He wouldn’t even look her in the eye.Earlier this month, as reported in The CJN, executive chef Christine Flynn was set to fly home from New York on a Porter Airlines flight. Standing in the aisle next to her was a man, seemingly an ultra- Orthodox Jew given his attire, who refused his assigned seat beside her.
Instead of doing what would commonly be expected in this kind of delicate situation, the haredi man turned to another male passenger and mumbled “move.” In an attempt to ameliorate the situation, a flight attendant asked Flynn if she’d be prepared to change seats. Feeling rightly discriminated against as a woman, she held her ground, refusing the request. In fact, Flynn said that had the man addressed her directly, she might have been more accommodating.
“He could have put in a request. When someone doesn’t look at you, and when someone doesn’t acknowledge you as a person because of your gender, you’re a lot less willing to be accommodating,” Flynn told reporters.
Eventually, a seat was found for the man beside another male traveller, but not before much delay and, for our community, which considers itself modern and accepting, a huge public loss of face.
To be sure, this isn’t the first time such a situation has occurred. El Al deals with this issue regularly, but it hasn’t really reached the public domain, given that for understandable PR reasons, it’s a matter El Al wants to keep “in the family.”
However this sha shtil approach is no longer in vogue. Many passengers are now openly sharing their stories of grief when demands are made that they switch seats due to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men believing that their interpretation of Judaism forbids them to sit beside any woman but their wives. This is especially so on flights between North America and Israel.
Indeed, with social media now the go-to resource for complaints, these faith-based seating disputes have even hatched an online petition demanding that airlines “stop the bullying, intimidation and discrimination against women” on flights.
Clearly, as my grandmother use to say, “this isn’t good for the Jews.”
To the great credit of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ Canadian Rabbinic Caucus, its chair, Rabbi Reuben Poupko, made it very clear that this is not the Jewish way. “From a mainstream Orthodox perspective, there is nothing wrong whatsoever with sitting next to a woman on an airplane,” he wrote in a recent statement on the Porter incident. He went on to explain that “leading Orthodox halachic authorities have long maintained a consensus regarding the permissibility of opposite-sex seatmates.”
Rabbi Poupko did note that there is a very tiny minority within the ultra-Orthodox community who don’t share this view, and he felt there should be a way to reasonably accommodate them.
However, the rabbi also quite rightly explained that “the onus is on a religious passenger to advise flight staff and secure an alternative seating arrangement in conformity with the airline’s procedures.” He emphasized that this should be done in advance and with the “utmost respect to other passengers.”
Good for the Rabbinic Caucus. Yet where does this stand in the pantheon of human rights and discrimination issues?
Sukayan Pillay, general counsel and executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, took on this issue recently in the Globe and Mail. “Personally,” she wrote, “I don’t think that in public or commercial space, the religious beliefs of one person can be used to deny, or relegate (intentionally or not) as inferior, the equality rights of someone else.”
Her point is a good one. She acknowledges that gender segregation in faith institutions, “freely attended by individuals,” can and should be permitted. However, when it comes to public places, the rights of the majority must prevail. Wise words indeed, and words that Jews, of all people, should understand more than most.