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Tefillin Totin' Jews Terrorize Another Airplane
By
Garth Johnston
Published Mar 14, 2011
Modified Mar 14, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Mar 14, 2011
Modified Mar 14, 2011
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Should flight attendants have to be fluent in religious rituals? We wonder because for the second time in a little more than a year a flight has been disturbed when Orthodox Jews praying with tefillin were confused with terrorists getting ready to terrorize. Last January a flight out of LaGuardia was diverted to Philly over the prayer ritual and then yesterday a similar confusion struck an Alaska Airlines flight from Mexico City to LA. After concerns were raised the airplane was swarmed by police, FBI and customs agents when it landed at LAX.
What exactly the three men, described as Mexican nationals, were doing didn't become clear to officials until after the plane had landed. In LA the three men were escorted off the plane because a stewardess had informed the cockpit they "were acting rowdy and a fight had broken out." In fact they were just praying with tefflin.
Tefillin are a set of black leather boxes containing religious verses that some observant Jewish men place on their heads and bind to their arms during some prayers. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, tefillin comes from scripture urging Jews to "take to heart these instructions...bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a frontlet between your eyes."
According to an Alaska Airlines spokesman a "flight attendant became spooked when she saw the men wrapping the straps to their foreheads and arms and praying loudly in Hebrew, and she instructed the crew to lock down the cockpit."
After officers had inspected the boxes and straps and discerned that they were, in fact, not bombs, the men were allowed to go.
Tagged
alaska airlines
bomb scare
jewish
judaism
LAX
orthodox
prayer
tefillin
terrorism
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Garth Johnston
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