Passengers Find Unlikely Help

By COLlive reporter

Several people were sent to the hospital Sunday night after American Airlines Flight 206 on its way from Miami, Florida to Milan, Italy, was diverted to the most easterly province of Canada.

The flight experienced brief yet severe turbulence, which left 3 flight attendants and 4 passengers with injuries, albeit non-life threatening ones.

The plane landed safely at St. John’s International Airport in the Newfoundland and Labrador area of the Atlantic region.

3 Jewish people that were on board required Kosher food and were assisted by a Chabad couple living in St. John’s.

“When we found out the news we called the airport and the hospital right away,” Mrs. Ester Yehudis Kashtanov told COLlive.com. “After we got an airline representative on the phone, we were told that there are 3 Jews on board who required Kosher food.”

With Divine Providence, a couple from Montreal were presenting a Tu B’Shevat program to the local Jewish community of St. John’s.

“They brought Kosher pastries from the Montreal bakery and provided fruits that were packed together with other food in meals for the Jews,” said Kashtanov, who moved to Newfoundland with her husband Dr. Adam Yisroel Kashtanov from Toronto.

Apart from their research in Glaciology, Cryospheric Science and Climate Change, Dr. and Mrs. Kashtanov organize holiday meals, deliver Matzahs, Menorahs and Challahs, and help people put on Tefillin, they said.

“The Jewish community in St. John’s has a long history,” says Mrs. Kashtanov. “Right after WWII, Esther Wilansky the grandmother of the active member of the Jewish community in St. John’s Mr. Shimon Wilansky, organized Seders for 200 US navy soldiers.

Mr. Dovid Levine, a Lubavitcher businessman from Toronto is also one of the people who is actively involved in bringing and spreading Judaism on the island, Kashtanov notes.

St. John’s is the most eastern city in North America, so this is not the first time that flights to Europe have been diverted to St. John’s, Newfoundland, she said.

A few weeks earlier, a plane from New York heading to Tel Aviv through Moscow made an emergency landing in Newfoundland. There were a number of Jewish people on the flight who spent over a week in Newfoundland, with the assistance of the Kashtanovs.