A Kohen wraps himself in a plastic bag on a 2013 flight under advice from his rabbi to prevent him from becoming tameh as the plane flies over cemeteries.
The Forward published an Op-Ed piece from a writer who recently witnessed a Hasidic man making a spectacle of himself on a US Airways flight from Phoenix to New York. After an argument at the gate with airline personnel and several seat switches later, the man was still unhappy with his proximity to other female passengers.
To express his displeasure, he popped up and down throughout the flight like a jack-in-the-box, even during times of turbulence. The flight crew had to forcefully ask him to sit down several times. Although he did sit when asked, he stubbornly popped back up again in protest at every opportunity, despite lit seatbelt signs.
The article is a pretty harsh smack down on how fundamentalist religionists are openly flouting civil law in the name of religious freedom and how they justify doing so.
However, I have to think about the chutzpa of fellow who would make such a public nuisance of himself on a flight where it seemed the airline went out of its way to try to accommodate him, yet their efforts still weren’t good enough.
My opinion is that a man like this doesn’t markedly change his behavior when he is in his own community amongst other Hasidim.
The article implies that when the world sees Hasidim behaving badly in front of non-Jews or secular Jews, it’s because they have no respect for anyone outside of their own community. Is there an underlying feeling of superiority over non-Jews or non-religious Jews in the Orthodox world? I don’t think that’s a completely unfair statement.
However, there is a difference in feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment in attempting to take on mitzvot given especially for the merit of Jews over those who make no such attempt or haven’t been given the opportunity to elevate themselves in such a way, and open contempt and smug superiority toward the non-Jewish and non-Orthodox world. A person can have pride in themselves and in their community without harboring hatred toward others outside of it.
I would argue that the most religious people make no such distinction in how they treat their fellow man or woman. The most pious people I know don’t have two sets of rules for how they treat Orthodox Jews and how they treat everyone else. I would also argue that a man such as the one on the flight from Phoenix also makes no distinction between how he treats Orthodox Jews and how he treats everyone else.
This is the guy who makes school administrators and teachers cringe when they see his name pop up on caller ID. This is the guy who loudly corrects the Ba’al Korei during laining, even if his corrections are wrong. This is the guy who makes his shul rabbi want to walk in the opposite direction when he sees him coming, because he needs a break from his litany of complaints about the level of talking during davening or the inadequate height of the mechitza. This is the guy who asks to see the manager at the kosher pizza store every time he eats there because he has concerns about the hashgacha or whether the cheese they use is indeed, cholov yisroel.
This guy doesn’t represent Hasidic Jews, he represents the face of mental illness.
It’s unfortunate that those of us who wear the garb of a religious Jew are held accountable for representing our entire community. Some of us do Klal Yisroel proud, while others set us back and do untold harm to the kehilla. One of the hardest challenges for an Orthodox Jew is to not cause a chillul Hashem or sinus chinum through our behavior in public.
It’s very easy to make generalizations about entire communities based on the actions of one sick individual. While we all must take responsibility for our own behavior when we are out in the wider world, we must also take care to realize that when we see another Jew behaving badly, the only person he or she truly represents in that moment is themselves.
