Now and then you meet a person who is a face of a story you read or heard about. This past weekend I was down in Great Neck/Roslyn celebrating the Bar-Mitzvah of the son of alumnus, and I met the mashgiach (Kosher supervisor), an Iranian Jew. He told me that he was born on Iran, has childhood memories of it, but came as an older child on Chabad’s Airlift to New York in 1979 when the Shah fell. He remembered Rabbi JJ Hecht of NCFJE who orchestrated the whole project and the summer camp they went to in the Catskills..
He’s not the first such person we’ve met. We’ve met mothers and fathers of Persian Jewish students at UAlbany who were airlifted in 1979-1980 without parents and family (many of whom came later). They say the project brought nearly 1800 children to safety and freedom away from the Islamic Republic takeover of Iran.
This Shabbat Zachor 2026 there’s much buzz about the attacks in Iran and the Ayatollah – a longtime adversary and enemy of our people.
Some of you have heard of the Kindertransport in Austria saving 1000 children from the Holocaust, sending them to England. We knew one such survivor here in Albany. The notion that parents would send their children away in a sure sign of the grave danger they found themselves. Indeed, many of the Kindertransport never saw their parents and siblings again.
Some of you know how close-knit and protective Persian families are. For so many families to have sent their sons and daughters thousands of miles away in such an uncertain way tells you of the tremendous danger and fear they felt.
We who live in a free country with so many rights and freedoms have a hard time imagining living under a totalitarian regime in modern times.