For over a week now, The CJN has been sharing the stories of Canadians stranded in Israel since it sparked a war with Iran, effectively shutting down its airspace. Some of those Canadians have safely evacuated Israel, mostly without help from the Canadian government, but for security reasons, we were unable to share those stories publicly. Until now.
Many of the Canadians with whom we spoke are now either home safe or en route, and in this episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, Ellin Bessner reveals some of their stories.
The first story belongs to Leonard Temes, an architect and interior designer from Toronto who went to Israel for a Pride mission with a Federation group, but left clandestinely a week ago. He flew out on a plane from Cairo by way of Jordan, hiding both his Jewishness and his sexuality, sitting on the same flight as the pro-Palestinian protesters who participated on the global March on Gaza (who wound up kicked out of Egypt by local authorities).
Meanwhile, Philip Lerner, a data scientist from Thornhill, was volunteering with an Orthodox youth group connected to the Aish organization. Lerner was offered a berth on the luxury cruise ship chartered by Birthright, via Ashdod to Cyprus. Videos posted to social media depict 1,500 young Jews dancing and partying on the pool deck. But Lerner says that despite those viral videos, the overnight “Jew Cruise” was not entirely smooth sailing.
Hear their stories on today’s episode of North Star above.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: This group of pro-Palestinian extremists, who had been kicked out of Egypt after trying to march to Gaza, was not one of the things that Toronto architect and home designer Leonard Temes, 61, had expected he would have to face during his recent nerve-wracking journey to flee Israel. But there they were, seated a few seats away from him on the same aeroplane leaving Cairo last week, bound for Athens, where Temes was also headed, on the fourth leg of his evacuation from Iranian missiles slamming into Tel Aviv. He couldn’t believe it, so he pulled out his phone to record what he saw. All part of his odyssey that started 10 days ago when the Israeli military launched Operation Rising Lion. The operation closed Israeli airspace, put the country on an emergency footing, and sent millions of Israelis and tourists into bomb shelters. But after three nights of this, Temes’ group, the Jewish Federations of North America’s LGBTQ Pride mission, who had brought 100 prominent people to Israel from the community, including five Canadians, offered to pay for anybody who wanted to leave and to get them out.
So, Temes and about 30 others signed up, but they had to keep the route a secret and especially stay off social media. They boarded a specially chartered bus for the trip across Israel into Jordan, then another bus to Amman, a flight from Jordan to Cairo, and from there, either directly back to New York, or in Temes’ case, staying on in Cairo on his own, then making his way home. Because he’d already planned to visit friends in Europe en route.
Even though Israel’s been at war since October 7, 2023 Temes originally had felt it would be safe enough to go to Israel this summer. He certainly hadn’t bargained for the surprise escalation against Iran, nor the other dangers he could face on his circuitous route out: because LGBTQ people are often persecuted and imprisoned in the two Muslim countries, and, even though both Jordan and Egypt do have existing peace treaties with Israel, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians since October 7th has raised tensions.
Leonard Temes: And we were walking around, and, you know, everything seemed fine. Like, as far as safety goes, I mean, it was a little unnerving just because you have to hide your identity. But overall, I think if it wasn’t safe, they wouldn’t have let us do it.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Monday, June 23, 2025. Welcome to North Star, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News, made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
For well over a week now, we’ve been reporting stories about Canadians stranded in Israel since Operation Rising Lion began June 13. But slowly and under the radar for security reasons, The CJN has been speaking to some of the first tourists who found ways to evacuate Israel, mostly without any help from the Canadian government.
We couldn’t report their stories until it was safe to do so. On today’s episode, you’ll hear later from Philip Lerner of Thornhill. He was with a group of young adults travelling with the AISH Modern Orthodox Movement. They got out of Israel on Tuesday with barely a few hours’ warning, aboard that Birthright-chartered 11-storey Israeli cruise ship to Cyprus. But first, here’s my conversation with Leonard Temes. He joined me late at night, his time, from his hotel in Athens, Greece.
Let’s get into it because you need to go to bed soon. I don’t know what time your flight is out of there.
Leonard Temes: I’m leaving for the airport at around 10, so I’m fine.
Ellin Bessner: You need to fill in how you got there and why you were there.
