Rabbi Moshe Sheinfeld is a Rav who serves in Kaunas (formerly Kovno), Lithuania, a city that has a glorious Jewish past which was sadly wiped out during the Holocaust. Today there are very few local Jews but there is a community of about 400 Jewish medical students, most of them Israelis.

Rav Zev (Willie) Stern, z’l of London, a renowned supporter of Torah and yeshivos who passed away last month due to the coronavirus, established and funded a Jewish center, The Jewish Center of Kaunas. The Center serves the Jewish students, providing amenities such as kosher food, a shul and Torah shiurim, helping to decrease the risk of the students succumbing to assimilation and intermarriage. Rav Sheinfeld and his wife have run the center for eight years.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, two-thirds of the Jewish students left the country but Rav Sheinfeld and his wife, despite the fact that they were expecting a baby soon, refused to leave and continued serving the community with mesirus nefesh.

But when their baby, who was born on the seventh day of Pesach, turned out to be a boy, the question was: who will be the mohel? There were almost no flights to Europe anymore and definitely not to Lithuania. Furthermore, Lithuania had closed its borders and anyone who did enter the country had to automatically go into self-quarantine for two weeks.

Rav Sheinfeld reached out to different people including Israeli MKs Aryeh Deri (Shas) and Bezalel Smotrich (Yamina) as well as Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Levi and the consul Adi Cohen-Hazanov.

Everyone rallied to help but initially, it seemed like all doors were closed. Even if they could get permission for the mohel to come in, how would the mohel peform the bris if he had to self-quarantine as soon as he stepped off the plane?

Rav Sheinfeld had an idea to have a mohel fly in on a private plane and remain in the plane upon landing, leaving him in the territory of the country the plane flew in from. Meanwhile Rav Sheinfeld would be waiting at the airport with the infant and ascend the ramp to the plane. The mohel would stand inside the plane and perform the bris with only his hands leaving the doorframe of the plane.

Meanwhile, Rav Yaakov Frankel of Vienna, a member of the city’s local council, volunteered to organize a private plane to transport the mohel, Rav Tzvi Gutman of Vienna, to Kovno.

Rav Gutman decided to embark on the 17-hour route to Kaunus even without waiting for an answer from the Lithuanian government since in any case there was no guarantee that an answer would come or what the answer would be.

Instead, especially considering the time limitations to perform the bris, Rav Kovno simply left for Kaunas, trusting in Hashem that everything would work out. He left Vienna and crossed the borders of the Czech Republic and Poland and entered Lithuania.

While Rav Gutman was en route to Kaunus, consul Adi Cohen-Hazanov notified Rav Sheinfeld that the Lithuanian government had approved the entry of the mohel’s plane to the country. The bris took place at The Jewish Center of Kaunas and of course was broadcast live on Zoom. The baby boy was named Yoel.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)