Quick-thinking Moldova rabbi’s two-for-one deal on matzahs

A quick-thinking Chabad rabbi in Moldova who arranged medical aid for a stricken Israeli tourist solved two problems in one by getting
a crate of matzahs loaded on to the rescue plane sent from Tel Aviv.

Israeli-born Rabbi Mendy Axelrod, mindful of Pesach and Moldova’s relative exile in a region of suspended air and land traffic, managed the work-around after a medical insurance firm got involved to arrange a flight from Israel to bring back the poorly traveller.

Speaking to JTA, Axelrod said he had come to the aid of the Israeli man aged in his 40s, who had been passing through Moldova when he was laid low by the coronavirus. The man was so ill he needed a ventilator, something Moldovan hospitals could not provide.

Unable to get any matzahs in the capital Chisinau, where Axelrod has been based for four years, the rabbi used both quick-thinking and chutzpah to get a box put on to the plane that was sent to pick up the man with Covid. The patient is now recovering and Moldova’s Jews have the Pesach matzahs.