From Panic to Prayer: Saving a Plane with Faith

Uri Lifshitz will never forget boarding that long flight from New York to Kiev, carrying a new siddur—a Jewish prayer book—he’d just bought in Crown Heights. Three hours in, he wandered back to help a flight attendant who’d answered the cockpit phone and suddenly screamed, “We’re all going to die!” She could barely stand, convinced there was a fire.

Uri sprang into action: he guided passengers to stow carry-ons, smelled for smoke, then found the back of the plane unbearably hot—while the front was freezing. He learned the pilots had turned off cabin power to quarantine a suspected fire, using only engine heat. Landing would be the real danger, since they’d need electricity to slow the plane.

As they approached the cockpit together, the attendant turned to Uri: “You’re Jewish, right? Pray!” He took out the siddur from his carry-on—still fresh from that New York visit—and flipped to the Traveler’s Prayer. Though he’d never prayed in the air before, he whispered the ancient words, then held the book close until the plane’s wheels touched down safely. Only he and the crew knew the truth.

Back home in Haifa, Uri realized something had changed. Friends told him, “Your prayers saved us.” He’s not sure how it happened, but he felt the power of his religion —and that one spark led him to put on tefillin and guide his children into Jewish school. His siddur sits with him every day: “It saved my life,” he says. “I’ll never let it go.”