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NOVEMBER 12, 2020 | The Jewish Home NOVEMBER 12, 2020 | The Jewish Home
The Wandering
Jew
A Tale of Three Cities and a Hurricane Part II By Hershel Lieber
The town of Rcakeve, Hungary
I
just arrived in Vienna after a Shabbos in Warsaw where I participated in Limmud Polska. My original plans of returning home to New York were aborted by Hurricane Sandy. I was being held hostage in Europe by the forces of a devastating storm that caused so much destruction, and even the loss of lives, on the Northeastern coast of the United States. It was Monday, October 29, 2012, and the earliest date that I was able to rebook my flight was the following Monday, November 5. I had plans to travel to Budapest on Wednesday for a Shabbaton organized by Rav Dovid Keleti for Hungarian Jews of all ages and to return to Vienna after Shabbos. In the meantime, I would spend the next forty hours in the Austrian capital. My cousin Debby and her husband Zwicky picked me up from the airport. This was not my first time in Vienna, nor my last. Just the previous year, Pesi and I came to take part in Zwicky and Debby’s chasunah, and now I was going to meet
With Zwicky, Debby and Yonatan in Vienna
their newborn baby, Jonatan. I dropped off my luggage at the Hotel Stefanie in the zweiter Bezirk, the Jewish district, and we headed for a new milchig restaurant. We had a lovely fish dinner with soup as a starter. I invited
Michoel Yosef, a young man from Poland, to join us for dessert. Michal, as he was called in Polish, was one the teenagers whom I brought over to America and placed in a yeshiva. He was now attending the Lauder Business School in Vienna. Unfortunately, we could not have a meaningful conversation about his future, as we were not alone. After dinner, I went back to the hotel and spent hours on CNN watching the unfolding saga of horror that Hurricane Sandy was wrecking back home. I spoke to Pesi many times during this period and was glad that she and our children were relatively safe. The next day, after Shacharis at the Ohel Moshe Shul, I had breakfast at the hotel. The Stefanie has arrangements with the kosher bake shop to provide their Jewish guests with breakfasts. This, plus the hotel’s location, is why I always stay there. Then I called to finalize my Monday return flight and made train reservations for the next day to Budapest. I was now free to do what I love: sightseeing.
