A Miracle in the Sky: Israel’s First Air Strike - Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

A Torah anytime original series. In the year 1948, Leon Franco, Howard Livingston, [music] George Lichter, and Coleman Goldstein were enjoying regular life after serving in the American Air Force as fighter pilots flying planes during World [music] War II. They were thrilled that the war was over and they were more than ready to start families and live peaceful lives. But one day out of the blue, an old friend of theirs, a man named Stephen Schwartz, he called them up and left them all a message. Get to the Henry Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and get there fast. The survival of the Jewish people is at stake. So knowing that the Holocaust was over, these four ex-fighter pilots were confused, but nevertheless they rushed to the hotel to hear Stephen Schwartz out. They all met in the hotel and [music] they see Steve sipping on a glass of vodka in the lobby and he looked at the four young pilots and he said, Listen here. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are about to pour into [music] Palestine right now and almost all of them are completely unaware that the five neighboring Arab [music] countries are planning on invading and slaughtering every one of them. Egypt declared that we will do what Hitler did only worse. And Steve put down his glass and he looked at these four young 20-year-olds, the Jews have absolutely no way of defending themselves. We found four German planes that were abandoned in some field in Czechoslovakia and the Jewish people need you to fly them.

Jump to a moment

1. 0:05A Torah anytime original series. In the year 1948, Leon Franco, Howard Livingston, [music] George Lichter,…
2. 0:38the Henry Hudson Hotel in Manhattan and get there fast. The survival of the Jewish people…
3. 1:09to pour into [music] Palestine right now and almost all of them are completely unaware that…
4. 1:44>> [music] >> Can you become the Jewish people's air force? And the four boys just…
5. 2:17traveled east and they secretly declared themselves the Jewish people's temporary air force. An air force…
6. 2:47right now, there will be no tomorrow and there will be a bloodbath, okay? Harold said,…
7. 3:18thousands of soldiers who might shoot him down at any second. And he tilted his plane…
8. 3:52thousands of Jews was avoided. And years later, when he sat down with an interviewer, Harold…
9. 4:25the 6 million can live on. Hashem save your precious nation so we can continue to…
10. 4:57we cling to our heritage and let it guide us down the road of life. Today,…

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