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

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. >> [music] >> Can you become the Jewish people's air force? And the four boys just looked at each other. They had finally begun living a peaceful life and now they're being asked to climb back into the seat of a fighter plane and not any old fighter plane, but German fighter planes. Stephen Schwartz looked at them with a fire in his eye and he said, Millions of Jewish people in the Holocaust [music] lost their entire past. You four have the opportunity to at least give them a future and the four looked at Steve and said, Okay, we're in. So the four traveled east and they secretly declared themselves the Jewish people's temporary air force. An air force consisting of four people, not 4,004, not 404, not 44, four people, possibly the smallest air force of all time and certainly the most frightened. On May 29th, 1948, [music] the immense Egyptian army was 20 miles out of Tel Aviv and Leon Franco approaches Harold Livingston and told him, Listen, if one of us doesn't go up and bomb them out right now, there will be no tomorrow and there will be a bloodbath, okay? Harold said, Okay, I'm going to go. So lifting up the used German plane to the sky, Harold looked down and he could see scores of fresh Jewish immigrants on the ground below hoping and praying that they could finally start their lives anew and he nervously looked up ahead and saw the massive Egyptian army and he quietly flew his plane until he was moments away from being directly on top of them, on top of their gunmen, on top of their artillery, on top of the thousands of soldiers who might shoot him down at any second. And he tilted his plane entirely on its side to get the most direct angle to drop the bombs. He closed his eyes and screamed, Sh'ma Yisrael, and let the bombs fall and fall they did and in a sheer miracle sent straight from heaven, the Egyptian army was left in shambles and Harold flew back completely unscathed. The oncoming Egyptian onslaught was ground [music] to a halt. The war was won and the potential barbaric slaughter of thousands of Jews was avoided. And years later, when he sat down with an interviewer, Harold was asked, What are you thinking as you were flying towards the Egyptian army? He said, I looked [music] up to heaven and I said, God in heaven, those Arabs down there might want to win this war. We Jews need to win this war. Those Arabs might want to come out victorious, we need to. Those Arabs might want to claim this land, we need to claim this land. Hashem save us so the memory of the 6 million can live on. Hashem save your precious nation so we can continue to make you proud because [laughter] our past is too glorious and our future is too bright. We, as Jews, look to our glorious past for our spiritual energy to propel us into the future. We rid ourselves of the stagnancy of death by ensuring that we are forever drinking from the fresh springs of life. With youthfulness and zest, we take our ancient traditions and we use them to light up the world. We look to the past, we look to the future, we cling to our heritage and let it guide us down the road of life. Today, tomorrow, forever. >> [music]