Navigate to News section

Come Fly the Tefilin-Friendly Skies

El Al won’t confuse davening and bombing

by
Marc Tracy
January 28, 2010
(Museum of Flight)
(Museum of Flight)

Are you worried that your daily prayer, including your wrapping yourself in tefillin, will end up grounding your plane and placing you in handcuffs and on the nightly news? Then have we got an airline for you! El Al, Israel’s national airline, has responded to last week’s tefilin-related airplane debacle (in which a flight was grounded in Philadelphia after an attendant thought tefilin was an explosive device) with a witty, fun advertising campaign: “Fly with us! Our cabin crew will know how to ‘defuse’ them …” reads a poster.

(Okay, okay, there’s a chance that it’s not actually a legit El Al ad. But it should be!)

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.