I Can Be Whatever You Want
New York
I AM WALKING through the cabin of my 757 aircraft, urging passengers to stow their luggage and take their seats as quickly as possible. Occasionally there is a “seat dupe”, a duplication, two passengers assigned the same seat. It’s usually easily resolved- one of the passengers got an upgrade to first class and didn’t know it, or someone sat in the wrong row. Once I had two passengers with the exact same name on their boarding passes-and it wasn’t a common name!
An on time departure is paramount on every flight. Departure times must be reported to the Department of Transportation. Statistics are kept, data is analyzed, admonishments are handed out, blame is assigned, but we never receive praise for a job well done. It’s never good. There is always room for improvement.
I notice a man in his thirties dressed in a yarmulke and a tallit katan- a skullcap and an outer vest-like garment worn by ultra-orthodox Jewish men. He is sitting in the aisle seat in a row with two women who are obviously not from his religious community. He looks extremely uncomfortable.
I size him up. I understand his degree of orthodoxy as evidenced by his clothing. All those years living in Jerusalem taught me to recognize and understand the degrees of religious observance practiced by the orthodox and ultra-orthodox. I know contact between men and women is extremely limited, restricted to close family members. I understand my religious passengers’ beliefs. A man cannot touch or accept something from a strange woman. When I serve a beverage, I place the cup on the tray table rather than offer it for the taking. It doesn’t matter what I think. I want my passengers to feel acknowledged and respected. I want them to feel comfortable for the couple of hours they spend with me.
I address this man in Hebrew, though I know Yiddish is his primary language. Hebrew is the language of the Bible and is not spoken in casual conversation in orthodox communities, but I don’t want his female seatmates to understand me. “Sir,” I begin. “Would you prefer not to sit next to a woman?” Startled, he looks up at me. “They told me it wasn’t possible,” he answers in Hebrew. “Let me try,” I say reassuringly.
This flight is supposed to be completely full but I walk up and down the aisle anyway, scanning for one empty seat. I find one, the only vacant seat on the entire plane. It’s a middle seat in the back row, flanked by two ordinary businessmen. I hurry back to my religious man and tell him I found him a seat if he wants it, a not-so-desirable middle seat, but at least it is between two men. The passenger readily accepts, collects his bag and moves to the seat. He thanks me in Hebrew.
During the beverage service, I make sure I am the flight attendant who serves him. I place his beverage of choice on his tray table and offer him a selection of snacks. I tell him in Hebrew that the pretzels are kosher, but the cookies are not. I show him the hechsher, the seal of rabbinic approval, on the wrapper of the kosher snack. He chooses pretzels.
After the service is concluded, he stands around the back galley and wants to talk to me. I am very surprised by this. Normally, a man from his orthodox community would not talk to me, a strange woman, unless it was absolutely necessary. This guy wants to have an actual conversation! He has probably never spoken to a woman like me and I have certainly never spoken to someone like him.
“How do you know Hebrew?” he asks me, in Hebrew. I smile. I have been asked this question over and over. I don’t fit the mold of someone who speaks Hebrew. I tell him when I was in college I lived in Israel on a work-study program. My major was Middle Eastern studies, I explain, and learning Hebrew or Arabic was a requirement for graduation.
“Are you Jewish?” he asks next. This is the second question I have been asked ten thousand times. I don’t want to discuss my personal beliefs, how my parents took us to church every now and then whenever they felt guilty. I grew up with no religious instruction at all, celebrating holidays in a very secular way. I knew no songs or psalms, had no concept of sin or redemption, didn’t know the difference between first communion, confirmation, confession. We never said grace before meals or kneeled in prayer at bedtime. Bunnies and reindeer populated my childhood.
“I can be whatever you want me to be,” I say vaguely. Now it’s his turn to smile. “It doesn’t matter what I want you to be,” he states. “It’s what YOU want to be.” I look him in the eye and say sincerely, “Yesh li lev yehudi (I have a Jewish heart).” He smiles and nods in understanding.