Since my brother Taneli arrived at Camp Moshava Wild Rose in Wisconsin four weeks ago, I’ve been counting down the days until I can see him. His 13th birthday was on July 11, and my immediate family was set to fly to Wisconsin last weekend to spend his bar mitzvah in camp. It was going to be the first Shabbos we all spent together as a family since my twin sister and I left for Israel for our gap year last August. My mother, who works as the camp social worker, and my brother Ari, a Machal camper, were both already in camp, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my father, my brother Jakie, my sister Leora and me.
On Thursday night, Jakie headed home from Binghamton, picking Leora up from Camp Moshava I.O. in Pennsylvania on his way. My father and I greeted them at the door, ready to wake up early the next morning to head to the airport. The airline website had a glitch and it took us a few hours to check in online, but we figured it was nothing to worry about. Jakie even joked that we should leave right away and make the 18-hour drive to Wild Rose, but we all laughed it off and decided to go to sleep.
At 7 a.m. on Friday, we all woke up ready to drive to Newark Liberty Airport. Our bags were packed and ready to shove in the trunk of the car. I was brushing my teeth and aimlessly scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video of a girl stuck in the airport, captioned “Thanks, Microsoft.” I thought nothing of it. A few minutes later, I heard my father yell from downstairs, “Planes aren’t flying because of some global IT meltdown.” My sister and I started to worry, asking, “What are we going to do? Should we go to the airport?” My father said we should just follow our plan and see where it took us.
The plane we intended to take from Newark to Appleton, Wisconsin was set to take off from Appleton at 7:50 a.m. and land in Newark just in time to take off at 11:50 a.m. back to Appleton. As my family was packing up the car, we called Allegiant Airlines and received no response. My father decided to call the Appleton airport and ask about the flight, and we found out it was canceled. We didn’t have a plane.
We decided to drive to the airport anyway and see what was going on. My father, Leora and I sat in the car outside Terminal B while Jakie scrambled around inside looking for the Allegiant counter. Eventually, he found a flight attendant in an Allegiant uniform who told him, “No Allegiant flights are flying out today. We were told to go home.” In the 45 minutes we were sitting outside the terminal, we saw not one plane in the sky.
On the way home from the airport, we called my mother. Wild Rose is two hours behind Teaneck (one due to time zone and one due to “camp time”), so she was just waking up by the time we left. We told her we wouldn’t be making it to camp for Shabbos. She was devastated and confused. How could something like this happen? Why now? What can we do about it? How was she going to tell Taneli?
Finally, we arrived back in Teaneck and retreated to our rooms, crushed to know we had no way of making it in time. A little while later, Taneli called us in tears. He was shocked at the news that we wouldn’t be there for his bar mitzvah. He had been waiting months for this moment. We told him we had done everything we could—looked for new flights, checked how long it would take to drive, driven to the airport just to scope out the situation—to no avail. Ari was a great big brother and tried to comfort him, but there wasn’t much he could do.
Resigned to our fate, Leora and I began cooking for Shabbos and my father headed to work. Jakie decided he would spend Shabbos in New York City with his friends. Over at camp, my mother took my brothers to Starbucks for a little pick-me-up before Shabbos. When Shabbos came, we said “Mazal tov” to Taneli and then had to shut our phones off and hope for the best.
Leora, my father and I spent Friday night together at home, aiming for a quiet dinner and an early night. We talked about how frustrating the situation was but how there was nothing more we could have done. For lunch, we headed to my cousins’ house, where we stayed until the end of Shabbos. Although we were all upset about missing the bar mitzvah, we had a really nice time.
Once Shabbos ended at camp, we asked my mother how it went. She explained how, all things considered, the camp made the bar mitzvah into a beautiful simcha. The mishpachot (staff families) set up the chadar ochel, completely surprising Taneli and my mother. They made a big poster for him and started dancing and lifting him in the air on a chair to celebrate. He leined beautifully at davening in the morning and had candy pelted at him. He had a schnitzel lunch and a beautiful ice cream party after Havdala. Taneli’s friends and counselors gave heartfelt speeches about him, which my mother shared videos of at the end of the night.
Although we were all disappointed that Shabbos didn’t work out as we intended, we managed to make the most of it. Taneli had an incredibly special weekend thanks to the staff and campers at Moshava Wild Rose, and his bar mitzvah will certainly be a story to remember. Thanks, Microsoft.
Eliana Birman is a digital intern for The Jewish Link. She is beginning her studies at Barnard College in the fall and lives in Teaneck.
