STRANDED IN TURKIYE (because of a BAGEL)

[Music] hello if there was ever a day that did not go as planned today would be that day I've already been at this airport for over 6 hours today and I'm going to be here for at least the next 13 hours so in total I'll have been almost 24 hours stuck in Istanbul airport and I want to explain to you how I got myself into this situation today I'm going to tell you the story of how a bagel got me stranded in Turkey Yes you heard that right but first a word from our sponsor do you know what drives me absolutely crazy let me tell you so often when I buy something online I'll order something on a website and then the product arrives but what happens is for the next few months or years every single day I start getting emails from the company that I purchase something from sometimes the emails come once a day sometimes the emails come two three or even four times a day and honestly it makes me regret buying the products and I certainly don't want to be getting these emails there is however one 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our hotel in Istanbul and go to the airport to fly back home prior to leaving our hotel Rabbi meni kitri who is the kabad rabbi and the chief ashkanazi Rabbi of turkey came to the hotel to bring us kosher food for travelers who might be stranded at Istanbul's [Music] airport okay look at this huge bag full of sandwiches packed up to go the rabbi provided them to me so that we can go to the airport and we're going to find Jews before our flight and give it to them so that they don't stay hungry people are stuck in the airport without kosher food we left from the hotel we got to the airport very early with more than enough time to spear for whatever we might need to do that day we checked in we went through security we went through passport control and then we even went to the lounge for a few minutes before heading to our gate there is one very important detail which I need to mention which is the fact that the rabbi had given us this food because there were passengers stranded at the airport why were their passengers stranded at the airport and why would they need food so allow me to explain this to you on October 7th there was a terrible terrorist attack and Massacre which occurred in Israel and was perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist group the attack took place on a Jewish holiday which we know as Sim and for many thousands of Jewish people from around the the world they come to Israel every year to celebrate this holiday so when the attack occurred there were many thousands of Jewish visitors from all over the world who had been in Israel during that time and as soon as the holiday was over many of them tried to leave Israel by any means necessary because they didn't want to be there during what looked like would be a full-blown War because people were so desperate to get out of Israel and many people had their flights booked for later in the week people just started buying up any flights to get out of the country no matter where they were going to and one of the airlines that Services Israel with the most weekly flights is Turkish Airlines therefore many Jewish passengers had ended up in turkey and they had no idea how they'd be traveling onward from Turkey but they did know that if they traveled to Turkey they'd be able to get out of Israel as soon as possible some of you might not know this but Orthodox Jewish people keep a special diet which is called kosher and it stems from the Torah therefore when Jewish people who keep kosher travel to places where they're not sure there will be kosher food they need to bring kosher food along with them so that they can eat when traveling on a plane a kosher traveler can request a kosher meal but that needs to be done at least 48 hours in advance before the flight if you book a last minute flight chances are the airline will probably not be able to get you a kosher meil so in this instance you had thousands upon thousands of Jewish people who were pass through turkey many of them had booked their tickets months in advance and they had food with them for the journey but many of them had booked their tickets last minute trying to get out of Israel and therefore when they arrived in Turkey they had already not eaten in a few hours and they were not going to be able to eat until they arrived home to wherever they were traveling to from Turkey so being the kind man that he is rabri gave me a large bag of bagels and little cream cheese packets and asked me to hand them out to kosher Travelers who were stranded at Istanbul airport without food so after checking in for our flight going through security and passport control we went to the lounge for a few minutes so we're past security at Istanbul airport and now our job is to look for Jewish people and offer them food if they need it and then we headed to our gate but when we arrived to our gate I noticed that it was early there was still plenty of time left before our flight was set to depart and I figured I should probably walk around the airport and try to find this as many Jewish people as possible so that I could give them this food that they so desperately needed I looked at the flight information boards hanging in the terminal and I saw that only two gates away from where our gate was there was a flight heading to New York and flights to New York from Turkey often have Jews on them so I figured I'd go to that gate and try to find Jewish people who might need food I told my wife what I intended to do and she said okay go but please come back as soon as possible because we still need to get onto our flight which is The Parting soon so I walked over to that gate from where the flight was leaving to New York and when I arrived the flight was almost done boarding and I didn't see any Jewish passengers so I decided to head back to my gate when I arrived I sat down with my family and we started to gather our things and we were getting ready to get onto the plane suddenly my wife turns to me and she says schi where's your tfillin for those of you who are not familiar tfillin are called filteries in English they are leather straps and leather boxes which Jewish men use every every day to pray although to fill in are not large objects they are extremely valuable and precious to their owners and many of you might not understand what I'm about to say but the feeling of losing your tfillin is like having your car stolen it feels like