Wartime wedding: Secret Jerusalem helps Olim fly family in amid airline cancellations

Just weeks before their wedding, Paula and Eitan – two olim (immigrants) from Brazil – discovered that their families’ flights to Israel had all been canceled. 

The family had purchased tickets well in advance, but suddenly, following developments in the Israel-Hamas War, the airlines canceled.

Paula was the first one to see that the tickets had been canceled, and she couldn’t even tell her fiancé, Eitan, a reservist who was in Lebanon without access to his phone at the time.

Eitan’s time in the reserves had already been challenging for Paula, who felt she was alone in handling things. “I faced a lot of difficulties with university,” she offered as an example.

“Even though my family and his family are the best, they are on the other side of the world,” she said, adding that the canceled flights were “the cherry on top that made me freak out.”

Paula was not able to find new flights for her family, and any flights she did find were wildly expensive. She ended up writing a post in the Facebook group Secret Jerusalem, hoping someone there would be able to help.

“I posted looking for help because I really needed help and connections [to people who might be able to help],” she said, adding that she also wanted to feel like she wasn’t as alone as it seemed.

“The post was more like a cry for help, like, ‘Please, I just need to share with the world because this is too much.’”

Members of the Facebook group did not disappoint. “It was insane how many people reached out to me to help and also show support. People were saying, ‘Mazal tov. I don’t have any connections, but I just want to say that I’m very proud that you are getting married.’”

“Many, many people reached out to help, and I really felt that I was not alone,” said Paula. “That was the feeling that I was having – being all by myself and feeling [that] all this is too big for me. I was super overwhelmed. And then suddenly I felt that I was not alone.”

Companies try to help 

Not only did the responses make her feel like she was not alone, but people on Facebook sent her the phone numbers of the CEOs of El Al, Arkia, and Israir. All three companies tried to help.

In the end, Arkia had the tickets she needed and was given a 10% discount – which, given the price of the tickets, was helpful, she said.

“They were really helpful,” she said, explaining that just having someone from the company to talk to, who wanted to help, made all the difference.

Paula shared her complex feelings about her fiancé’s reserve service. Eitan was called up on October 7 and served seven months since then in the Gaza border region, Gaza, and Lebanon.

While Paula is very proud of his service, she has felt alone throughout it. “He’s constantly telling me that he is doing this for the country and for me, for our life in the future,” she said, adding that at the same time, “part of me is feeling very, very alone.”

“It’s very contradictory,” she said. “I am very happy and very sad and very worried. I was worried all the time; it’s crazy.” Paula recounted the relief she felt each morning when reading the names of the IDF soldiers killed, knowing that Eitan was safe this time.

When asked what she is most excited about for the wedding, Paula said it’s because Eitan’s father – a rabbi in Brazil – will be marrying them.

A feeling of hope 

“We sent everything [for the wedding] to be printed in Kibbutz Be’eri, in the print house, and my makeup artist is from Zikim,” said Paula, explaining that they want to connect the wedding to the idea of hope.

This was a huge part of what the reactions to her Facebook post gave her, Paula said. It gave her hope that people were able to help her, “[to] stop their days to write me a message, [to] follow up to see if I was ok and if we were able to get the flights.”

“It’s the best feeling to know that I am not alone,” she said, adding, “I feel that in the last year, we sometimes forgot this. We are all [facing] our own battles, but if we trust the people around us, I think we can go on a better path for the country.”