| Jewish Teen’s prayers cause Terrorism hysteria on airplane Posted: 28 Jan 2010 07:28 AM PST
A Jewish teenager, attempting to say his morning prayers, caused a terrorism alert on a US Airways airplane Thursday. The plane had left New York and was going to Kentucky. Instead, it was redirected to Philadelphia, grounded, and surrounded by local and federal authorities, including dogs sniffing for bombs. The boy had taken out his tefillin, as is stated in the Jewish Torah that every male thirteen and over is supposed to do daily as part of his prayer time. Tefillin are two leather straps attached to small boxes which contain tiny scrolls of biblical passages. The tefillin wrap around the arm and head and serve as a reminder of being spiritually bound to God’s laws. The Jewish Torah is similar to the Christian Old Testament. In both, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 says: Today, only very religious Jewish men, most of the Orthodox and Hassidic sectors of Judaism, observe the tefillin prayer ritual faithfully. This is one reason it may be less recognizable in public. Hysteria Demonstrates Americans’ Attentiveness to Terrorism Threats; but also Lack of Knowledge toward Faith-Based Traditions That the boy and his sister were questioned by authorities is not being cited as an incident of anti-Semitism. According to a report by Associated Press, the concensus from most people interviewed was that we can’t be too careful about what is going to get pulled out of a box or suitcase on airplanes anymore. People can use innocent looking things to avoid suspicion. However, one rabbi who spoke to the FBI stated it’s also a show of modern-day unawareness toward biblically based activities and commandments. With today’s interpretation of “separation of church and state” leading people to believe that prayer isn’t allowed in public, Americans aren’t as accustomed to seeing prayer rituals carried out. Nor are so many reading their Torahs and Bibles to learn about it. Rabbi Benjamin Belch of New York’s Yeshiva University told AP that people should be aware of ignorance just as much as we should be aware of terrorism. The teenager was never under arrest. It will be hard to determine how to remain terror-alert while being culturally sensitive. |
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