Religious expression or feminist trolling
Good morning (or afternoon). I'm back in Israel.
The picture above was on the front page of this morning's Jerusalem Post print edition (Hat Tip:
Leah P).
What does each of the five women in the picture have in common aside from the fact that they all belong to
Women of the
Wall?
The caption says that they are 'teaching' women to put on Tefillin. There's one small problem: Not a single one of them has the Tefillin on correctly.
While I can't really see where the arm Tefillin are, the head Tefillin are supposed to go "in the place where an infant's head beats" according to the Talmud. That means that they should be in the center of the head with the front line of the Tefillin ending at the hairline.
Now look at the picture again.
From Left to Right, women 1, 2 and 5 all have their Tefillin on their foreheads (which was how the Karaite sect wore them). Women 3 and 4 have them off to one side. Yes, of course,
it's the Left side.
Hmmm.
Labels: feminism, radical chic, radical Left, Tefillin, Women of the Wall
As I put on my Tefillin...
From a Facebook post shared by
NR (daughter number 2, child number 4).
No further comments needed.
Labels: Jerusalem, Palestinian terrorism, Tefillin
Time to move to Israel?
Remember that story a couple of weeks ago about the '
offensive' Absorption Ministry ads that tried to
convince Israelis living in the US to move back to Israel? Well, get a load of this:
Now, you meet think this is a parody and the billboard might be (I suspect that it is, because of the blog name at its bottom. But the story actually is true. It happened in Laguna Beach, California.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Tefillin, Yordim
Those funny people with those funny boxes and straps
For the
second time in 15 months, there was panic Sunday on a North American flight as three Jews - gulp -
put on Tefillin in midair.
Pilots on an Alaska Airlines flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles locked down the cockpit and alerted authorities Sunday when a flight crew grew alarmed at the behavior of three men who turned out to be conducting an elaborate orthodox Jewish prayer ritual, officials said.
The men, all Mexican nationals, began the ritual that involves tying leather straps and small wooden boxes to the body, and the crew of Flight 241 alerted the cockpit, airline spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said.
"Shortly after takeoff, a flight attendant saw what she believed was unusual behavior from three passengers on board," Egan said in a statement. "The three passengers were praying aloud in Hebrew and were wearing what appeared to be leather straps on their foreheads and arms."
The cockpit was placed on a security lockdown for the rest of the flight - meaning the door couldn't be opened even for pilots to leave briefly. Normal protocol calls for the cockpit to be locked, but on longer flights the pilots will leave and return from the flight deck.
FBI and customs agents along with police and a full assignment of fire trucks met the plane at the gate at Los Angeles International Airport, and the men were escorted off.
After questioning from the FBI, the men were released without being arrested. They continued in their travel which took them overseas, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told City News Service. Eimiller said she could release no further information because the men were not charged with anything.
Egan said airline officials later learned from law enforcement the men were performing the ritual known as tefillin.
These morons cannot get anything straight, can they?
The ritual isn't called Tefillin - the object is called Tefillin. The boxes aren't made out of wood - they are made out of leather. So are the straps. The ritual is quite simple and not at all elaborate - you put one box on your bicep, wind the straps around your forearm seven times. Then you place the second box in the center of the top front of your head, so that the front of the box coincides with your hairline (or where your hairline used to be if you no longer have one) so that you could draw two straight lines from its end that would be between your eyes. And then you wind the arm one three times around your middle finger and then you wind what is left around the back of your hand.
The boxes have parchments inside with sacred scriptures written on them. Even the morons from TSA don't usually bother to take them out of my carry-on bag anymore. You would think that the flight crews would be at least as smart.
You mean to tell me no Orthodox Jews have ever flown this airline?
Good grief!
P.S. One of my most amazing travel moments was putting on Tefillin in the business class section of a Lufthansa flight from Tel Aviv to Frankurt. The Nazis were rolling over in their graves.
Labels: Tefillin, TSA
Tefillin cause a scare in New Zealand
And here we go
again.
Once
again, we have a scare on public transport because someone has never seen Tefillin. This time it's in
New Zealand.
An Israeli tourist visiting New Zealand caused a minor panic on a New Zealand ferry on Sunday after the captain reported to police that a passenger was carrying a "suspicious article," NZTV reported.
Some media in New Zealand even reported a hostage situation aboard the ferry, even though the passenger was cooperative with police, according to the report.
The man was described as wearing what appeared to be "boxes" with "wires taped" to his body. "One individuals had two boxes attached, one box taped to his leg and one box seemingly taped to his forehead," a transportation services spokesman was quoted as saying in the report.
Jewish websites described the man as having worn his tefillin (phylacteries) on the morning ferry voyage.
He was stopped by police at the ferry's destination after it finished crossing the Cook Strait and was released by the police without being charged.
That's better than what happened the last time. See the links above.
Labels: Cook Strait, ferry, New Zealand, Tefillin
