Thoughts on flying back to Israel after another brief visit to the US

Flight 90 from Newark, NJ to Tel Aviv must be the punishment that Continental Airlines metes out to flight crew who commit heinous professional crimes. Accidentally open the exit door in mid-flight, resulting in fifteen passengers getting sucked out into the atmosphere?  Under-cook the first class coq au vin, resulting in a salmonella outbreak on board?  Join the "mile-high club"... with a passenger... in the cockpit?  It's the Tel Aviv route for you, mate.  And then you can imagine the screams of protest: "No, no, anything but that!  Don't make me go back there!  Please forgive me!  Dock my pay, demote me, put me in baggage reclaim... Anything but the Tel Aviv route!!"

Yes, the Tel Aviv route must be the short straw in flight crew world.  It is a bizarre world on board.  It's different from El Al: the moment you get on board an El Al plane, you have the feeling that you have entered Israeli sovereign territory.  So you expect all the nonsense and craziness, and it's familiar and reassuring.  On Continental, everything still operates under a non-Jewish framework, but it's weird, it's like the Jews are breaking out of the ghetto and trying to take over the Czar's castle, and there ain't a damn thing that the Czar can do about it.  On my flight back to Israel this past Sunday, one of the stewards was an African-American guy with dreadlocks.  He was used to dealing with quiet, normal Americans.  I don't know what he did wrong but he ended up on the Tel Aviv route.  This poor guy spent the entire flight saying "Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.  Please, we can't move the plane until you take your seats.  Ladies and gentlemen, the fasten seat belts sign is on.  Please clear the aisles so that we can start the food service.  Please, I beg of you, take your seats.  We are about to crash, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest you take your seats.  You bloody Jews, why won't you sit down?!!!"

I don't know why Jews won't sit down on planes, but they won't.  Worst offenders are the charedim and their hat boxes.  What is so complicated about a hat box?  They act like it's some piece of delicate technical material that must be kept at a precise angle with no sudden movements.  It takes your average charedi about 17 minutes to get the bloody hat box into the overhead compartment before take off ["please, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot push back from the gate until everyone is seated"].  And then once it's in, they're jumping up and down every five minutes like jack-in-the-boxes to check that the hat box is still ok.  They're all speaking Yiddish, which I don't understand, but my bet is that it would translate as:

"Did you check your hat box?'
"Oh, right, good idea, I checked it 4 minutes ago but I should have another look."
"Yup, it's still there, the angle looks good."
"Hey, nice hat box, where did you get it, can I have a look?"
"Yes, but make sure you take it down carefully."
"What is that schvartzer with the dreadlocks saying?  He keeps waving his finger at me."
"He is probably reminding you to check your hat box."
"He's right, I should check it."

I could go on.

On this last flight, there was one point when they were trying to serve dinner, and they'd been pleading for half an hour to get everyone to sit down, and suddenly, as if by a miracle, we hit this really heavy turbulence and everyone sort of scattered back to their seats in fright.  But I know what really happened.  I saw dreadlocks guy on the internal phone first: "Captain, we can't get the damn Jews to sit down.  Any chance you can give things a bit of a shake up there?"

In other news, Melilah is one tomorrow, and is the cutest thing ever.  Her first word was "bruvver" - thank God not "Eshy" or "Vivi" but "bruvver" - already the little diplomat.  She can now also say mayim [water], ball, and "puh" for "kippah".  My mum will be especially proud of that last one.  Eshy slammed his little finger in a door hinge, ripped the nail half off, but he's fine.  Aviv has started speaking Hebrew beautifully; his first word was "zuzi" which means "move!" - interestingly enough, said to a female object, not a male.  The joys of kindergarten.

And other than that we are all doing quite wonderfully in general.

Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate that particular festival!

Toot-toot!

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