Now I know what tefillin are

by Charlie Leocha on January 27, 2010


Sometimes you learn things the darnedest ways. Until a USAirways LaGuardia to Louisville commuter flight was diverted to Philadelphia for an emergency, possible terrorism landing I had never heard of this word — tefillin. Evidently the flight attendant on US 3079 had never seen one either.

Tefillin (also called a phylacteries) are prayer boxes strapped to the head and another strapped to the arm for morning prayers by some devout Jews. In this case on flight US 3079 a 17-year-old strapped the boxes onto his head and wrapped the straps around his arms and scared the bejesus out of the flight attendant.

To some people in New York, that is a relatively common sight: an observant Jew beginning the ritual of morning prayer. But to at least one person on US Airways Express Flight 3079 on Thursday — the flight attendant — it looked ominous, as if the young man were wrapping himself in cables or wires.

With the skittish state of the flyin public and aircrews, many senior rabbis were not terribly surprised at the reaction.

Some observant Jews said they were not surprised that the ritual had attracted attention — or that people on the plane would have been unfamiliar with it. “When they see a passenger strapping yourself,” said Isaac Abraham, a Satmar who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and campaigned for the Democratic nomination for a City Council seat last year, “you might as well strap yourself with hand grenades. They have no idea.”

After a search and an explanation the flight continued and the teenager and his 13-year-old sister were kept for more questioning but eventually flew to Louisville that afternoon.

Now, I know what tellifin are, but can’t remember its other longer name that starts with a “p.”

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Tagged as: emergency landing, tellifin, terroris, usairways

  • http://www.globepharm.org Michael Anisfeld

    I’d not “a tefillin”, its a pair fo tefillin; and its not “some devout Jews”, but it is all devout (and even many less devout) Jews who wear them every morning during prayers. Despite is flaws, Wikipedia has an excellent article describing tefillin, their history and use. As for the ‘p’ word you forgot – it is “phylacteries”.

  • dcta

    I am stunned that there was NOT ONE OTHER JEWISH PERSON on a flight out of LGA who could have explained this!?

    “Tefillin” and “phylactory” are the singular. “Tefillah” and “phylactories” are the plural….FYI

  • em Hoop

    No disrespect intended, but some people do have what i think of as odd religious practices. And in the current climate of total fear all the time, what a dumb thing to wear without alerting the airline in the first place. If this young fella got through screening, just where did flight crew think he hid this before boarding? And how come he was flying, anyway? Maybe airplanes ought to be too modern for him to truck with under his religious rules?
    I do know that Mennonites paint all their cars and trucks black out of religious conviction. That’s how you can often tell them from the Amish –who don’t use modern anything.
    Thanks, Charlie, for showing us one more thing that can be turned into a bomb…… But, how will we know that the next one that shows up at the airport as not been? she asks…..so super-screening continues.

    You gotta love America….always something interesting, all the time….

  • Hapgood

    Minor correction: “tefillin” is actually plural (in Hebrew), so the headline should be “Now I know what tefillin are.” What’s the singular? I don’t know, as I’ve never heard anyone refer to them that way. Tefillin are always worn as a pair, with one put in the head and the other wrapped around the left arm in a prescribed fashion. That might be why it’s easier to use the Greek word “phylacteries,” which has a singular form “phylactery.” It’s the Greek word for “amulet.” Yes, that’s related to “prophylactic,” as both come from a Greek root meaning “guard” or “protect.”

    What’s inside those little leather boxes? A piece of parchment on which are hand-written the Hebrew verses from Deuteronomy commanding Jews to bind the words (of the Torah) on their arms and between their eyes. So putting on tefillin is the literal fulfillment of a Biblical commandment.

    If anything, the tefillin incident proves that one of the only two genuinely effective enhancement to aviation security since 9/11 is working well, even though here it resulted in an extreme overreaction to a false positive. Passengers and flight attendants were vigilant about unusual behavior, and reacted quickly to stop it before it became dangerous, just as they did with the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. But in all these cases, the TSA “professionals” failed to detect or question the items, and reacted only after the fact with measures intended to prevent a repetition of that specific tactic.

  • Carrie Charney

    Just for clarification, I believe tefillin is the plural, as are phylacteries. The singular would be a tefillah. Because tefillin are used as a set, they are rarely referred to as a single thing.

    I can see a teenager dutifully putting on his tefillin without thinking he might be regarded as a terrorist. In orthodox communities, it is a daily ritual of life and one doesn’t think about what kind of terror this can evoke in the minds of non-Jews or even non-religious Jews on a plane.

  • Louise

    “Tefillin” is plural, in English it’s “phylacteries.”

  • http://www.tripso.com/author/leocha Charlie Leocha

    Sorry, my ignorance continues. I have changed the story to make tellifin plural. Thanks for the corrections from multiple readers.

