Hi
everyone. Back after a long hiatus. So, many of you have no doubt heard about the
airplane seat-switching controversy involving ultra-Orthodox men and non-Orthodox
women passengers. But instead of just getting riled up over the ultra-Orthodox attempt
to control not only our lives on the ground, but airborne as well, let’s look
at the phenomenon as part of a larger, meta-phenomenon that I call tiptoe-ing
around, placating, and pretending to the Orthodox.
I
know of at least three funerals where Orthodox people – either
themselves mourners, or members of the Chevra Kadisha [burial society] – compelled the primary mourners to engage in / refrain from engaging in, certain
practices. In one case, everyone in attendance was compelled to engage in a
strange ritual that originated generations back in some neck of the Diaspora
woods with which none of them identified, much less had ever heard of. In another,
distant Orthodox relatives of the deceased showed up and jogged behind the
hearse, loudly chanting psalms in a way that, I found out later, horrified the
children of the deceased. At another funeral, the deceased’s children, being daughters
only, only began reciting kaddish after a male relative began doing so.
In
addition, it calls to mind a recent bar mitzva I attended where the host edited
her speech at the Shabbat dinner that mentioned the bar mitzva boy’s
grandmothers having aliyas the following morning in shul, so as not to offend
an Orthodox relative who wasn’t even going to be at the ceremony.
What
do all three of these situations have in common? They all involve heightened
anxiety, impatience, and being invested in everything going smoothly: a
trifecta, or “perfect storm” if you wish, for the Orthodox individuals to
exploit the non-Orthodox individuals’ (the stakeholders) vulnerability to
compel the latter to accede to the will of the former. After all, boarding a plane,
we all have the same goal: For the accursed thing to take off. Not having
buried a parent, I’m assuming that the goal at a funeral is to just get through
it intact and start the shiva. And as for the bar mitzva, I know how stressful
it can be to host an event of that scope: You want so badly for it to go off without
a hitch, and are thus willing to skirt anything that has even the slightest potential
to “become a thing”, or what everyone’s going to remember about the event in
which you and your child have invested so much.
Regarding
the funeral and bar mitzva examples, since every case differs, it would be
impossible to suggest a blanket policy. But you can be sure that if I’m ever
asked to change seats pre-flight, I’ve got my answer ready: “Sure. I’d be happy
to either upgrade to Business or higher; or get a voucher for a free round-trip
flight of equal distance on this airline.” That way, I’m not holding up
takeoff, but I obtain what I believe to be fair compensation for my
inconvenience.
I
actually don’t agree that the seat change request is anti-woman; I simply
believe it to be pure chutzpa. Maybe if we all gave my suggested answer, the
airlines would start printing on their ticketing conditions and posting signs
at check-in (i.e., before passengers hand over their luggage) to the
effect that no seat change requests will be honored beyond this point,
we can make this chutzpa go away. How about it?
