On Sunday evening of the 16th, I flew into JFK at around 7:00 for a 11:00 flight to Tel Aviv. New York airports are hectic places, filled with people rushing to get somewhere.
Pardon my bias, but New Yorkers do it in a uniquely brusk style. The 747
bird that carries 300 plus folks is like a small city, a borough at least, maybe located
in Brooklyn for that matter. The presence of small groups of travelers dressed in black, and young people with “T” shirts declaring their independence dominate the scene. After all, they are traveling to the promised land and some perhaps on the “Birthright”
pilgrimage. Some might be settlers. Some are Israeli citizens heading home after visiting family here.
After queuing through a number of land-based security systems in D.C, and then again to the Delta gate at JFK, before finally reaching the gate at the end of the long, dimly lit corridor, where the 747 awaits me with flashing lights on its wings, and attendants appear like ants scurrying around before the plane’s departure, I finally feel I’m there . And yet before me is another scrutinizing machine to pass through even though I haven’t been exposed to the light of the outside since I departed the D.C terminal. “What is this about, again?” I ask.
The plane started to fill nearly two hours before its took off. I sat outside in the jetway
waiting for the last moment to board. Meanwhile groups of young American Jews
sang songs in Hebrew and jaunted down the plank; men with dark suits, long beards and tall hats with women and lots of children in tow, merged into the cabin doorway.
I was feeling quite alone and unattached. I didn’t seem to fit. I wasn’t aware of another Christian-looking person on the plane, at least I felt that way, though not really knowing how to distinguish between us in an impartial way. I stood by my aisle seat for a half hour waiting for the other person to move to the middle seat between me and a young man at the window with a kippah a top and ear phones wrapped around. He was ready for the flight with or without me it seemed.
Finally She arrived, an older women with wrinkled skin, angry eyes and disheveled hair. She had her ticket in hand and while pointing at me and the two contested seat, She shouted several words at me in Hebrew which most always appears to me to be loud and hostile even though the message might be something like “ I love you”. ( I get that feeling about Arabic too.) I had no idea what she wanted. At first I thought it was for me to exchange places with her, but since I make frequent investigations of the nearest lavatory during the night, I wasn’t willing to give up that seat. She was almost screaming at me and it seemed to everyone else around us at one point, and then she moved several rows down and spoke to the flight attendant as animately.
This incident did not help improve a deep seated feeling that all the people on this plane must be political zionists, and if they knew my view of the occupation of Palestine, they would have my life in a flash. My perception of this woman’s personal attack only enhanced an already, angry resentment for people that I didn’t know, but thought were evil. For that is what the Israeli Occupation is for both parties.
Then, when the plane seemed full, a woman boarded hurriedly, having arrived late from her connection from Boston. As she scanned the ship for her seat, my adversary came forward and convinced the late arrival to switch places with her which she did willingly. I concluded later that she was also Jewish as she read meditatively in her prayer book during the next few waning hours of the night flight. Her response seemed to please everyone on the plane including me.
When I asked my new companion what seat she had, she said, “all the way in the back, in the middle seat”. “Oh” I said. Then I thought, the angry woman must not have wanted to sit next to me, a goy perhaps? “Why not?” I thought. The experience only confirmed my perceptions of my fellow passengers, though I really didn’t know any of them personally, other than the hostile one. Then an announcement came on, the plane would delay its take off until 30 passengers from Boston arrived. An hour later young people ran down the aisles to their seats with their back packs bobbing- more “birthrighters” I suspected. We were late. I felt alone. I was tired but it was too early to sleep.
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Twelve days later, on the flight to New York, I boarded the plane and found my economy class Plus aisle seat on the first row with lots of leg room and the lavatory within two steps. Ahh. heaven! Then when the plane was about to depart, a young woman with a two year old, collapsed in the empty seat next to me. “Oh, oh! This was going to be a difficult flight for all of us,” I thought.
Then the husband-father came over and asked if I might give up my aisle seat (in heaven) for the one on the other side, (less than heaven). Reluctantly and a little resentfully, I picked up all my stuff, and moved to the other side. There was a young man with a kippah by the window in the three-seated row who greeted me friendly like, almost over apologetically as if he were making up for some lost moment in the past. He then said as the doors closed, “It looks like we have a middle seat to share between us.” This seemed like heaven again.
Later, his 8 year old little brother switched seats with him from the business class where youngest had been sleeping. In the middle of the night as he lie there scrunched up in a ball and apparently cold, he must have put my jacket on. I reached over and I boosted it up to cover his exposed shoulders. He smiled. He reminded me of my grandson Jackson. It was heaven.
BP
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