  • Frank

    But to at least one person on US Airways Express Flight 3079 on Thursday — the flight attendant — it looked ominous, as if the young man were wrapping himself in cables or wires.
    ===================================================

    One would have to question how long this Flight Attendant has been flying. Because Express carriers are limited in size and fly a limited route system. You would think this particular Flight Attendant has done numerous flights in and out of the New York Area. Seen Jews praying.

  • Enrique

    Actually, Tefillah is not the singular for tefillin, which as far as I know doesn’t have one. Tefillah is the word for prayer.

  • Scott

    @em Hoop:

    No disrespect intended? Your comments are ignorant, rude and anti-Semitic. It is not up to you to determine what are odd religious practices just because they may differ from your own. A religious Jew shouldn’t be on a plane because they are too modern? Someone should “alert” the airline about religious paraphernalia? They got through security because they are harmless…..little boxes with parchment inside. I might question whether he should have done this on a plane, but that is only because of people’s ignorant attitudes which you display so clearly with ignorant remarks. Tolerant America, right.

  • http://www.tripso.com/author/leocha Charlie Leocha

    Scott, You are a bit out of line. I quoted a satmar (another new word for me) in my story who said, “When they see a passenger strapping yourself,” said Isaac Abraham, a Satmar who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and campaigned for the Democratic nomination for a City Council seat last year, “you might as well strap yourself with hand grenades. They have no idea.”
    From your comments, you would seem to lump him into your definition of anti-Semitic. Hardly.

    Let’s have a bit of understanding for those of us who might be surprised at these actions, just as you would be surprised (and possibly alarmed) at seeing a Muslim pull out his prayer rug and begin praying next to the cockpit.

  • Scott

    Not even close, Charlie. If you read those comments as similar, then I seriously question your judgment. I even said myself, I might question the intelligence of the traveler to use an item on a plane that so many people will be ignorant of. The person I responded to questioned why an observant Jew should be on a plane because they were too modern. That and the Satmar’s comments are not even in the same PLANET of thought. His comments are not about the PERSON, they were about the ACTION. If you don’t see the anti-Semitism and ignorance of the comment, then you are misusing your forum. But I suppose that is typical….let the anti-Semitism stand, and call the criticism out of line. All it takes for evil in the world to triumph…

    For you to compare Muslims to Jews in that context is inappropriate. Jews (and Israel) and the United States have had a mutually beneficial relationship. While the vast majority of Muslims are wonderful beings, the misguided fanatical few have caused a severe problem in this country. That is not the case for Jews. The ONLY thing in question here should be the JUDGMENT of someone participating in a practice on an aircraft, not the practice itself, and nor ridiculing someone for their beliefs, whether intentionally or out of ignorance. em Hoop is the one without the understanding, but that was no problem for you. I have no problem calling out religous (or other) intolerance and you should be doing the same.

  • http://www.tripso.com/author/ned/ Ned Levi

    I thought I might jump into the topic.

    To start, as usual, Enrique’s Hebrew is on the money. Tefilláh (תְּפִלָּה) means prayer and its plural is tefillót (תְּפִלּוֹת‎). Also as Enrique said, tefillin (תפילין‎) which many have pointed out is plural, is the name of the item. There is no “singular” term. As Carrie pointed out, it’s always used in pairs, and as it turns out, that’s why it’s always spoken as a plural word. And yes Wikipedia is wrong, as they are often, but the gist of their description is pretty good.

    Now that we have that out of the way, I would point out that I doubt most Jews would know that they are called phylacteries, a Greek word actually meaning amulet. I know I had never heard of the word myself until I took a course on Jewish ritual practices in college. I actually take strong issue with the use of the word phylacteries describing tefillin, as tefillin are in no way amulets. I know this description of tefillin as phylacteries is very old, and it probably comes from a badly informed Greek who didn’t have the slightest understanding about what tefillin actually are, and what Judaism is all about.

    OK, back to the issue at hand. I’ve got a problem with the flight attendant’s eyesight and judgment. I agree that she can’t depend on TSA having seen and approved the tefillin. That being said, describing the tefillin as having wires is ridiculous on its face. She went up to the kid and asked for an explanation while they were in flight. If she couldn’t tell wire from leather then she was blind and unqualified to be a flight attendant. As to her judgment, I guess it was as blind as her eyes. She asked the kid what he was doing. He told her. He showed her the tefillin. Without another word or look she jumped to a conclusion and either fibbed (trying to be kind) to the pilot or saw what she wanted to see instead of what was there. Either way I think her judgment was atrocious. She should have at least made a reasonable attempt to see and understand what was going on.

