A chartered plane carrying 250 North American participants of summer Israel trips landed in Toronto overnight Aug. 7, after organizers ended trips early on rising concerns over security and commercial airlines cancelling flights.
The chartered flight was delayed for days, however, while summer program staff worked around logistical problems, including a hurricane pounding the U.S. East Coast.
Israel has been on high alert since Iran vowed to retaliate against the July 31 assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Global Affairs Canada upgraded its travel advisory Aug. 3 telling Canadians to “avoid all travel” to Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On Aug. 7, the Canadian government confirmed it was relocating families of diplomatic personnel from the embassy in Tel Aviv.
“The situation in Israel remains volatile and unpredictable,” the Canadian Embassy in Israel posted online Aug. 7.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly last week advised Canadians in Lebanon to leave the country, with fears of escalating war between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, on Israel’s northern border.
Most commercial airlines that had had direct flights to Tel Aviv have ceased those flights, including Air Canada, which said on July 11 it was pausing flights between Israel and Toronto until Oct. 15, and Montreal flights to Israel until next summer.
Organizers of teen trips from North America, including the heads of Camp Ramah and Young Judaea, separately decided to cut trips short by a few days. Canadian Young Judaea sent 66 participants on its Biluim Israel trip this year, while Ramah’s Canadian contingent for its Seminar program was around 30 teenagers. (Numbers for teen trips to Israel overall had dipped this year during the Gaza war that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.)
Ramah CEO Amy Skopp Cooper, who came from the U.S. to Israel to spend the final week of the trip with the teenagers, told The CJN in a phone interview from Jerusalem that the trip had been scheduled to end Aug. 7.
“We made that decision [to leave early] Friday (Aug. 2) before Shabbat, with concerns of what might progress in Israel, about keeping the teens in a safe environment. ” She notes the participants had “always” been near bomb shelters throughout the trip, which were well provisioned in case of extended periods in the bunker.
The groups were in the Negev Desert when the decision to leave was made, Cooper said.
“We began thinking about, God forbid, an extended power outage, or lack of communications, or if the teens would need to spend long periods in the shelter. We decided it was prudent to send them home early. Being that it was so close to the end we felt the teens had the most amazing experience, [and that] we were not cutting our program short.”
Cooper and other Ramah organizers were in contact with Canadian Young Judaea organizers, and, with funds through a private donation, quickly coordinated shared flights out of Israel for participants.
Obstacles abounded despite organizers’ determination to safely return the teenagers to their families in North America. The charter flight, envisioned as a direct route between Tel Aviv and Newark, New Jersey, hit a snag when staff learned the U.S.-flagged aircraft could not land in Tel Aviv due to current restrictions on planes that haven’t previously landed in Israel.
The Boeing 767 operated by Eastern Airlines LLC landed in Athens, where the participants flying back to North America arrived on two flights via Israeli carriers on Aug. 3 and 4. The chartered plane was set to return from the Greek capital Aug. 6, but was delayed another day after the flight crew’s time reached its maximum. After a few days at hotels by the beach in Athens, teens spent one more night in a different hotel.
That delay, the teenagers and staff learned from the captain as they were about to board on Tuesday night in Athens, was due to an error in weight calibrations for the aircraft, which had flown to Athens without passengers or luggage. The roughly 250 passengers and their luggage, including around 90 to 100 Canadian teenagers, plus staff and chaperones, required a new weight calibration, resulting in the extra delay when the flight crew’s work hours timed out.
Originally scheduled to fly from Athens to Newark, the charter’s itinerary shifted with weather concerns around Hurricane Debby on the U.S. Atlantic coast, eventually rerouting the plane to fly first to Toronto and then, weather permitting, continue to Newark. The flight from Athens landed at Toronto Pearson airport a little before midnight Aug. 7, and continued without incident to Newark, landing early on Aug. 8.
Cooper told The CJN that “from the beginning, we knew that the program itinerary was going to be somewhat in flux,” which also meant steering clear of northern Israel this year.
Cooper says both Ramah and Young Judaea made the decision to leave early independently, before teaming up to get the teens home on the chartered flight. More and more flights were being cancelled, she says, and many charters weren’t willing to fly into Israel to pick up the teenagers, but from the morning of Friday, Aug. 2 onward, the two groups resolved to share resources.
“From the moment we began working with Young Judaea, it was obvious we had one goal: to get our kids safely home,” says Cooper, who says there’s “no formal relationship” between the movements, “but all of us are colleagues that will always reach out to one another to collaborate, for support.”
Based on the number of teens going to Toronto, Cooper says, organizers and the charter airline company agreed to adjust the itinerary, flying first to Toronto, then Newark.
“One of the challenges we’ve been facing is that New York airports cancelled all flights due to the storm [risks with Hurricane Debby]… It was just a real challenge to get everyone home.”
Still, Cooper says, the “totally unanticipated… prolonged stay in Athens for two and a half days” had some upsides.
“Having studied Jewish history the entire summer, understanding Hellenistic influences made so much sense to our teens, and produced incredible conversations.”