Leonard Temes: Yes. So I went to Israel with a group. It was called the LGBTQ+ Pride Mission to Israel. And partway through the trip, the war broke out. I was planning to be there an extra week to visit my cousins and to see a few parts of Israel that weren’t covered by the trip itself. And the group provided us an exit plan to get out of Israel. I didn’t have too much time to think about it. I spoke to a couple of friends, and they’re like, “Get out if you can.” So I decided not to stay and wait for the airports to reopen, which I think was a good decision given the intensity of the bombing. We got out through Jordan. We took a bus ride to Jordan. At the Jordanian border, we switched buses and spent the night in Amman.
Ellin Bessner: Hold on, before you go any further, like, did the Israeli or the Jewish Federation of North America and the Toronto people urge you to get out, or did they give you a choice?
Leonard Temes: I think, If they didn’t think it was completely 100% safe, they wouldn’t have encouraged us to do it.
Ellin Bessner: And where were you located? You were all in Tel Aviv at this time?
Leonard Temes: Yes, we were staying at the Sheraton. It’s called the Sheraton Grand Hotel. It’s on Hayarkon in Tel Aviv.
Ellin Bessner: There was supposed to be a Shabbat dinner, as far as I understand, and.
Leonard Temes: Then, yeah, we ended up in the bomb shelter in the middle of dinner in the basement of the hotel. We were in and out a couple of times throughout the course of the evening. Two or three times that happened for two nights that we dealt with going in and out of shelters. I checked out of the Sheraton Sunday morning and checked into another hotel, and it did not have a very nice shelter. The Sheraton’s was like a four-star shelter. It had a coffee machine and soda machines and, you know, like tables and benches to sit at. The one in the Prima was basically like a storage room at the bottom of the hotel.
I did that the second night and then the third night I decided to go walk over to the Sheraton when I got the warning because there were still a lot of people from the group at the Sheraton. I wasn’t that shaken up by it. It seemed the Iron Dome was doing its job for the most part. But then after three nights of being in bomb shelters and having to wake up several times during the night, I made the decision that I want to get out of there because I’d rather be somewhere safe.
Ellin Bessner: So how many JFNA people did they get out, and were there people that are still in there from your trip? Do you know?
Leonard Temes: So they gave everybody the option of leaving, and they told us at the dinner we were having in the evening, I think it was around 8 pm, “We have a route and whoever wants to come, they need to know by 9 am.” They sent us a form to fill out, a disclaimer asking what our final destination was. And so the next morning we left, and we had a full bus. So I’m going to say like 25 to 30 people opted to leave. A lot of people had relatives in Israel that they wanted to stay with. Some people wanted to wait a little bit longer till the airlines opened back up.
Ellin Bessner: But was it scary, like going through Israel on a bus to enter Jordan?
Leonard Temes: The most nerve-wracking part was the border. Other than that, I mean, once we were through the border, it was like there was really nothing identifying us as a Jewish group. We were told not to wear Stars of David. You know, women were told to dress more modestly. If anybody had exposed tattoos, they were told to wear long sleeves. You know, some people had Hebrew tattoos on their bodies. If they couldn’t cover them, they put band-aids on them. Oh yeah, I mean, once we were in Jordan, they were very welcoming to us. I don’t know if they knew we were Jews or Israelis or gay. I mean, yeah, well, definitely we had to keep that quiet.
Ellin Bessner: And there were no bombs, you didn’t hear any airplanes going back, or did you see any of that?
Leonard Temes: So the first night we were in Jordan, we were sitting outside in a restaurant that had an outdoor courtyard, and they saw the missiles overhead going into Israel. So they brought us inside the restaurant, and that was it. The next day, they took us to Jerash and a Jordanian ruin.
We were like tourists, and we were walking around, and, you know, everything seemed fine. It was interesting. Then they took us to the airport. We flew from Jordan to Cairo. In Cairo, we were met by another group organizing person. They had to exit the airport and re-enter to go from one terminal to the next, which meant that we all had to have visas. So this guy issued visas for us. At that point, I had made my own arrangements to fly to Athens because that had been on my itinerary previously.
Ellin Bessner: So you were in Cairo. Have you ever been to any of these other Middle Eastern countries before? Or just have you ever been to Israel before?
