Some fellow passengers are questioning why an Orthodox Jewish man was removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight in Montreal last week for praying.Jewish prayer (davening) is a full-body experience. Traditional Jews shukle while davening, that is, sway back and forth and side to side in order that even the bones sing G-d's praises. At various times during certain services, it is traditional to prostrate oneself on the floor in submission to G-d. In order to be alone with G-d, a Jew might wrap himself in his tallit, or prayer shawl. At at least one point in almost every service, we sing of the angels praising G-d and how their voices shake the foundations of the Temple. At the same time we raise ourselves up on our toes three times (as the word of praise is uttered) to symbolize that shaking.
The man was a passenger on a Sept. 1 flight from Montreal to New York City when the incident happened.
The airplane was heading toward the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox man began to pray.
"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.
"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.
All in all, I can see how it might seem odd on an airplane.
5 comments:
Peter: Your comment seemed uncharacteristic until I read the linked post at BrothersJudd about the sukhot.
The Hasidic gentlemen's actions seemed odd because gentiles are surprisingly ignorant of Jewish prayer rituals. (One reason I wrote this post was to demystify what he was doing.) I assume that we're not going to be kicking old women off the plane because they're busily crossing themselves.
As far as identifying whether a particular observance is required, in the US it is the law that the courts cannot decide whether a particular practice is actually required. The First Amendment protects individual religious feelings and practices, not the tenets of established religions.
David, is there some requirement for Hasidic Jews to pray at certain times of the day? I know that this is true of Muslims, but I was unaware of any time related requirements for Jews.
As much as I hate to, I somewhat agree with Peter. Not that socially approved, conventional expressions of religiosity be given a priviledged status over personal individual expressions, but that public decorum and propriety should have a say on when/where such individual expressions should be allowed. An airplane is a psychological tinderbox, it has to be tightly managed to prevent panic and mayhem. While they're at it quashing the Hasidic performance praying, it would be nice if they tell the bozo speaking loudly that noone else cares to hear anything he has to say.
And while we're at it, why does noone talk in hushed tones in public settings anymore? Have we lost all sense of privacy and shame?
Does this make me a Victorian?
Duck: I don't think there's any one answer to that. You are supposed to pray three times a day, but practice as to when and what you say is elastic. Clearly, though, if you can't, you don't have to; we're not expected to matyr ourselves over this issue.
As to the other point, prayer is not shameful or, in Judaism at least, private. Certain prayers can only be said when part of a group. Someone who had lived all his life in a Hasidic community (though they are not all that insular) would not have internalized any cultural bias against public prayer, or that his mode of prayer (swaying back and forth and muttering under his breath) is odd.
As Peter admits, the discomfort here really is down to lack of familiarity.
Well, there's public and then there's public. There are things that are "kosher" when you're with your own community which are not so when you're in a multi-cultural setting. A planeful of Hasidim would not be scandalized, but just think about how our pious frield would react to a pentecostal woman taken with a fit of glossalia rolling in the aisles. Somehow I doubt he'd be all that understanding.
This is why I baulk at Harry and Skipper's absolutist position on freedom of speech (eg. in the great cartoons row)
It seems perfectly clear that freedom of speech must necessarily be subject to pragmatism.
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