YIR: Atlantan is Glad Her 15 Minutes of Fame is Over
The CEO of an Israeli travel agency arranged outbound flight for students.
On Oct. 7, air raid sirens started blaring about 6:30 a.m. Israelis may have been familiar with the sound, but thousands of American Jews in Israel temporarily soon learned that a war against Israel had been fired by Hamas in Gaza. At that time, no one knew the war would continue for months or that thousands upon thousands of rockets would be launched to almost every major city in the country.
But they and their fearful relatives still in the U.S. knew they needed to leave. Among them was 17-year-old Fayetteville resident Lyla Caplan who had been attending the Union for Reform Judaism Heller High based on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel campus in Hod Hasharon in the middle of the country. On that scary Saturday morning, Caplan was on a field trip in Jerusalem with her fellow students when she was awakened by the sirens and banging on her hotel room door. “It was terrifying,” she told the AJT.
The group returned to the Muss campus hours later and slept in the campus bomb shelter until a plane could be arranged for her fellow Heller students as well as dozens more high school students attending various Muss programs.
While Caplan and her friends were being told they would need to leave Israel long before the end of their programs, unbeknownst to them, an Atlanta-based CEO of Israeli travel agency Kenes Tours was frantically trying to orchestrate their safe escape.
Cheri Scheff Levitan modestly told the AJT that she “didn’t do anything anyone wouldn’t do,” but as she narrated on Facebook her adventurous attempts to organize a flight for the students to anywhere from which they could return to the U.S., she was hailed by many parents as a hero.
On Thursday, Oct. 12, after an overnight in Rome, about 100 students landed in Boston, from where they traveled on to their home cities and eager parents’ arms.
After the AJT broke the story, Levitan was heralded in both local and national news for her persistence and amazing achievement. “After getting the kids home and the publishing of your [AJT] piece, word certainly got around. I was on Atlanta’s ABC and CBS affiliate channels, CNN with Anderson Cooper and on the Mark Aram radio show/podcast,” she recalled, adding that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also wrote a story.
“Through Facebook, many parents found me and thanked me,” said Levitan. “I am glad that I personally was able to help the kids, families, and JNF-USA in meaningful ways during a very scary time. The experience was very emotional, humbling and gratifying, but I’m glad my ’15 minutes of fame’ are over.”
As one parent wrote, “What you did was a miracle to get these kids on a plane. The fear and guilt that these parents are experiencing knowing that they sent their beautiful children for an amazing life experience and instead it turned into a war zone!!! What a true mitzvah!!!”
Jewish National Fund-USA, which operates the Muss program, is a client of her company, Kenes Tours. Two days after the war broke out, a JNF executive called her with a plea, “Cheri, can you get our kids out?” she recounted days after she returned to Atlanta.
“I had been a parent of a Muss student,” she said. Along with her thoughts of parents of current students, she thought, “if anything happens to these kids, what are the liabilities of a major non-profit?” One of her sisters who lives in Israel questioned how she could arrange the complex operation, but she decided, “I can do this.”
El Al wanted $1 million to charter a flight to take the teens out of Israel. “No one can okay an expenditure like that,” said Levitan. After she arranged for IsrAir to transport the kids to Rome, she called JNF at 4:30 in the morning, saying, “I need you to say yes. What I cared about was getting all the kids on one plane.”
El Al wanted $1 million to charter a flight to take the teens out of Israel. ‘No one can okay an expenditure like that,’ said Levitan. After she arranged for IsrAir to transport the kids to Rome, she called JNF at 4:30 in the morning, saying, ‘I need you to say yes. What I cared about was getting all the kids on one plane.’
Levitan credits a team of people almost across the globe with the myriad details and arrangements. “It was a major group effort in which everyone pulled together. I told my team not to take no for an answer. It really did take a village,” she said.
While Levitan was focused on getting the students out, she was also searching for her own way to leave Israel, and running back and forth between her hotel room and the stairwell in her hotel which was considered the “safe space” when Hamas rockets were flying overhead.
“My first experience with bomb shelters was when I was 12,” she recounted. She knew the drill: shoes by the door, bottled water, keys ready and phone charged. She slept in her clothes. When she eventually got on her El Al flight for London – after a terrifying few moments delayed on the tarmac hearing rockets overhead – she said she felt sick.
“I was very nervous,” she said. Once the plane cleared Israeli airspace, she had a good cry. And when Wi-Fi became available, she got to work. “I worked the entire flight.”
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