Leonard Temes: I went to Israel twice, actually, as a child.
Ellin Bessner: You haven’t been back in like, what, 40 years?
Leonard Temes: 1977. So, yeah, nearly 50 years.
Ellin Bessner: 40 years.
Leonard Temes: 50. 50 years. Closer to 48.
Ellin Bessner: But you’ve never been to Jordan, or you’ve never been to Egypt, or any of those countries?
Philip Lerner: No.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, so you’re… You get to Cairo, and I saw some videos that you shot that you encountered the group of protesters that had tried to march into Gaza. Tell me about that.
Leonard Temes: Okay, so I stayed overnight in Cairo, got in a pyramid tour, and then got back to the airport, got on the plane, and the takeoff got delayed. But then suddenly, somebody comes on the plane. A lot of people on the plane were clapping, and I hear somebody shout out, “Free Palestine.” And I didn’t really quite know what was going on. I was sort of taken aback. The plane took off, and then we land in Athens. All of a sudden, everybody starts shouting. They start shouting, like, “Free Palestine, Palestine.” They were pronouncing it, chanting it over and over again, clapping. So I brought out my phone, I started videoing because I couldn’t believe it. Then I realized they must have been the people that were on the walk to Gaza.
There is a guy literally across the aisle from me, like one or two rows up, who stood up and said, “Thank you, I am from Gaza. Thank you, thank you.” Which, like, your life can’t be that bad if you’re flying to Greece on… anyways.
Ellin Bessner: Well, we don’t know his story. But… Okay, so you’re escaping bombs from Iran that are raining down on your… on your neighborhood, on your hotel, on you. Then you get on a plane full of people who hate the Israelis and hate Jews and also pro-Palestine. How do two things happen and what… What do you… How does that go through your mind at the time?
Leonard Temes: .I was a little…..freaked out, and I wanted to say something after being on that amazing informational trip and having an incredible understanding of what’s going on in the Middle East. They were almost like a mob. I just thought, “Okay, I’m just gonna be low key about this and get off this plane.”
When we were off the plane and walking through customs, they started shouting it again. Like, I guess some of them had been detained in Egypt, I guess, and even imprisoned. So I imagine that once they were in Greece, they felt like they could scream it again. So they were literally walking through customs screaming. I just got through customs and walked out, and again there was a mob of people waiting with Palestinian flags and banners saying the walk to Gaza. So the whole thing until I got in my taxi was a bit of a mob scene. But that’s it. I got to my hotel, went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up and heard people speaking Hebrew in the lobby of my hotel. I was like, “Oh, my God, thank God. I’m like back with my people!” You know, I wanted to go up to them and say, “Am Israel, Chai.” But I wasn’t… I didn’t speak to them there. But I did go to the laundromat because I hadn’t had a chance to do laundry since I planned to, but then the bombing started. So I went to the laundromat, and there were several Israelis doing laundry.
Ellin Bessner: So what’s now?
Leonard Temes: Well, I mean, when I saw the Israelis in the lobby of my hotel, I wanted to cry because I was just like, so frazzled by the plane incident, really. Having been in Cairo by myself for a night and half a day without the group, it was stressful. Although I have to say, everybody, you know, at the hotel was very nice. And I, of course, I didn’t tell anybody I was Jewish or gay either. So if there is PTSD, I haven’t really experienced it too much. I mean, it was… When you’re in the shelter, you don’t hear the bombs. So I didn’t hear the explosions. There’s a couple of people in the group who actually heard explosions. So for me, there were… I wasn’t hearing any explosions. So it was a little bit less nerve-wracking other than the air raid sirens, which were nerve-wracking in and of themselves to hear.
Ellin Bessner: So you’re going to take a few days to get back to Canada?
Leonard Temes: Because I already had a flight tomorrow pre-booked from Greece to Copenhagen, which is a half an hour car ride to Malmö, [Sweden] where my friend lives.
Ellin Bessner: Right, where they don’t like Jews either! Okay, never mind. You have to be careful. I wish you safe travels, happy trails, and only calm seas, as they say. And thank you for giving me this long interview.
Leonard Temes: Oh, it’s my pleasure.
