New York – It was an email from Benzion Klatzco that set a chesed train in motion that was just as powerful as the mega blizzard that blew through the New York area this past Sunday night.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Klatzco, the founder of Shabbat.com was at JFK Monday morning, along with 200 students who spent nine hours on the tarmac Sunday night after their El Al flight was unable to take off or return to the terminal. Many of the students who were traveling to Israel on various programs to learn about their Jewish heritage including MEOR Israel Trip, Shappels Pathways Trip, Rutgers Jewish Xperience Aish HaTorah’s Hasbara Fellowship, Shabbat.com and Israel 2.0 learned a great deal about what it means to be Jewish before they ever left the ground.
Klatzco sent an email to anyone he could think of who lived in the Five Towns asking them to please lend a hand, by either taking some of the students home for a meal and a hot shower or to bring food to JFK. In no time at all the email was forwarded around and the Five Towns community immediately swung into action buying food, getting into their SUVs and heading to JFK.
While many of the students elected to stay at JFK, others took advantage of the opportunity to find refuge in the Five Towns, with boys heading to Shor Yoshuv and girls enjoying the warmth and hospitality of the Wolfson, Safier and Stahler families.
Yanky Brach of Brach’s Supermarket, a mainstay of the Five Town’s community, put together a full breakfast for all the students in their various locations, personally delivering breakfast to the students who were still at the airport, along with Eli Shapiro of the White Shul and Phil Goldfeder, a friend who works for Senator Schumer. With a quick call to the senator, Brach received permission to park in front of the terminal for a full ninety minutes and was cleared to bring breakfast, including normally prohibited liquids such as milk, orange juice and soda directly into the Terminal 4.
“My phone kept ringing while I was at the airport,” said Brach in an exclusive interview with VIN News. “People kept asking if they should bring more food. I kept getting calls from the store, hearing how people were leaving donations to help defray the cost of feeding all those people.”
As Brach was leaving the terminal he ran into Yossi Farber, another Five Towns resident, who brought bourekas and twenty pizzas from David’s Pizza in Cedarhurst. Supper was a joint effort, with so much food delivered to the airport from both Brach’s and Carlos and Gabby’s in Cedarhurst that Brach said they literally walked around the airport terminal offering food to any Jewish person they saw.
Brach confesses to being shocked at the response he received at JFK. “I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he said. “But I got a hero’s welcome. It was overwhelming.”
But nothing prepared Brach for the deluge of emails he received from the both the people who were stranded at Terminal 4 and their families.
“I didn’t give anyone my email address, but I must have gotten thirty to fifty emails, thanking me and the entire Five Towns community for what we did. To me the biggest part of what happened here is how quickly these kids and their parents managed to dig up contact info for myself and a local newspaper to express their gratitude.”
Good work from the MO Community!
Yanky Brach is an amazing Baal Chessed (as was his father a”h). This story is only one of many, albeit most of what he does is extremely quiet and no one ever finds out.
Nice story…for those of the students on the flight who keep kosher, this act of chesed was probably greatly appreciated since its hard to find kosher food at JFK.
I received the e-mail as well but I could not help as I could not get either of my cars out until yesterday morning. I know Yanky Brach for many years (back to Yeshiva Ohr Yisroel days in Forest Hills, Queens) and he is a wonderful man from a family known for giving tzedaka and doing chesed.
I only hope my fellow 5 Townsers took advantage of the opportunity to do a Kiddush Hashem and offered food to non-Jews too.
Mee Keamchu Yisrueil…..
I got chills reading this!!! Great job!
I don’t think the great majority of those of us who live in the Far Rockaway / Five Towns community view ourselves as modern orthodox, haredi, etc. We are one community.
As for Yanky Brach, it’s not at all a surprise that he would rise to the occasion.
yasher koach!
Yanky Brach is unbelievable. I think all fivetowners should show their hakaras hatov by patronizing his store instead of the others who sat back while this was unfolding
brachfan: While I agree that Yanky Brach i unbelievable, there were others not listed in the article that helped. It is unfair to say that others “sat back”, just because you might not have heard about it.