something is missing from you they are items that we love and use every single day and to have them go missing is just a very uneasy and worrying feeling the airline started boarding our flight and I was in a panic I needed to find myin there was no way I was going to leave them in the airport in Istanbul now luckily I have ear tags in myin bag if you're not familiar with ear tags there are these awesome devices created by Apple which you can drop them into a suitcase or into a purse or into your to filling bag or into your car anything that's valuable to you and you can track that device or vehicle or whatever it is around the world so you can log into an app on your phone and you can always see where that bag SLP purse or car or suitcase is located I'm going to put a link in the description so that if you want to buy ear tags you can go ahead and do so I think they're very important for people to have especially if you're somebody who travels often like me so I got onto my phone opened the app and tried to locate my fillan within the airport but for some reason they were just not showing up something had gone wrong and I couldn't see where they were I became even more nervous and more worried and I decided that no matter what I was going to find them so I left the gate area and I told my wife I'd try to be back within a few few minutes but for now I was leaving to find myin I ran back to the lounge to see if I could find them perhaps I'd left them there I'm not a small person I'm quite a big guy actually so I walked as fast as I could but I wasn't running because I didn't want to totally exhaust myself when I got to the lounge I ran in there checked the place couldn't find them then my wife called me to tell me that they were almost done boarding and I really needed to get back to the gate ASAP she also mentioned that one of my children had seen me with my fillan heading to the gate where the flight to New York was going to be leaving from and perhaps I had left it at that gate I left the lounge and started running back to my gate and by the time I got there boarding had already closed and my wife was on the plane alone with all of our children now we had an even bigger problem because all of our children are very young and whenever we fly together as a family I always try to be there to help and support my wife as much as possible on the journey and now my wife is on this plane for a flight that is going to last Almost 13 hours and she's alone with the kids with no one to help her since they had closed the boarding gate only a few seconds before I had arrived my wife approached some of the staff on the Turkish Airlines flight and asked them if there was any way that they could get me onto the plane so they told her that they would help her they asked her to sit down and strap in the kids and they said that they would try to help get me on eventually the staff on the plane asked to talk with me so my wife put me on the phone with them and they asked me where I was I told them that I was at the gate and they said that they would come and get me so we were relaxed hoping that I would be able to get on the flight but a few minutes passed and no one had come to get me and eventually they made it clear to my wife that they would not be allowing me on the plane my wife was obviously extremely disappointed because they had told her that they were going to allow me on the flight and now it seemed that they had changed their mind additionally they offered my wife to get off the plane they told her that she could get off with the kids if she wanted to stay with me in Turkey so my wife asked the Turkish Airline staff well why can't you just let my husband onto the plane the plane is still here we haven't gone anywhere yet and my husband's standing right at the gate can you please let him on so they said no we can't let him on because the door was already closed so my wife said but one second if you're willing to let me off which would mean that you need to open the door to let me off why can't he just get onto the plane instead of me getting off the plane there was no good answer to that question but eventually it became clear that they were not going to allow me on and it had also become too late for her to get off so she was on this plane with all the kids and they're about to take off for a 13-hour flight let's just say she was not in the best state of mind she called me frantic not knowing what to do I tried to calm her down but I knew that this was going to be a very difficult flight for her she also said that she never ever wants to fly Turkish Airlines again and although I've always appreciated Turkish Airlines and I thought they were a pretty good Earline now we have this this problem we have a little bit of beef with Turkish Airlines I promised my wife that I would do whatever I could to get home as soon as possible and I headed to the Turkish Airlines desk to try and rebook my flight but they wanted an exorbitant amount of money for me to get on the next flight so instead I took out my phone and booked my own flight the new ticket cost me an extra $1,356 60 so in hindsight perhaps leaving my gate which I had arrived to on time to go to another gate to try and feed bagels to stranded Jewish passengers might not have been the best idea but that is how a bagel got me stranded in Turkey so now I had this new flight home it wasn't just one flight it was three flights I was going to be flying from Istanbul to London London to Washington DC and then from Washington DC to Texas the biggest problem was that my next flight was only going to be taking off in 18 hours so I had full 18 hours to figure out what to do and I don't know why this happened but as a practicing Jew I do believe that every single thing that happens in this world happens for a reason and being that I was now stuck in the airport I decided to make it my mission to bring food to as many stranded Jewish passengers as possible I'm leaving the lounge now because I got some Intel got tipped off that there's a flight heading to New York right now with a lot of Jews who don't have food so we're going to go to their gate I looked at the flight information screens and I found the flight numbers and the gate numbers from which all flights which were heading to cities that have large Jewish populations were leaving from so for example I was looking for flights to Paris to London to Washington DC to Miami to New York to Los Angeles and when I would find such a