Religion & Beliefs
Tip of the Week: Don’t Fly While Being Jewish
By Jewcy Staff / January 21, 2010
Another day, another purported terrorism scare at a New York City-area airport. Today, it’s out of LaGuardia, where a flight to Louisville had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia after a passenger’s use of a religious item caused flight personnel to fear a bomb scare. What was that religious item, you may ask? Not a Koran, like you might guess. According to CBS, "a Jewish male removed a "tefillin" for prayer purposes after takeoff. The removal of the "religious item" prompted a bomb scare aboard the plane." (Please note that that is an exact quote, including all the scare quotes.) Yes, guys, it turns out that a tefillin box totally looks like a bomb. Thank goodness nobody tried to bring a tzedekah box on board with them.
The man in question was removed from the flight and is probably being questioned by the FBI. However, this is the second incident this month that makes it seem it’s less safe to fly while obviously being Jewish. The first, of course, was comedienne Joan Rivers being denied access to a flight because her passport carried two names – her stage name (Rivers) and her much Jewier-sounding legal name (Rosenberg).
Through his brother, "Joseph," Jewcy spoke to "Caleb," a passenger who was sitting near the Jewish man on this flight. Speaking under condition of anonymity because he and several other passengers are still being questioned by the FBI, he said that "There was no problem with [the Jewish passenger] at all," and added that the flight attendant who reported the ‘suspicious activity’ was biased against the Jewish passenger because she was African-American and did not understand Judaism or the significance of tefillin. The flight attendant in question is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. [Editor's note: I just want to point out we're not hating on Southern people or saying they're all racist. I mean, dude, I'm from Raleigh. We're just relaying how Caleb and Joseph described the situation to us, and Caleb drew his own conclusions about the situation. Jewcy does not necessarily share or endorse his opinion.]
Of course, Jews aren’t being profiled in airports the way that Muslim or Arab-looking people are. At least not yet. But how likely do you think it would be for a Catholic passenger to get kicked off a plane and investigated by the Department of Homeland Security for deciding to pray a rosary before the beverage cart went around? I’d bet the person would be able to pray without incident. And that’s something we should be concerned about.
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I was searched four times before leaving Jamaica. I was searched when I entered the airport in Kingston, searched at the door when I was leaving the Kingston airport. When the plane landed in Mobay…as if I’d gotten out for something mid air, I was searched again. And before I boarded the plane for Orlando…yah.
I don’t look that freaky, I wear size zero. I also tend to paint on my clothes so that if I had a coin in my pocket you could read the date.
So why me?
I’m different. Â
That’s it.Â
People who work for airlines outside of El Al are so damned stupid they make Forest Gump look like Einstein. They aren’t really trained, they don’t know what to look for, and will over react at any provocation.
The jerk who saw the guy praying with the teffilin, now she’s too stupid to live. She can’t be that insular that she’d never scene a religious Jew before. And if she didn’t know what she was seeing; ask somebody.
I always pray on planes. I have my Tanakh in my hand and my special passages ready. Yeah, I’m a woman, so don’t have the accountrements. But I’m sure if I put a tallis over my head they’d assume I was from al qeada.
The moron with the explosives in his panty…you know he was obvious. And it took a passenger, (like me) to get over there and put him out, just like the shoe bomber was put out by a passenger.
My view of flight?
Get on with the attitude you might have to kill some terrorist. Be on the look out because the morons hired by the airlines would ask Osama if he were comfortable and wanted another orange juice.
"However, this is the second incident this month that makes it seem it’s less safe to fly while obviously being Jewish." The Joan Rivers incident didn’t really have anything to do with her Jewishness. It was just the fact that she had two different names. This article makes it sound like these people were targeted for being Jewish. The tefillin incident is worse because like you said, the people are really ignorant of Jewish practice.
….I think this idiot kid should have taken out his tefillin at a more opportune time. Sure, pray, but let’s not divorce ourselves from the realities of the modern era.Â
I disagree with mobius1ski: I’d say this is terrorists -1. Now they know they can’t pretend to be Jewish, insert some C4 into a fake phylactery and detonate while on board. There is quite a bit of terrorism in Israel perpetrated by terrorists who make themselves look like Jews and thus evade circumspection.Â
Terrorists 1 – TSA 0
Instead of investing in actual intelligence infrastructure, how about giving flight attendants even greater ability to act like assholes?
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