Lew Shaw’s Blog from Haifa

On Sunday I left Boston en route to Haifa.  My itinerary had me changing planes in Newark, then a direct flight to Ben Gurion Airport.  When I arrived at Newark airport, I had a three hour layover and made my way to Gate 139 for my departure.  As in other airports, the waiting area for flights to Israel involves additional security, then passengers are held in a closed area until boarding.

I got there early, went through the additional bag and body search, and took a seat to read and wait.  Slowly other passengers arrived and I noticed something special about them.  I’d guess that about 90% of those arriving were Hasidic Jews from New York.  Men in the long black coats and unique hats, all of them constantly on their cell phones.  Many were followed by the wives, pushing strollers or holding assorted children, lots of them.  An hour before the flight took off, all the men gathered in a corner of the waiting area for evening prayers.  It was quite a scene.  Then back on their cell phones.

As we boarded, overhead storage was in great demand.  It had been filled by enormous black hat boxes.  The men took their seats and continued talking on their cell phones.  And when the announcement (English and Hebrew) said to turn off all cell phones, they just ignored it.  I saw flight attendants speak to several about this.  They would either ignore them, or put away the phones until the flight attendants walked away, then back on the phones.  I even saw during taxiing and take-off, still on their phones until they lost service. 

My seat was next to a young Hasidic couple.  They told me it was their first time coming to Israel.  They spoke Yiddish to each other.  When the PA system started announcing something in Hebrew, they told me they didn’t understand.  I found that a bit surprising.  This was their first time coming to Israel.  Apparently the head rabbi of their sect of Hasidism was up in the front of the plane.  The whole group was on a trip to celebrate Lag B’Omer in the Safed area of the Galilee. 

As they started serving dinner, I was one of the few people on the plane that wasn’t given a hermetically sealed Kosher meal.  Actually their food looked much better than mine!

And at sun-up (based one whatever time zone we were approximately in), all the men got up, pulled out their tallitim from the overheads, removed one sleeve of their black coats, and put on their tefillin for morning prayers.  If anyone needed to get throught the aisles, they’d just have to wait. 

And to add to that, our plane arrived about an hour before the Pope’s.  He was on a trip in the Middle East, flying from Jordan.  Their apparently was a high diplomatic welcoming group, but I wondered how many Israelis really cared whether the Pope was coming.  The adulation would have to wait for Bethlehem and other Christian religious areas.