Following the conclusion of Shabbat on June 20, a single-engine Piper PA-28 Cherokee departed Ocean City, N.J., bound for Montgomery County Air Park in Gaithersburg, Md. The plane carried Yoav Bomrind, 26, of Israel, the pilot; David Rabinovitz, 19, also of Israel; and Elad Neidik, 20, a Canadian citizen originally born in Israel.
They never made it.
The three took off at 11:15 p.m. on Saturday night. About 15 minutes into the flight, an iPhone crash alert reached Prince George’s County Public Safety Communications. A large multi-agency search was launched, but it was friends from the victims’ flight school who finally located the wreckage at 3:45 a.m., debris scattered across 100 feet in a wooded area of Bowie, Md.
Rabbi Eli Baron, the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Bowie, Maryland, got the call at 9:30 Sunday morning. His colleague Rabbi Shlomo Beitch, director of the Chabad Israeli Center of Rockville, told him a plane had gone down overnight in the woods less than two miles away from him, and three young Jewish men were dead.
“It was a shock,” Baron told Chabad.org. “As the rabbi of a small community, a tragedy like this, thank G‑d, is not something we regularly see. But our mission as emissaries of the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory] is to help every Jew, no matter what situation they happen to be in—joy, and tragedy.”
Chabad of Maryland was established by regional director Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan in 1974, and today is made up of 27 Chabad centers throughout the state served by 44 emissary families. In the 24 hours after the fatal crash, this network mobilized to ensure the deceased were accorded the full dignity and treatment Jewish law requires.
Baron, the closest rabbi to the crash site, headed there directly, reciting Psalms and prayers for the deceased on site. He was joined by a Jewish representative from the flight school, while Rabbi Nechemia Mond, a rabbi and chaplain from Silver Spring, ensured access to the site and remains, with the assistance of the City of Bowie Police Department and Deputy Chief Robert V. Liberati.
“When the soul passes, it’s an exceptionally heavy and special moment, particularly after a tragic incident like this,” Baron says. “As we said the Shema for the souls of the three young Jewish men, I felt that this prayer could’ve been the last words on their lips as well.”
Baron escorted the remains during the transfer to the medical examiners office, and the Jewish representative there to ensure the bodies would never be alone.
Coordinating across the agencies was Beitch, who served as the point of contact between the arriving communal organizations, local authorities, and the families making their way from Canada and Israel. Rabbi Ariel Sadwin, executive director of Agudath Israel of Maryland, who has worked with the Maryland medical examiner’s office for over two decades, coordinated with state officials to ensure all three victims, including the two Israeli nationals whose remains would need to be repatriated, were handled in accordance with Halacha. Volunteers from ZAKA USA and Misaskim of Baltimore worked through the night and into the following day at the crash site to ensure all the remains were retrieved and treated with the utmost respect.
As families arrived from abroad, Rabbi Sholom Raichik of Chabad of Upper Montgomery County in Gaithersburg, and his son, Rabbi Mendel Raichik, met them at the airport and opened his home to some of them in the days that followed. On Wednesday evening, the rabbis are hosting a memorial service at the fight school the victims attended, helping bring a measure of solace and consolation during the painful time.
“For all of us involved, it was an honor to help escort these souls to a peaceful rest in the World of Truth,” Baron says. “It was tremendously inspiring to see the unity and collaboration between all the organizations and communities that helped. Too often we only see in tragedies that the Jewish people are all one, but the love and care we have for each other is always there and always felt.”
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