The rabbi of Moldova arranged for an airborne evacuation of an Israeli tourist who was in critical condition • On the way he convinced the insurance company to supply the country, to which there are no regular flights - matzah
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Photo:
Oren Ben Hakon
Last week, Mandy Axelrod desperately tried to obtain matzah supplies for his Jewish community in Moldova ahead of Passover.
This is not an easy task this year, as air and land traffic into the small Eastern European country has been suspended following the Corona plague.
Then a disaster almost happened.
Axelrod, a Chabad rabbi operating in the capital Kishinev, was forced to stop everything to save the life of an Israeli tourist, a man in his 40s, who was on the verge of death due to a severe case of coronary heart disease in a poor country whose fragile public health system was ruled by the plague.
The timing was catastrophic.
But Axelrod, a native of Israel who moved to Moldova four years ago, managed to solve both problems together.
Axelrod persuaded the insurance company Medassis to load crates of matzah on the medical plane that arrived from Israel to rescue the patient back home, where he is now recovering.
"Caring for a patient required a lot of effort," Axelrod said.
"Eventually we bought a respirator for him and treated him in a rented apartment" so that the patient would not be hospitalized in Moldova, where public hospitals are prone to the spread of infections and suffer from a shortage of medical equipment.
The shipment consisted of reserved matzahs, and now Axelrod his wife Chaya Moshka and other Chabad emissaries are busy negotiating the import of ordinary matzahs to Moldova via the border with Ukraine, where the Jewish community is at least ten times larger than that of Moldova, which numbers 5,000 people.
During the closure during Pesach last year, Jews in almost all Jewish communities in Europe received regular matzah supplies, thanks to the efforts of Chabad, the JDC and other organizations. However, reserved matzah, produced commercially in only a handful of places in Europe, was almost unavailable. All over the continent.
The plague situation in Moldova is particularly difficult.
With 4,000 Corona deaths out of a population of 2.6 million, the death rate per million inhabitants in the country is the fourth highest in the world, following an eruption that peaked apparently in late February.
The Moldovan government, which is in financial distress, began vaccinating against the virus only on Tuesday - almost three months after the United States, Israel and Britain.
The Axelrod family and many others maintain voluntary isolation so as not to be infected with the virus, which according to some studies has already infected most Moldovan residents.
Therefore, Masselrod said, it is unlikely that mass Passover events will take place.
But this only increases the importance of supplying matzah to Jewish families in a country that used to be east of the Iron Curtain and this dish was an important link in Judaism.
"Because of communism, there is a strong connection to matzah here," Axelrod said.
"It seems like everyone who lives under communist rule has a story about getting matzah - how they stood in line at a secret bakery or got a package from friends."
At a time when the communist authorities disapproved of any manifestation of religiosity, especially among Jews, matzahs provided a convenient connection to Judaism.
"It was just a piece of bread," he said. "It did not have the same risk as going to a synagogue or actually holding a religious ceremony."
To this day, Axelrod added, Passover is more involved with local Jews in Moldova than Yom Kippur, which is considered Jewish. Many for the holy day of the year.
"Since I came from Israel, I was surprised to see more Jews in the synagogue on Passover than on Yom Kippur," Axelrod said.
"But it's part of the history specific to this place."
