We first spotted them in the Tel Aviv terminal late Sunday night, about an hour before we weary travelers were to board our 12:30 a.m. Delta flight to JFK in New York. Groups of boys, obviously Hasidic Jews, running all over the place, like kids being turned loose at Disneyland. The main attraction was sprinting the wrong way on the people movers, with occasional spurts into and out of the stores. They ranged in age from young teens to college age. Their apparel consisted of knee length bottoned black coats, black top hats, and braids coming way down from their ears where sideburns ought to be. "I'll bet they are bound for Russia," said Tom Hart, one of the MHT 8. If only he were right.
Our final day had started early, of course, with the walk down the Via Dolorosa and the visit to the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre, as described in my September 30th second installment of The MHT 8. We concluded the morning with a thirty minute stop at the Western (aka Wailing) Wall inside the Jewish Quarter of The Old City. Then, that Sunday afternoon was free, the first mid-day period we had without an organized activity since arriving in the Holy Lands nine days before. Between our return to the Inbal Hotel and our final group dinner at 6:30, we had a leisurely outdoor lunch at a nearby cafe, visited the famous King David Hotel -- I enjoyed the celebrity signatures on the floor tiles of the main hallway -- packed our bags, and (in Momma Cuan's case) swam in the Inbal pool.
Following dinner, we bade farewell to the ten Magi group members (including Father Joe) who were "extending" to Istanbul the next day, and then boarded the bus for one final ride. Tel Aviv was a little over an hour away, and by the time we arrived at the airport, all we wanted to do was fall asleep on the plane and wake up twelve hours later at JFK. To put it mildly, however, things did not go without a hitch. First there was the fatiguing wait to pass through not only the regular security check point, but also the energy-sapping formality of customs. Following that ordeal, we still had plenty of time, so most of us gathered near our gate to drain an Israeli beer or two -- Goldstar amber was quite tasty -- and hang out, waiting for the midnight boarding.
It wasn't long after we were seated on the jumbo jet that we realized the Hasidic Jews we'd seen running around the terminal were not going to Russia after all; they were getting on our plane. A simultaneous surprise was that they were in the company of dozens of male adults of all ages, including sixties and seventies, whom we hadn't spotted in the terminal. Where were these older folks when the teens were frolicking in the terminal? On a plane which held close to four hundred passengers, the Hasidic delegation comprised at least two-thirds of it.
What followed was one of the strangest, most surrealistic sights I have ever experienced. The ultra-orthodox Jews refused to take their seats, and were blocking the aisles. Small groups would proceed toward the rear of the plane, only to return back up the aisle, against the flow. Then they would stand there aimlessly. They placed very large suitcases in the overhead compartments, some of which were too big to allow the shutting of the compartment door. Then they'd return to the overhead compartment, and open it for purposes of retrieving articles from their carry-ons, or re-adjusting the contents of the compartment. Whenever they did this, which was often, they would have to lean into whoever the poor soul was sitting in the aisle seat underneath the overhead. One of them was our fellow pilgrim, Chuck Neerland, who I thought was going to clobber the guy who went to the overhead above Chuck for the fifth or sixth time. Luckily Chuck thought the better of it, or he may have been escorted off the plane, but I would not have blamed him if he had acted on his impulses.
This mockery of decorum, civility, safety and airline protocol went uninterrupted for over an hour. There were more people standing than sitting. The Delta flight attendants were ineffective, flabbergasted and incompetent. About forty-five minutes into this ridiculousness, the pilot (or copilot) got on the intercom, and asked people to take their assigned seat. This announcement, which sounded more like a plea than a command, fell on deaf ears. A few minutes later, two of the officers came out of the cockpit and convened with a small group of Jews halfway down the starboard aisle. Again, this conference had no effect. The aisles remained clogged. Several minutes after that, someone (a flight attendant?) asked over the P.A. if there were people who were willing to trade their seats to accommodate the passengers who did not like the seat to which they were assigned. (At this point, we had no idea what their beef was.) I only saw one passenger, who did not appear to be Hasidic, get up to trade seats, and as he was doing so, there was an unfriendly verbal exchange between him and another passenger whom I could not see.
What I could see were many Hasidic "elders" who did absolutely nothing to help resolve the situation, but chose instead to bury their collective noses in their prayer books, oblivious to what was obviously going on all around them and refusing to take any responsibility. I momentarily thought back to my teaching days, when my eighth graders simply would not have dared to misbehave on any of our several public outings. They might not have been angels on school premises, but never failed to toe the mark in public. Yes, it is a different culture now, and we live in a much different era.
Along with the total ineptitude of the Delta flight crew, the biggest surprise to me was that this airplane insubordination would be occurring in Israel, of all places. If there is one country on the globe known for its tight travel security and enforcement of the rules, it is Israel. Yet, if the same thing happened on a domestic flight in almost any other country, the perpetrators would have been taken off the plane by a marshall and charged with a crime. On Flight 469, no police or security officer ever came on the plane. We did not push off from the gate until 1:10 a.m., an hour and ten minutes after we boarded, and forty minutes after we were scheduled to take off.
So, what was the cause for the ruckus? The MHT 8 found out later that disruption caused by Hasidic Jews failing to take their seats is not an uncommon occurrence. Their unhappiness stems from their refusal to sit next to a woman, and of course there were many women on the plane. When I first heard this I was incredulous, but after some research I've learned it's true. It's hard to believe that a religion teaches that awful practice, but apparently that was one reason why the elders did not admonish their young proteges. I still wonder why Delta puts up with such foolishness, or if it's even within the rules of accepted international travel regulations. I still find it hard to believe that airport security never made an appearance.
When all the commotion was going on, I wanted so badly to take a picture to memorialize the sad event. I did not for two reasons. First, I was in a window seat, so I would have had to raise my camera quite high to capture a picture over fellow passengers' heads. Second, the last thing I wanted was to start another brouhaha in the event someone saw me taking pictures and wanted to "make something of it." In any event, if you care to see pictures of a similar happening which occurred on an El Al flight going from New York to Isreal, check out the following article which appeared last month in the Gothamist: http://gothamist.com/2014/09/
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