"Chassidim on a Plane"

 

For Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I had to be in the US, so I flew to the US a week before R"H and returned Monday Erev Succos.

Because of the tight schedule, I needed to fly direct and the timing had to be so so; so I flew Delta which accommodated my needs.

On the way back, the entire plane was Chareidie, specifically chassidim. 

During the flight, they got up to make minyanim. I went with the psak of Harav Eliyashiv who suggests you daven in your seat without joining the minyan. 

Suddenly, we hit turbulence, and the crew "begged" everyone to get back into their seats and buckle up. 

You guessed it.... אין קול ואין עונה

They totally ignored the crew and the pilot's warning, and even ignored when the crew got a Hebrew speaking passenger on the speaker system to "beg" them to get back to their seats. 

Mayhem broke out, as the stewardesses couldn't get the food carts back in the galley fast enough, since  the "daveners" were in the aisle refusing to move. Food and drinks were flying over the entire aisles and seats but the "Daveners" refused to budge.

Finally the pilot started to itemize the numbers of all the empty seats, and announced that those who bought those seats will be forever banned from flying Delta again.

When they heard that in English (suddenly they didn't need any translators) they abandoned G-d, and ran to their seats. 

Why am I writing this now?

I mentioned this story to a neighbor of mine and he said  that the  blog called "Rationalist Judaism" has horror stories of "Chassidim on a Plane"

and so I am copying a letter from one of his readers who describes her experience ..

I just flew to and from Israel... and I have never been more mortified to be Orthodox. The plane was trashed. The bathrooms wrecked. A flight attendant remarked that this route is always left this way, while after 15 hours to Japan, the plane is left spotless. Men crowded the aisles and blocked the passageways, forming a minyan even while being explicitly told that they could not do so A- because the seat belt sign was on and B- because of the pandemic. While attendants were buckled in because of turbulence, stopped food service because of turbulence, men were up and putting on tefillin even while flight attendants and the captain himself begged them to sit down and buckle up. They could not have cared less. It was as if they were deaf or above the rules or both. 

To describe myself as shocked is an understatement. It got to the point that I asked them who they were even praying to, who would possibly listen to their tefilot when they were causing us such humiliation and chillul Hashem. I don't know who to turn to to speak about this and I do not want to trash an entire community. But this was so so bad that if I myself was feeling such anger and animosity and close to posting videos I can't think that someone actually doing this who is not Orthodox is far off. In all seriousness, rabbis and Leadership needs to address this. If anyone has ideas as to who to turn to, please let me know.