Flying Prayers

I can always be identified as a Hasid. My white shirt and beard give me away, and even though I try to hide my payess under a baseball cap, I still look like the man who was the last one onto the plane, or at least everyone seems to think we look alike.

Never mind that Mr. Trouble Maker, who summoned the attendants when he realized he was assigned a seat next to a female and asked to be switched, has a hat sitting proudly on his head, a hat that I own too but which I had left in the suitcase.

Never mind that I sit in my shirt—the long black coat with thin blue stripes stashed away in the overhead storage—while he walks around the heated cabin with not one solid black coat, but two.

And while I have my headphones on, listening to the in-flight music offerings and unconcerned with hiding my intentions of watching an archived Seinfeld episode, he has a little portable Talmud in his hand. No wonder his eyeglasses are so thick. Sin of all sins, I didn’t complain about my seat—which also happened to be right next to a woman; worse yet, I didn’t even ask her to change with her husband or boyfriend sitting on the other side of her. He, on the other hand, stood firmly in the aisle, just two rows away, and showed all the goyim who was boss.

But no one cares to spot the difference. I look like a Hasid, I must act like one too. When the bearded penguin produces a wife and a million kids from the back to help rearrange the seating, prompting the pilot or co-pilot to announce a slight delay due to people standing in the aisles, the woman next to me stifles a curse on her lips, clearly not wanting to offend me. Yet, there is nothing more offensive to me than being associated with him.

When things finally settle down and the pilot switches off the seat belt signs, before I even have the chance to ask my friend a few rows back if he noticed him, the guy is all smiles, shouting from the other side of the aisle to get my attention. Of course, he wants a minyan for prayers. I give him my standard response, “I already prayed,” and I can see him wondering about the likelihood of me having prayed after sunset back in Brooklyn. Lucky for me, he keeps quiet.

So much for thinking that by avoiding El Al and traveling with Lufthansa through Germany I would avoid being branded one of a backward bunch of smelly savages. To the couple next to me it must’ve only reinforced my association with that fellow. Our common language, I’m sure, didn’t help either. I resent him for making me one of them.

The plane lands, finally. I notice soon enough the affects of 9/11, 7/7, 3/11 and whatnot. Security, stringent before Al Qaeda was a brand name, looks even tighter now. The lines seems twice as long, and as I get closer I notice the customs officials asking questions, questions unlike the usual: “What’s the purpose of your visit?”

My turn comes. I look for my ticket, boarding info, and passport—I’m proud to be a US citizen—and I realize my passport is gone. I stand there frozen, alarmed at the nightmare I now imagine for the next few hours or days. I see myself chained to a chair in a waiting room, grilled by stern-faced Israeli putzes. People in line behind me scramble to find a new line, understanding that this is going to be a tough one. From the other side of the hall a voice bellows in Yiddish, “Everything okay?”

I turn around and there is the bearded-double-coated-ugly-voice-pious-son-of-a-bitch-Hasid.

“My passport is lost!” I shout back, unaware of how desperate I sound, thinking maybe he could help.

I am desperate. My carry-on bag is now wide open, its contents spilled on the floor, as I rummage through it all to find my passport. Another fat security guy stands firmly over me, then I spot a skinny one, and then a nondescript one, and I almost give up.

Saviors come in different forms, however, and Mr. Trouble Maker redefines himself as Mr. Savior. He directs his wife and million kids to go search for my passport while the security fatsos stand around making sure that I won’t escape. Mr. Savior has by now orchestrated a rescue mission to help a fellow Jew, a fellow Hasid.

As much I might have despised his earlier behavior, he still feels like a brother to me, while I must feel the same to him. Otherwise I would have had no hostile thoughts when he shouted across the plane aisles, or when he prayed and shokeled and rocked his virtuous hips in prayer. While I hated to be associated with him, he now hurries to assist me. When one of his million kids, one of the very ones I so less than an hour ago, finds my passport in the plane aisle, the look on the man’s face — yes, that very face with the unkempt beard that I’d so hated just an hour before — beggars description. He is happy to have done a mitzvah, he is happy to have taught his kids to do a mitzvah, and is clearly happy just to see me, a fellow Hasid, happy. For the good or for the bad, we’re still family.

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Originally published on A Hasid and A Heretic on 9/08/06, and reprinted here with permission. Authors have asked us to note that as the essays featured in “Best of the Blogs” document journeys of transformation, the author’s views may have changed since initial publication.

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