Comments on: Tefillin on airplanes

By: Rabbi Jason Miller

Rabbi Jason Miller — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:07:30 +0000

This is a poem I wrote about the tefillin incident on the airplane based on “Oh! The Places You Will Go!” by Dr. Seuss.

http://blog.rabbijason.com/2010/01/oh-planes-gonna-blow.html

Rabbi Jason Miller

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:47:11 +0000

I’m with Kittenmommy… I live outside Boston and know many Jewish people and have never heard of a tefillin before, nor would I have any idea it was part of the Jewish faith to look at it. To my ignorant eyes, it would look very strange. I don’t know that I would assume he was going to blow up the plane (the pictures I’ve looked up online don’t make the straps look like wires at all… but I guess I can forgive the flight attendant for misjudging it).

It sounds like it was resolved as reasonably as possible (other than actually just going to talk to the kid some more.. but I understand that if you think it’s a bomb, you can’t just go make small talk). Sounds like the kid was handled as well as possible, and no lasting harm done.

In the long run, this is probably a good thing – it’ll make more people (myself included) somewhat less ignorant, and maybe next time it won’t provoke such panic.

As an aside – I think this is a really potent example of just how much we trust the security on airplanes – that we assume a 17 year old kid could bring in bundles of wires and boxes full of explosives and not get noticed by anyone.

By: bev

bev — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:40:50 +0000

I grew up in Kentucky, although granted not the “big city” of Louisville. I never met anyone Jewish until a summer program before senior year of high school, and none of the Jewish kids in the program were observant in any way that stood out for a Southern Baptist hick like me. I didn’t even really know that there are last names that are generally Jewish; I just lumped anything Germanic-sounding together and didn’t give it any thought. And even now, I don’t really get what stereotypical facial features I’m supposed to look for when I’m racially profiling and trying to separate Jewish from Arab from “istani.” So yeah, if the me then had, in today’s world, seen a young man with a skullcap and dark hair strapping a couple of objects to his body, I woulda probably freaked out, too.

By: Michael A. Burstein

Michael A. Burstein — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:40:56 +0000

The sad thing is (connected to your reply above), I can now see a terrorist trying to create an explosive that looks like tefillin.

By: Kittenmommy

Kittenmommy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:09:27 +0000

I have never seen or even heard of tefillin before yesterday, and I know a lot of Jewish people. I don’t know if I’d have thought the kid was a terrorist, but I’d have definitely been like, “What is that kid *doing*??” Because, wow. That’s not something one generally sees every day.

By: jik

jik — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:55:09 +0000

It is not reasonable to assume that the flight crew even recognized that tefillin are a Jewish thing. Muslims wear skullcaps too, eh, and if the kid is ashkenazi, then he wasn’t wearing a tallis.

Not to mention the fact that, at least in Israel, the suicide bombers have in fact started dressing up like Jews. They learn new techniques, just like we learn new techniques to stop them. I’d rather have people being proactive than thinking that something can’t possibly be dangerous because it’s not how the terrorists have done thing in the past. They also hadn’t flown hijacked planes into skyscrapers before 9/11, eh?

By: CA

CA — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:51:02 +0000

This would make sense if there were any Jewish terrorists in recent history blowing up (or attempting to blow up) American planes.

Yes, racial (and religious) profiling is a sensible thing to do sometimes.

And yes, it’s rather pathetic that people are so ignorant. Of course, that bochur’s community is probably equally ignorant of the world outside…