Religious rites may appear threatening to the uninitiated

Randi Kreiss

We’ve all heard about the US Airways flight that was diverted to Philadelphia last week because a flight attendant became suspicious — let’s make that alarmed — by a 17-year-old boy who was praying.

As part of his ritual, the young man put on tefillin (small leather boxes attached to leather straps), which Jews wear during morning prayers. Apparently, nobody on the plane had ever observed this practice or even heard about it. In an excess of caution, the pilot decided to land in Philly rather than the destination, Louisville, Ky.

Because we live in a world where terrorists carry explosives in their underpants, police officers swarmed through the plane once it was on the ground. In initial reports, the Transportation Security Administration used terms like “suspicious passenger” and “disruptive passenger,” but within an hour they were saying it was basically all a misunderstanding, according to a report in The New York Times.

Apparently the young man is what my mother would call “a nice Jewish boy.” He was just trying to pray, and in his world, every young man lays tefillin in the morning.

Older and wiser Jewish leaders agreed that in these times, it would have been better to pray on the plane and, as his rabbi said, “fulfill the ritual later.” All of the Jewish officials said they could understand the concern of the other passengers and the flight attendant. Even the kid’s grandmother agreed.

The incident, while it cost the airline thousands of dollars, resulted in no harm done. A young boy learned that his religious rituals may be seen by some as bizarre and threatening. Maybe a few more people now know about tefillin.

The story makes me think about what is going on in France these days, with public debate raging over the right of women to wear burqas or head coverings in public.