flight I would head over to the gate at the appropriate boarding time and try to find Jewish passengers in need of food this little cart that I have here is a mini Mitzvah tank this cart is filled with food kosher food we're rushing to the gates right now excuse me please excuse me so that we can provide food to Jewish passengers who haven't eaten in days because they keep kosher and they're not willing to compromise on that of the airport under the opes of Rabbi Mand and uh volunteer for the day slence we're going to give out food and keep Jews satiated enjoy have me and my wife take two yeah thank you thank you thank you anytime anytime there you go you want to ask that couple as well if they need I see another Jewish Family let's see if they need food three four five six that couple right there they're walking away thank God we just got them food feels good feels good do you know what it means to Bagel somebody there's a term us Jews have we call it to Bagel someone if you Bagel someone that means that you identify them as Jewish like you see them on the street and you recognize they're Jewish that's called bageling someone so there's a lot of Jews walking around here tonight and they are kind of disguised because of the situation right now it's my job to try to find them and uh provide them with the food that they need I was just sitting here in the airport and I saw two people walking with shopping bags and that can only mean one thing if you're walking with a shopping bag in the airport you're Jewish so I got to find those people and ask them if they need some food excuse me sir do you guys need closer food what you guys need closer food uh no um all right yeah yeah do you do you have food on the flight or you booked the last minute we booked the last minute maybe they Arian okay so here's what we have we have Bagels that are um there's also cream cheese that you can dip them in but they're not okay thank you I'm going to take for them too this one you have tuna fish I don't have tuna fish what is this and cream cheese yes you're a good name it's not me it's stumble I didn't do anything I'm just I'm just passing through for your son also my daughter my son sure no problem and need take one more carel one more that was the most successful Bagel in the history of bageling and the funniest thing is that I'm literally handing out Bagels what do you say I identified them by these shopping bags you see a shopping bag in the airport that's a Orthodox Jewish person so we handed out all the sandwiches and now it's time to get some more the rabbi came back to the airport and found someone at checken who just brought them through security hello sadic thank you so so much what's your name huh he wow you're going to help so many people today really appreciate it simp so here's my strategy right behind me is gate D7 there's a flight leaving from Istanbul to Miami from that gate in about 1 hour what I'm doing is I'm standing here and looking at oncoming traffic at this escalator right there and I am watching people anyone who I feel looks Jewish I'm going to approach them and ask them if they need kosher food so far it's been working even though these men have yamakas on I'm pretty sure they are not going to need any koser food there you go we have these are these are cream cheese enjoy this is this is um fresh bagels with Bagels sandwiches thank you do you need food this is just uh bagels and there's a cream cheese dip inside that you can dip it into a second say hi to the YouTube channel hi thank you so much for this for hours it's not me it's not me it's I appreciate it thank God I was able to feed many many people and when I started running out of bagels I called rri and he immediately got working on bringing another shipment of bagels to the airport and getting it past security to the gate area so that I could hand them out to more people throughout the next 18 hours I met many incredible Jewish people who were sacrificing and suffering for the sole purpose of trying to keep kosher to the best of their ability being that they were stuck in an airport without any food many people had gone a long time without eating one guy I met hadn't eaten in two full days but he was not going to waver in his commitment to keeping kosher no matter what hello Canen M so one second this guy did not eat for two days cuz he keeps kosher and he's not willing to compromise for 2 days he walked around with no food finally he's getting food a rabbi from China called me to tell me that he's here after a very long but fun beautiful and inspiring 18 hours finally the last flights the United States have left and I'm taking some meat time to actually enjoy one of these Bagels thank you Rabbi those people who just walked away also got sandwiches so even in the lounge it is me time but it's also them time which makes it us time okay one two we go thank you so much three four it's fine we're be up keep it's completely enough sure okay it is 7:00 in the morning at this point I've been in the airport for over 20 hours I'm exhausted beyond belief haven't slept in about 24 hours but we got to get out of here so heading off to London right now flight number one of three which will hopefully with God's help take me back back to Texas just landed in London I slept for the entire flight from before takeoff till after landing I finally made it out of turkey and onwards to London Washington DC and finally to Texas this experience of mine in which I missed my flight was not easy for me it was expensive and it took a lot of of time out of my schedule as a human being I have no idea what God's plans are and I certainly cannot understand God's calculations but if God's plan was for me to miss my flight so that so many Jewish passengers could be given food and wouldn't have to starve for the duration that they were in Turkey I am happy to accept that and honestly it was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had while traveling the world thank you all for Watching God bless you all and we'll see you very soon stay safe hey there one second don't go yet there's one more thing I forgot to tell you I found my Fillin they were just randomly sitting there in the terminal not at the lounge not at the gate where the flight to New York was leaving from someone must have moved them I don't know how they got there but thank God I found my Fillin and I am currently reunited with them and using them again every single day thank you Hashem thank you Hashem thank you