Ellin Bessner: If you haven’t yet seen the videos coming out of last week’s sea evacuation of 1,500 young North American tourists by the Birthright Organization, imagine throngs of smiling young people wearing only bathing suits, dancing and partying on the pool deck of an Israeli cruise ship en route from Ashdod to Cyprus with an Israeli navy escort.
It might not have occurred to some of the stranded tourists that their exodus was being made nearly 80 years after illegal boatloads of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust bound for Palestine were caught and imprisoned in Cyprus detention camps by the British Mandate. Or that this week that Mediterranean island has provided a kind of reverse escape route for thousands of Jews.
When Birthright had extra space on their vessel, other North American trips were offered places. While 24-year-old Philip Lerner and his friends felt a bit guilty about leaving, they hadn’t counted on being in Israel at such a scary time. Even once they were on board, it wasn’t all smooth sailing, despite the carnival scenes. I caught up with Lerner in Larnaca Airport in Cyprus.
Ellin Bessner: What did you stay in like? Was it like, did you have your own bed, your own stateroom, or how did that work?
Philip Lerner: It was three or four people per stateroom. Pretty small stateroom, if I’m being honest, but we all had our own bed, so that was nice.
Ellin Bessner: How long was the journey from when you set sail?
Philip Lerner: The journey was about a solid 18 hours. We left at 1 p.m. and then we got in at 7 a.m. the next morning.
Ellin Bessner: And was it rough?
Philip Lerner: Honestly, no. The winds were not too intense, and the ship was big enough to counteract them. It was actually, for the most part, a really fun experience. There were times when I had to remind myself, “Wait, Philip, this is not just a pleasure cruise. You’re being evacuated right now.”
Ellin Bessner: What did the kids with you and your friends call the ship?
Philip Lerner: We called it “The Jew Cruise”. There were a couple of jokes going around comparing it to Noah’s Ark. But they stuck with Jew Cruise
Ellin Bessner: And was there enough food for everybody?
Philip Lerner: Oh, beyond. There were a lot of restaurants, buffets. There were no issues with food. This was a proper cruise ship.
Ellin Bessner: And did your whole group come out with you from Olami?
Philip Lerner: We actually were given the choice. This was like literally the night before. We were given so little notice about this. Like 7 pm the night before, we were basically told by our group leaders, all right, there is a ship, and we are going to leave at 6 am tomorrow morning to get there. You can come if you want or if you choose, you can stay in Israel with family, go to yeshiva, seminary, whatever you want. But we had to make some pretty quick decisions. At that time, we were not 100% sure what type of ship it was. A part of me was really nervous because I was like, “Wait, Am I going to be sitting on the floor of a cargo ship for 15 to 18 hours” But my top priority was getting out of the country. It was getting really insane.
Ellin Bessner: You checked with your parents and what they wanted you to do?
Philip Lerner: That was my first call. They were happy with my decision.
Ellin Bessner: How long did it take to get to where the ship was?
Philip Lerner: I was in West Jerusalem. So in terms of safety in that area, it was one of the safer areas. Saying that knowing that we were in and out of bomb shelters about 10 times during a span of four days. It took us about an hour to get to the port of the ship.
Ellin Bessner: And were you able to board right away, or was there a delay where you had more incoming stuff to deal with?
Philip Lerner: A couple of hours before we boarded, we got sirens, or at least we got the pre-warning for sirens. But sometimes it’s hard to tell which was which. Some group leaders were telling people to get out of the bus, get down on the ground, hands above your heads. Now this might have ended up being a little bit of an over-exaggeration. Apparently, it was just a warning. But I still did it. I’ll take that over an alternative. It was scary.
Ellin Bessner: I saw some videos that people sent other people, and there was a reception committee just like you’re getting on a cruise with staff dancing.
Philip Lerner: Yeah, this was a legitimate cruise. I mean, Birthright really pulled through. We got to Cyprus, they put us up in what looked like a four-star hotel, and I was like, “You know what? With everything we went through, we deserve this.” Obviously, I was extremely grateful.
Ellin Bessner: So now, you’re, you’re going where? Do you know how you’re getting home?
Philip Lerner: The plan was to go from Cyprus to Poland, then to JFK in New York, and then to Toronto. But what happened was when we got on the plane, we were on that plane for three hours and it was not moving.