Risa Epstein, executive director of Canadian Young Judaea, called the return trip “a logistical nightmare” though she mentioned that the overweight calibration in Athens that caused the second delay was likely because “the charter didn’t expect the big bags these kids carry.” Teenagers reportedly had to be weighed individually before boarding the flight home.
“We kept changing the rules on the parents,” Epstein says, explaining that the flight originally booked to Newark meant the Canadian teens, most either based in Toronto or travelling home from there, would need alternate return transportation. Epstein’s organization secured and paid for a bus from Newark, but was “sending it home empty now” that the flight went to Toronto.
Epstein says the teens were “disappointed they couldn’t finish the trip the way they wanted to, but understanding that we were making the best decisions with info we had at hand.”
“It’s been a Herculean effort on behalf of Ramah, CYJ, [the private donor] and the charter airline company,” Epstein says. Of the 66 teenagers from across Canada on the CYJ trip, she says 60 were on the flight that arrived from Athens.
“The parents have been amazing, so supportive and understanding that so much has been out of our control, but what’s in our control is the health and safety of their children,” says Epstein.
“Despite everything, these kids have had an unbelievable experience in Israel. They were engaged and felt so much, especially after the year Israel’s had, the year they’ve had witnessing antisemitism for the first time in their lives… this trip was beyond expectations. Yes, they had to leave early, [involving] logistical difficulties… but every moment they spent in Israel was worth all the difficulties it took to get them home.”
Alicia Richler’s son is one of the 17-year-olds who went on the Biluim Israel trip this year with CYJ, and Richler says in the recent days while the teens flew to Athens and then home, she learned a lot about how airplane technicians calibrate aircraft weight.
“The combination of the fuel, the people [by total weight], and the temperature affects the plane’s ability to take off,” she says. “By the time they did the calibration [in Athens on Tuesday night], the crew timed out.”
Back at the airport in Athens Wednesday, she says, “each person was weighed before they got on the plane, so they knew the exact weight of the people and the luggage, so they could calibrate how much fuel to put in to be confident that they could take off.”
Richler gives the organizers credit also for putting together a tour of the Acropolis for the teenagers.
“They really went beyond the call of duty to not only ensure the kids were safe but to give them a great ending of their trip,” she says, noting that the CYJ group was able to finish its Hadracha leadership training in Athens and properly close out the trip “as they should… they all got to have a finishing experience through Tuesday.”
“The organizers have been honest and open with the [teens], from months before, from the day they left, they said [to families] ‘safety is first, and if we feel [participants] are not safe, we will leave Israel’… and they did that.
“The kids will be home and they’ll have a story to tell forever … not only the kids but the parents … we’ve been communicating, we’ve been in it together.
“The goal of this trip was to, in some cases introduce Israel to kids, but to connect these kids to Israel in a whole [new] special way, and in all the craziness to get home, they never lost that.”
Another CYJ parent, Josh Blinnick, says he’s grateful to “whomever was able to arrange for a flight to be chartered to get [the teenagers] home,” including his son.
“I had faith they were going to be aware of what was going on and make adjustments as necessary,” he says. “The most likely worst case was that tensions were going to rise [and] they were going to have to cut it short… I’m glad they were able to make the decision when they were, because it wasn’t easy to get a flight.”
Blinnick says his son, while grateful for the trip and time in Athens, will be glad for the ordeal to be done.
Meanwhile, many other Israel trips had already wrapped up or were close to doing so. NCSY Canada’s annual summer trip called The Jerusalem Journey, offered by the Orthodox Union, had already returned to Toronto, said Rabbi Shlomo Mandel.
Rabbi Mandel says there are about 650 teenagers still out on trips to Israel through NCSY, including about 50 or 60 Canadian teens organized via Jewish schools in Montreal and Toronto, who place them with NCSY bus groups after teens register for their Israel trip programs.
Mandel says TJJ’s program went according to plan this year.
“It was a much more meaningful summer, they went to the Nova festival site… they did certain things that would never have happened… they got to engage with displaced families from kibbutzim,” he says.
“Going to the Nova site is a drastic change… that’s one activity, but that can change someone’s summer.”
(Thousands of people were attending the Nova music festival when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7. More than 360 people were killed and 40 were taken hostage, some of whom are still being held in Gaza.)
The NCSY trips are ending within the next week or two, and are scheduled to fly from Tel Aviv on El Al directly to airports in New York or Los Angeles.
Rabbi Mandel says as of now the organization’s trips haven’t been cancelled or cut short, but that staff has “their fingers on the pulse” and that chartering a flight was “not out of the equation.”
“Everything is safe and secure and operating normally. There are always slight changes day to day, depending on what [government authorities] say,” he says, noting that trip leaders from NCSY’s tour provider, Israel Destinations, are in touch with parents and will “do what’s necessary” if situations escalate further. Each morning, he says, “every bus gets a green light” from the security team before proceeding.
“Whether it’s chartering a flight, cancelling, ending early, moving the trip to other areas of the country,” the NCSY national organization has “various [tools] at its disposal,” he says, if escalating security threats necessitate an early exit. “They’re not going to take risks or chances.”
