Cyprus Chabad inundated by thousands of Israelis trying to find way home

Within hours after Israel launched its preemptive strike against Iran, thousands of Israelis found themselves stranded in Cyprus as flights in and out of the Jewish State were canceled. More than a week later, Chabad houses around the country are still helping them sort through the chaos.

“During the first few days, the people stuck here had hope,” said Rabbi Zeev Raskin, the country’s chief rabbi and the head of the Chabad movement in Cyprus. “Now, I see people cracking. It is tough to see people in this situation, crying so many tears with their families.”

More than 12,000 Jews have gone through the country’s six Chabad houses over the past 10 days, receiving food, help with accommodations, and assistance for emergencies of all sorts, Raskin said. He estimated that there were 15,000 Jews stuck in Cyprus as of Sunday morning.

His team has helped arrange shipments of life-saving medicines, organized the evacuation of a woman to Israel after a car accident, made last-minute plans to accommodate 1,500 Birthright participants who arrived from Israel on a luxury cruise liner, and ensured that six men made it to their weddings in Israel in time to get married.

“It’s a challenge, but we believe that it is all from God,” Raskin said. “We trust that this is what He has planned for us, and we are grateful for the opportunity to be able to do so much kindness for others.”

Preparing for Shabbat

Shortly after Israel began its attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities before dawn on Friday, June 13, dozens of flights in and out of Israel were diverted to Cyprus, the island country about an hour from Tel Aviv.

“We suddenly had masses of Israelis showing up here without anyplace to go, or anywhere to stay,” said Meir Levin, a relatively new member of the Larnaca Chabad after marrying Raskin’s daughter three weeks ago. “The first place they went was to Chabad.”

Chabad, a Hasidic movement rooted in the teachings of generations of Lubavitch rabbis, is known worldwide for helping Jewish travelers with their needs — spiritual and material — in more than 100 countries around the world.

“We suddenly had to prepare for hundreds of people with very little notice,” Levin said. “Every hotel was booked up, and we had a team of people networking to find apartment buildings, private homes, people in the real estate business. A lot of people came with no money, and we found them places without asking questions.”

Chabad of Cyprus has since set up a crowdfunding campaign where people can help cover its expenses for the operation.

On June 13, Levin said, nearly a thousand people packed into Larnaca’s synagogues and ate their Friday night dinner together.

“There was no room to move,” Levin said. “The atmosphere of the prayers was amazing. There was such a feeling of unity, with every type of Jew there. Hasidim were dancing with secular Jews, and the meal afterwards went long into the night. It was an incredible experience.”

A staff of five Chabad emissaries in Larnaca, along with 25 employees from the local non-Jewish population, helped with the preparations. Chabad already had large quantities of kosher food on hand, and more has been arriving over the course of the week, Levin said.

American-born Israeli Yaakov Katz, a former editor of The Jerusalem Post and author of several books, described a similar scene in Paphos after his Thursday night flight home from London was diverted.

“After I checked into a hotel and tried to figure out what was going on, someone invited me to the Chabad for Friday night,” Katz said. “There were hundreds of people from across the religious spectrum, and while everyone was worried, there was a sense of religious fervor, and a relief that you weren’t alone.”

Logistics and challenges

Over the past week, Chabad was called in to help with numerous emergencies. In one, a Jewish man was killed in a car accident, and his wife was seriously injured.

“I contacted someone from the airport and I said, ‘Listen, I don’t care if the airspace is closed or not, we need an air ambulance right now,’ and we got a special permit to get her to a hospital in Israel,” Raskin recalled. “There was another big operation getting her husband’s body back to Israel.”

In another situation, a man was desperately trying to get to his own wedding in Israel last Tuesday evening.

“It was Monday afternoon, and I was able to book a flight to Aqaba, Jordan, early the next morning,” Raskin said. “But after he sat in the airport for 11 hours, they announced that the flight was canceled. Then, we tried to rent a speedboat, but that didn’t work out either. Tuesday morning, Sun D’Or International Airlines had its first flight to Israel, but only certain people could get on. I made some calls, and we were able to get him a ticket. He arrived on time for his huppah [wedding canopy] at 4 p.m.”

One of the biggest logistical challenges, Levin said, was the arrival of a luxury cruiser carrying 1,500 Birthright participants stranded in Israel after their educational programs finished.

“With about three hours’ notice, the CEO of Birthright called Rabbi Raskin and said, ‘We’re coming in with a ship. These kids have nowhere to go,'” Levin said. “He kicked into emergency gear, and within three hours, we had the whole operation set up, with food, music, and lots of good energy.”

Such an operation could not have been possible with the cooperation of local authorities, Raskin noted.

“They shut down the streets for that, and provided so much security,” he said. “We are very grateful that the police and other authorities have always been so cooperative and supportive.”

A mission of service

When Raskin arrived in Cyprus with his family 22 years in order to found the country’s first Chabad house, he couldn’t have envisioned the events of the past week. But providing assistance to Jewish travelers has been his life’s work.

“That’s the reason we left Israel to come on shlichus [a mission] as an emissary,” Raskin said. “We’re here to help. When I came here in 2003, there was barely a Jewish community here.”

Raskin was officially named the chief rabbi of Cyprus in 2005, and has persistently worked to strengthen Jewish life on the island, which now has 10,000 Jews. Chabad of Cyprus now includes six Chabad houses, a synagogue, a kindergarten, a mikvah (ritual bath), a kashrut certification agency, a cemetery and summer programs, according to its website.

Cyprus’s location off of Israel’s coast has made it “the back door of Israel” in recent years, Raskin said. Many Israelis ended up extending their vacations there after the coronavirus pandemic forced Israel to close its airways in March 2020. And after Hamas launched its terror war against Israel on October 7, 2023, 5,000 Jews landed in Cyprus in one day.

“From one direction, we had American students trying to go back home, and from the other direction, we had Israeli soldiers returning from abroad so they could fight,” Raskin recalled. “And everyone was sitting outside Chabad with their suitcases, waiting for us to feed them.”

Sunday morning, Raskin was working to help more visitors get their lives back together.

“This morning, 50 flights were supposed to leave for Israel, so people checked out of their rooms last night, but now, flights are canceled again, and they don’t have anywhere to sleep,” he said. His team prepared 1,000 sandwiches earlier in the morning, and six pallets of bottled water now sit outside his office, he said.

“The manager at the airport asked me, ‘Why doesn’t everyone stay here on vacation for a few more days, instead of going back to the war in Israel, the rockets?'” Raskin said.

“It’s hard for me to explain to him that this is our land that we’ve prayed for so many years for,” he said, adding, “We all just want to get back home.”