STRAPS ON A PLANE!!!

This post appeared on my old blog about a year ago, before we began experiencing technical  difficulties.

     The atheist cybersphere is having a field day with the story about the seventeen-year-old boy Jewish boy caught praying on an airplane last week, which led to the pilot's diverting the flight and making an emergency landing in Philadelphia. The boy was on the way from New York's LaGuardia airport to Louisville, Kentucky to visit his grandmother.  The reactions I've seen run from "people who pray are weird" to the unrepeatable. Of course there are atheists who believe the boy must be insane if he feels the need to "talk to his imaginary friend." But now they learn this boy not only tried praying, but he tried doing so with phylacteries. So some Jews tie these funny-leather-straps-and-boxes thingies onto their arms and heads when they pray. Who knew?

      Um, lot of people, actually.  
      Not only does atheism have no good holidays or food, it isn't exactly famous for producing a lot of great comedians, either. And these people are Not Amused. Less than a month after a Muslim man tried blowing up an airplane with a bomb in his underwear, people are understandably skittish about airline passengers who behave strangely. And what, atheists wonder, can be stranger than תְפִלִין? Not funny strange or curious strange, but appalling strange.  Intolerable strange.  The millennia-old tradition that spawned Jesus, Albert Einstein, and Jon Stewart, it seems, is nothing more than a bizarre cult. Surely there could be no rational motive for this behavior, could there?  Isn't prayer just unthinking superstition?  Something that only crazy religious fanatics do, anyway?  And aren't all religious fanatics the same? Mr. Arrogant A. Atheist has never seen Jews wearing t'fillin before, so doesn't that prove that practicing Jews are even more insane than he previously suspected? 

     Perhaps even more than the praying itself, our atheist friends are outraged at the suggestion that anyone on the plane should have understood what he was doing. Why would normal people know anything about Jewish prayer? How could we expect any pilot or FBI agent to realize this Jewish boy wasn't just one more suicide bomber? People who think they know everything don't take kindly to the idea that there's anything else worth knowing. Nope. They don't gotta know 'bout nuthin' they don't wanna know 'bout, and religion is something only crazies want to know about, right?

     Of course, the Jewish world is also abuzz with the same story. I'm sure there has been more than one Friday evening or Saturday morning sermon on the subject.  My rabbi had some intelligent things to say about it this past weekend.  But you are probably reading this to find out what I think.

      Would I ever put on t'fillin on an airplane?  No.  Would my husband, or my seventeen-year-old?  No.  But I don't believe it's fair to call this boy an insane, unthinking fanatic, either, or to assume he was acting on any superstitious fears about Big Bad Skydaddy crashing the plane and killing him if he didn't.  He is young, and he knows plenty of people who have prayed on airports without hassles.  Perhaps he wasn't afraid of running into anti-Semitism where he was going, because he associates it with his grandmother and not with rednecks.  Although he was acting upon the commandment to say his morning prayers within the prescribed time slot, he might reasonably have felt a genuine desire to pray with his תפלין, and I can understand what his motive may have been. 

     Asking favors from God is not the only theme of Jewish prayer, not even Thursday morning prayer.  I'm not going to argue that people ought to pray or believe in God.  Those are difficult things to do.  I will only say that if one is in doubt about God, there is no place where belief in God makes more sense than on an airplane.  Jewish prayers are designed to elevate our awareness, to help us appreciate all that is wonderful in the world, to stop us from taking anything for granted, and to keep us mindful of the responsibility to live our lives in accord with what is sacred.  Humans don't normally fly hundreds of miles through the air from within hours.  Some people don't have grandmothers, and some can't afford plane tickets.  This boy might have felt thankful that he was able to make this journey, which once took weeks and weeks of dangerous overland travel.  As he sat on that plane, looking out upon the Firmament and down at the Earth, with nothing between him and death but the engineering genius of people he will never meet, perhaps he felt a greater than usual awarness of something greater than himself.  If he never before wanted to touch those verses from Deuteronomy telling him to love God with all his all his heart and all his soul and all his strength, perhaps in that moment it was clear and compelling for him.

     So what do I think of his praying there and then, in that particular manner?  I think that it was both brave and naive.  I'm not saying he was wrong.  His little leather boxes obviously made it through airport security, so the flight attendant should not have freaked out.  When one goes to visit family, air travel time can easily feel like a waste unless one can find a way to occupy oneself.  Knitting one's grandmother a pair of mittens or clipping one's fingernails is now Verboten, according to TSA regulations.  Judaism doesn't allow much flexibility about when a man should pray.  The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects prayer.  Yet given the paranoia and prejudice that pervade our world today, he probably could have made a better choice.

      1. He might have tried arriving at the airport a bit earlier, and had he asked around among his friends and contacts and known what their schedules are, joined one of the regular prayer groups that meets there every day somewhere between the security check and the gate.

      2. He might have done his praying quietly and in his seat, perhaps without his תפלין.  He probably wouldn't have aroused much suspicion just sitting there reading from his prayerbook, especially since his sister was there to reassure anyone who might freak out.  They might have thought he was stupid or crazy to sway and move his lips when reading, but they wouldn't have worried about him being a threat to them.  

     3. He might have waited until he got to his grandmother's house, where he knew he could pray without being hassled.

     I like my rabbi's take  on the situation.  He says prayer should make us more mindful of other people and their needs, not less so.  If they are afraid someone might strap a bomb onto his body and blow up the entire plane, or if they feel uncomfortable with people praying in a language they don't understand, perhaps it's best to put one's consideration for the other people on the plane first and make other arrangements.   Even if they're all a bunch of redneck bigots who don't deserve respect, one's motive for prayer should not be to demonstrate one's disagreement with those around one.