On Sept. 11, 2001, 38 planes were rerouted to Gander, stranding nearly 7,000 people in the Newfoundland town.

Rabbi Leivi Sudak, head of Chabad of Edgware in London, England, was one of them.

In Come From Away, the highly acclaimed Canadian musical written by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, the rabbi’s story is intertwined in a narrative about 13 passengers and locals.

“It was a very momentous moment of change in my life because I had witnessed four days of absolute pure generosity,” Rabbi Sudak said.

The rabbi, played by Corey O’Brien in the current Royal Alexander Theatre Toronto production, was travelling from London to New York for one day to pray by the Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s grave before Rosh Hashanah.

When the rabbi’s plane landed in Gander, it sat on the tarmac for over 14 hours until the passengers were taken to Lakewood Academy in Glenwoods, a town 22 kilometres outside of Gander.

There, Rabbi Sudak met two Israeli boys who also landed in Gander, ages 12 and 13, who were desperate for kosher food. He sourced 13 kosher airplane meals and distributed them to the nine observant Jews staying at the school. Word spread that there was kosher food at Lakewood Academy and 28 Jewish people stranded from various flights congregated.

The rabbi promptly koshered the school’s staff kitchen, bought new pots and pans, and kosher food, like produce and fish.

Rabbi Sudak’s flight was cleared to leave Gander on a Saturday, but he couldn’t travel on Shabbat. There was a short window of time he could fly, after Shabbat and before Rosh Hashanah – from Saturday night to Monday night. If he didn’t get on a flight he would have to stay in Gander over the High Holiday until Thursday.

“I happened to have with me my mahzor. I had a shofar with me, I had my tallis, I had my tefillin, I had my Selichot book, I was fine,” he said.

He invited a formerly Jewish Israeli Tibetan monk to join him for Shabbat. They prepared dinner together and the monk sang Shalom Aleikhem while they cooked. The liquor store had two bottles of Manischewitz kosher wine so the rabbi bought both.

“At the school everyone was like a member of one people, it didn’t matter who you were, where you came from, what you were, we were all one people,” he said.

READ: CLASSICAL GUITARIST WINS MUSICAL LEGACY AWARD

On the rabbi’s last night, he met Ed Brake who revealed he was a Holocaust survivor. A British family hid him and his brother during the war and later moved to Newfoundland. His parents told him to never tell anyone he was Jewish.

“It was an extremely emotional meeting,” Rabbi Sudak said.

In the play, the rabbi hands Brake a kippah as a present, but in real life, the rabbi sent him a tallis, prayer book, and kippah once he returned to England.

On Sunday night, Carl and Eithne Smith, locals Rabbi Sudak became close with during his time in Gander, drove him for five hours to an airport in Stephenville because there were no flights available from Gander.

Two years later, at a Chabad Edgware celebration dinner in England, the Smiths attended and were honoured on behalf of the people of Gander for their incredible generosity.

When the rabbi arrived at the airport in Stony Brook, a Canadian News and Business Channel (CNBC) reporter asked him to do something Jewish for the news broadcast. Rabbi Sudak blew his shofar and was broadcast across the network.

From Stony Brook, he flew to Halifax, and then to New York, arriving 7 minutes before Rosh Hashanah.

“All the time I was looking (for signs), why am I here? What am I doing here? What’s going on? I was on the lookout all the time, what is my purpose for me being there at that time,” he said.

Departing Gander, the rabbi had an abundance of answers. 

Come From Away is performing at the Royal Alexander Theatre in downtown Toronto until Jan. 20, 2019. Tickets range from $39 to $215. Visit www.mirvish.com for more info.