I didnt hear any mention of thanks to bentzion Klatzko in any of the comment. He was the one who set this all in motion. He deserves a real yasher koach for this big kiddush hashem
I was glad to speak with VIN and was gratified and humbled by the post and the response. I thank them for spreading the word of this kiddush Hashem
I am chiming in to second the comments of ClinicalShrink and 5TResident.
From Bayswater and Inwood to Hewlett our community delivered. Few if any in a position to help sat back. No need went unmet.
Remember as noted above, I only became aware of the situation from friends already setting up rooms and meals including one friend who called at 8 on his way to JFK to invite kol dichfin to his home.
To be sure, I am proud that we at Brach’s acted without hesitation and provided the lion’s share of the much appreciated food spread, chizuk and companionship.
But, we, and Yossi Farber were not alone.
Having spent at least 5 hours in Terminal 4 we were in a unique position to see most of the comings and goings in addition to engaging with these wonderful teens and leaders.
Dovid Urbach drove up with 15 boxes of Donuts and Michael Edery delivered food as well.
Rabbi Teitelbaum of the Young Israel L/C passed on taking a snow day and demonstrated true leadership.
Someone sent food from Gourmet Glatt including big trays of Chinese food.
Coca-Cola will be reimbursing us for the soda we sent
Suri Davis of TheFiveTowns.com kept us updated from the “command post” she set up at the Stahler home. She could thus help warmly welcome the 50+ teens seeking refuge there.
Numerous trips were made shuttling guests back and forth and to doctors as well. Asher Schoor patiently waited curbside as more of the stranded decided whether to leave the airport.
Phil Goldfeder and Eli Shapiro had more friends on hold just waiting for the call to help.
Rabbi Bennet Rackman, chaplain of the JFK Synagogue worked with me to get us more room.
Gotta Getta Bagel put a rush on pumping out extra bagels and I am sure will discount the bill!
Even the cigar store I stopped in to buy playing cards didn’t charge me when told why I needed them.
In the end, it was I, and not the “Tarmacced 300” that got the most chizuk. Rabbis Klatzko, Berg and Weiner are new lifetime friends. One young man from Baltimore commented that as miserable the experience was, it was a small price to pay for witnessing our community’s collective response.
Take it from someone who knows Yanky Brach well. He would literally take the shirt off his back to give it to someone, and then would go and buy that person a few more shirts just to have. Yasher Koach Yanky and all the rest. major league Kiddush Hashem!!
Im blown away, this is what its all about. I dont know you Yanky but I wish I did. Youre an amazing person with an amazing soul.
Phil Goldfeder is awsome always helping jews in need
Phil Goldfeder is awesome go phil go
As someone who was there all day I want to mention a HUGE yasher koach to Rabbi Shaya Rubin of Jewish Fellowships International for being mesader everything. You did a great job!
i must take excpetion to this anemic, one sided reporting. let me start by saying, that there were two El Al flights that were gorunded, leaving an estimated 700-750 jews stranded, in addition to those Jews flying to other parts of the world, on different airlines, ie Virgin Atlantic. Of those 700-750, 200 were the college students. There was an estimated 2100 meals served on monday alone. so while Brach certainly deserves some degree of credit, to suggest that he brought the vast majorty of the food, as he states he did, is quite preposterous. he couldnt absorb such an expense and still stay in business. there was no mention of the 30 pizza pies, bags of fruit, bags of zeppelis, boxes of hot chocolate, boxes of grain bars, paper goods, plastic cutlery etc, all brought by one person, or the 200 deli sandwiches brought by another, or the tremendous amount of soda and nosh, chips, etc, brought by yet another, or the insulin needed emergently by a paitent, that was brought to JFK. so yes, while Brach does deserve honorable mention, lets remember, that he was NOT the focus of this operation, but merely a part of it. BTW, what did he do at the airport for 5 hours??