi can come up with.”
Rabbi Estrin reached out to the Chabad rabbi in Dublin, and he and his wife prepared a whole feast! More frantic phone calls ensued to figure out how to get the food to me. The eventual result was that within about four hours, a massive amount of fresh kosher food was delivered to the airport terminal where we were quarantined. There was so much food that we even had extra to share with the hundreds of soldiers who were there!
My soldiers were all in amazement. “Sir, how did you get this to happen? Is this really how Jews take care of Jews?” they asked.
I responded, “Absolutely! We are a family even if we don’t know the Jewish person personally.”
One of the soldiers quipped: “Can I convert?!”
This was definitely a great story to tell the grandkids one day.
Originally published in the Shavous/Three Weeks 5784 issue of The Jewish American Warrior.
