"Religious beads"

-Everybody's preferred neighbor on a flight is no passenger at all. Failing that, a silent, perfume-free, recently-showered one with slim hips and thighs, who eats nothing with a crunch, crumb or odor during the flight, and graciously moves aside when you wish to get through. Anything that strays from this model elicits eyerolls, so I don't necessarily fault anyone for finding it irritating when someone gets up to pray. Unlike the delay when someone in a wheelchair gets on a bus, or when someone sitting in the window seat on the flight made the mistake of finishing the chicken and has to get up accordingly, whatever disturbance this causes is voluntary, so while all disturbances are disturbances, one caused by prayer - and we're talking about in an enclosed space from which there's no escape - is not the most 'just suck it up' as they go. But! it still falls under the 'just suck it up.' While the question of the day began as a discussion of some flight where everyone thought tefillin=bomb, some commenting on the incident are not so much frightened as irritated by prayer on planes.* Irritated is not frightened. There's a little mumbling in a Semitic language on your flight? Suck it up.

-There are no doubt secular Jews among the irritated, once prayers begin. Visibly Orthodox Jews seem to make some from just about every group uncomfortable (liberal Jews who fear being judged as of a piece with the most pious, non-Jews confused by the whole thing), with the exception of anti-Semites of the old school, who find Jews most threatening when assimilated, that is, when they go around looking like and socializing with non-Jews. It's the Jews without the religious beads they have a problem with.

-On -isms. Is it anti-Semitic not to recognize Jewish prayer garments you've never heard of before? No. Would I want to be dropped into a town where every resident thought tefillin meant prayer beads meant bombs? No.

-The obvious: just as for some, Abercrombie and "The Hills" are normal, and those who've heard of neither come from Mars, for this kid, Orthodox is normal, because someone growing up in a Jewish family or community experiences Judaism not as a minuscule part of the overall population, but as the default. (I'm taking a leap here and assuming the kid is not the child of Episcopalians who converted alone, of his own accord.) So even if on some level he realized that not all would know what he was doing (and he might not have - not all Jews, remember, are geniuses), it's highly unlikely it would have occurred to him that his prayer ritual would appear to anyone as an attempt to blow up a plane. It's not that he thought Jews were just so special that everyone should know everything about the faith, but that he does not see mysterious straps and boxes. Again, just a guess.

-A good amount of the response is in the form of evoking a theoretical Muslim 17-year-old at prayer, who, on his theoretical flight, has caused a great deal of theoretical dismay. As with any accusation of theoretical bigotry (see also Caitlin Flanagan's imaginary Mexican), there are some flaws. For one, there was no Muslim 17-year-old. The time to get indignant is when something has actually happened, which does often enough in the world of anti-Muslim prejudice that we don't need to make theoretical accusations. Something actually did happen here, and this victim was a Jew. Oh well.

Then, there's the issue of race. We're to believe that there's sympathy for the kid because he's white, whereas if he'd been a Muslim... Without rehashing the whole are-Jews-white discussion, remember that even if this kid happens to be the least stereotypically-Jewish-looking Jew around (couldn't really tell from a video), if he's sporting a religious-looking hat, say, or praying in a way that's non-Protestant, he looks Muslim or fern to the ignorant. But, geez, plenty of Jews 'look Muslim (or, more accurately, Arab, as the two are conflated in popular imagination)' without this, just as plenty of Muslims 'look Jewish.' Not (just) because these are religions rather than races, but because these are two populations with a whole lot of dark hair and non-Nordic features. The sort of white people with a grievance with Islam not based on perceived radicalism but on brownness aren't too hot on Jews either. (Except while pandering.)

-Craziness is everywhere, but if it's not on a plane, whatever, right? I was recently on the subway when a guy in the car, with a bandanna covering his entire face, kept applying the flame from a lighter to the window. I decided this was a form of etching graffiti and not a prelude to his blowing up the car, because you sort of have to think like this when it's happening right next to you and there's no discreet way to move aside. So in one case, shoes are removed, and everyone has to pay $5 for a post-security bottle of water because you never know. In the other, by all means, let's test that subway's flammability! I get that no one's crashing a subway car into a building, but is there no way the security levels could be slightly evened out?

* Charming: "If I’d been on that plane, I would have been annoyed by his insistence on practicing his silly rites in a public space. If you want everyone around you to understand your vodoo, then you should move to Israel."

Get thee to Comparative Religions 101: "why does anyone need a box on your head or arm, or for that matter, a string of rosary beads, or have to point in a certain direction in order to pray? seems to me god doesn’t care when or how someone prays, or whether you’re accessorized or not."

Let's bring that class roster up to two: "Part of my religion says that I can carry around long red tubes with strings hangin out of them which, unfortunately, resemble TNT. Am I OK to board now? Can I bring on my sacrificial animals, as well? It’s time to keep the kooks off the aircraft."

Guess they're not removing any comments: "White Jews, and ergo most of the NYT staff, DO believe that they’re superior to the rest of us and superior especially to Muslims."