This disturbing video was shot in the Ben Gurion Airport synagogue, apparently on Sunday night or Monday morning. I first saw it on Facebook last night when the holiday ended.
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
To me, the question is why the airport synagogue was open at all on a day when it was clear that there were not going to be any Orthodox Jews passing through. Chabad is in charge of the synagogue, and someone ought to make sure that they see this video if they have not already.
According to the Facebook post, the Muslims in the video are Turkish and wandered into the synagogue by 'accident.' There are several night flights to Istanbul from Ben Gurion on Turkish Airlines....
Still, this is disgraceful.
To be clear, I am not able to watch the video from my current location, so maybe I'm missing some context. However:
ReplyDelete1) I don't see any reason to be upset at the thought of monotheistic Muslims praying in a Beit Knesset, so long as they treat the space respectfully.
2) That they used our tallitot as prayer rugs is very disrespectful, but did these Muslims have any clue that we would consider it so? I imagine they don't know much of anything about Judaism or its norms, and have no context for understanding what a tallit is or what its significance is to us. Maybe they even thought they were meant as prayer rugs! The WASPs think our tallis katans are bed sheets with a hole, apparently, so why can't Turks get honestly confused?