    Second, the flight crew called the kid disruptive and unruly. That wasn’t true (a lie – no reason to be kind) and they knew it. He completely cooperated with the flight attendant and everyone agrees he was open, honest, answered every question and behaved completely respectfully to all. That was grossly unfair to call the kid that. That resulted in the kid and his sister being taken off the plane in handcuffs which to my mind was unconscionable.

    At the least, US Air and in particular that flight crew, needs to apologize for their actions and untruths.

    Just my opinion, but I’m sticking to it.

  • http://www.tripso.com/author/leocha Charlie Leocha

    This entire incident was caused by ignorance or a religions ritual. I started my story with reference to just such ignorance on my part. @em Hoop confessed her ignorance. If ignorance makes either of us anti-Semitic, so be it. Expressing our ignorance is not anti-Semitic, just ignorant.

  • http://www.tripso.com/author/leocha Charlie Leocha

    This entire incident was caused by ignorance or a religions ritual. I started my story with reference to just such ignorance on my part. @em Hoop confessed her ignorance. If ignorance makes either of us anti-Semetic, so be it. Expressing our ignorance is not anit-Semetic, just ignorant.

  • Scott

    Perhaps you have to be part of an oppressed minority group because you simply don’t seem to get it.

    You keep attempting to defend someone else’s comments, this time by comparing hers to yours. You explained what you were ignorant about as a way of bringing exposure to others who might have shared a lack of information or understanding. She ridiculed and belittled someone and something she did not understand. Her ignorance did not make her anti-Semitic. Her poor choice of comments was exactly that. It may have been unintended, but it was *really* thoughtless and inappropriate. We all make mistakes and speak too quickly at times, and I have no idea if this was the case here or something worse. But why would someone ever express remorse when you keep attempting to defend it? Stop trying to use other perfectly fine comments as a way of justifying inappropriate ones.

  • Enrique

    I have to agree with Scott. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being ignorant if you know you are (a la Socrates) and strive to improve. The comment in question is:
    “And how come he was flying, anyway? Maybe airplanes ought to be too modern for him to truck with under his religious rules?”

    There’s absolutely no excuse for saying something like that. If maybe we shouldn’t be on a plane, then heck, maybe even a bus is too modern for us. Maybe we should forgo electricity altogether, since we’re not supposed to benefit from it one day a week. Maybe they shouldn’t let us mix in with the rest of the population, since we’re all that different. See where this is leading?

  • Frank

    That being said, describing the tefillin as having wires is ridiculous on its face. She went up to the kid and asked for an explanation while they were in flight. If she couldn’t tell wire from leather then she was blind and unqualified to be a flight attendant.
    ====================================================

    I understand where you’re coming from, Ned. In training, we’re shown the components that make up a bomb. HER JUDGEMENT CALL was more affected by the recent events in the news. The attempted SUICIDE BOMBING on the Delta flight. On Express flights, there is usually only ONE flight attendant. She had no one else to evaluate the situation. She, of course, immediately notified the cockpit. And, they cant come out of the cockpit anymore.

  • Enrique

    I just read an interview with the subject of this story. The whole interview is at http://www.newvoices.org/community?id=0022, but I thought the following quote was telling:
    “Some people think I showed poor judgment, that I expected [the flight attendant] to be familiar with the ritual of tefillin, which is not true. I expected her not to think that anything that was not familiar to her was a bomb.”

  • Hapgood

    The Important Lesson here seems to be that the Global War On Terror has unleashed a pernicious pandemic of ignorance and fear that is at least as dangerous as terrorism. Ignorance and fear (along with a large dose of incompetence) has dominated the government’s response to terrorist threats (e.g., the TSA), but it’s certainly not confined to government.

    And worse, it seems to encourage lying and misplaced blame to excuse the any ignorant and fearful over-reaction. In this case, the boy with the tefillin was clearly the cause of the costly reaction. He did “something wrong.” So it’s presumably acceptable to falsely brand him “disruptive and unruly” even if he actually wasn’t. That deflects any criticism of the “heroes” who reacted quickly and bravely to the alert, even if it turns out to be an unnecessary over-reaction. We want to encourage “vigilance” and “heroism” after all.

    It too often seems that our own ignorant and fearful reaction to the threat is inflicting more harm than the terrorists. It’s like those viral infections where it’s not the virus that kills the patient but the immune system, which damages vital organs in the indiscriminate (and ineffective) panic to go after the virus.

    I know that it’s always better to be vigilant than complacent. And the flight attendant who heroically sets off a terror alert is still a hero even if the alert was merely an ignorant and fearful reaction to something “unfamiliar.” Vigilance is good, but it needs to be combined with some intelligence. Otherwise the American body politic will end up destroyed from within, by mindless fear and panic that if anything gets in the way of effective protection from terrorists.

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