Because I’m not sure if this is 100% accurate, but what I heard was that the rockets that were happening were actually messing with the navigation systems, so they didn’t feel comfortable flying. And this was after pulling close to an all-nighter. We got to the airport at 1 am, we boarded around 5 am, and at 8 am we were told to get off. At that point, Birthright and Olami just said, “Let’s get these guys home any way it takes. If you want to rent your own way home, we’ll give you, I think it was like $3,000 USD, up to that, in reimbursements.” So now my new flight path may be a touch scarier than the first one: I’m gonna be flying to Egypt first, and that flight leaves in about four hours. But then from there, after about a six-hour layover, it’s gonna be straight from Egypt to Toronto.
Ellin Bessner: And you’re flying by yourself, or do you have some friends with you?
Philip Lerner: I’ve got some friends with me on the flight.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, good, good.
Philip Lerner: I was not doing this on my own to be getting out. Honestly I was just happy to be getting out.
Ellin Bessner: You said that it was messing up with the guidance, whatever, but you don’t see any of the bombs or hear anything at all when you’re there, right?
Philip Lerner: No, but actually something interesting: while we were on the cruise, about three hours after departing, we did see a rocket get intercepted over us. I don’t know where it got intercepted, but over our heads, we could see the jet stream. It was all wavy. We knew it was intercepted, but that was happening while we were on the top deck, the pool deck.
Ellin Bessner: Woah!
Philip Lerner: We saw it. We saw it. I didn’t hear any boom.
Ellin Bessner: I was told that the Navy, Israeli Navy, was escorting you. Is that correct?
Philip Lerner: I’m unsure if it was the Israeli Navy or international or U.S. I think after a certain point, once we got to international waters, it had to be U.S. I’m not a hundred percent sure.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, but let’s, let’s just unpack that. So, your navy is escorting you, a navy is escorting you across the Mediterranean. How does that sit with you? How did you feel about all of this effort to keep you safe?
Philip Lerner: First off, it was like, “Wow, who am I to deserve all this type of protection?” Like, I just came here for a one-week volunteer trip. Not exactly royalty. But the other part was just the fact that they felt it was necessary made me feel a little bit more on edge as well. It’s like, okay, this, this is actually a risky journey I’m making. It’s easy to forget that when you’re surrounded by bars and pool parties.
Ellin Bessner: How did you keep yourself calm?
Philip Lerner: I just really went for everything the cruise had to offer. I’ve actually been on some cruise ships before. And then there were times where I just gave myself some downtime. I was like, All right, relax.
Ellin Bessner: Have you ever experienced anything like this in your entire life?
Philip Lerner: Never. This was an absolute first, in and out of bomb shelters. Literally while we were doing Kabbalat Shabbat, we had to go to a bomb shelter a few times and we kept on singing Kabbalah Shabbat in the bomb shelter. It was kind of incredible. And something I never want to experience again.
Ellin Bessner: You guys get any of your money back, or do you have to pay back all this rescue money? Like, what’s the financial stuff that we have to understand?
Philip Lerner: Our trip was already so crazily subsidized, we were only paying $600 USD for everything. And that’s more than most Birthright trips. Most Birthright trips are free. The only thing that we’re, that we have to pay back is if people book their own flights home, we get reimbursed up to $3,000. But, yeah, basically they had a free cruise. How doe that happen?
Ellin Bessner: I hope that the rest of your journey is boring. Very boring.
Philip Lerner: I would be okay with that.
Ellin Bessner: Thank you so much for zooming in from Cyprus Airport.
Philip Lerner: Absolutely.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of North Star, made possible in part thanks to Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
You’ll be happy to know that Philip Lerner got home safely early Friday, and his parents took him out for a celebratory breakfast at Whatabagel.
Leonard Temes expects to be back in Toronto this Shabbat.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. The executive producer is Michael Fraiman, and the music is by Brett Higgins. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Hear why some Canadian young people on subsidized Israel-volunteer programs like Birthright and Olami got out of the country, while those with MASA have not yet.
- How a Canadian survived a direct missile hit in Tel Aviv, by praying and channeling Queen Esther, her personal heroine, on The CJN’s North Star podcast.
- Learn more about Philip Lerner and his advocacy for people with autism.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Bret Higgins
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