Plane Musings During the Ten and a Half Hour Flight

Entry 4: Sunday June 21st, 3:30pm EST
PLANE MUSINGS DURING THE TEN AND A HALF HOUR FLIGHT TO ISRAEL

3:30 EST
The plane took off an hour late. Going through security was so insane. It was packed and intense and everyone’s desire to get on the plane was super strong. I got to my gate at 2:15pm and the plane was scheduled to depart at 2:30pm.

3:45pm EST
As soon as the fasten seatbelt sign went off, the aisles were flooded with men sporting peyote (the long ringlets that fall from the base of the temple), and they all were rushing towards me. (I am located fourth row from the back of this 500+ person plane). I thought, “Great, just when I was about to go to the bathroom.”
It turns out that the men weren’t rushing to the back of the plane to use the restroom, but rather were rushing to the back in order to doven (pray). They congregated in what I’ll call the back crossover “corridor,” which connects the two aisles. Instead of facing Jerusalem, which I suppose would be the front of the plane, they faced the emergency exit door—the pack was maybe 30 or so people deep.
As I headed towards the bathroom, a man emerged from the crossover corridor, took a few shuffling steps and then bowed, in my direction and then away, right as I opened the bathroom door. I realized that I , an American 20 something woman, dressed in madras shorts and a denim jacket, was about to use the bathroom, to pee, actually, a foot a way from an orthodox man, dressed in the traditional black and white garb, who was in the middle of reciting the most Holy prayer of all, the Shema. What a culture “clash,” but in the greatest possible way! Our respective cultures intersected, in the clouds, over the Atlantic, between NYC and Jerusalem. As I relieved myself, and I heard the man’s prayer above the plane’s motor, I thought, “We (the man and I) are One, for we are of One source, returning to the source (Eretz Yisrael), each honoring our own, individual yet equally impassioned reasons for journeying to this land of our beginnings.”
When I emerged from the bathroom, though, the poetic aura had evaporated somewhat and I viewed our encounter not as a “clash,” or of an “intersection” but, I guess, but a kind of unsentimental co-existence.
****
Let me share: the aisles are narr-ow!
I wonder: How do these men feel when they have to brush up against women in order to maneuver through these unbelievably narrow aisles? It is clear that the need to get a suitcase from the upper compartment trumps (again and again) the need to honor shomer negiya (the rule that observant men and women do not touch the opposite sex, except for spouse and family). Clearly the necessity of plane travel to Israel overrides these wacky physical negotiations, this reinterpretation of the game “twister.”
***
There is an orthodox man (it may be two men, I can’t tell because due to their dress and my haze of exhaustion, they look identical) who seems to have taken a billion carry-on bags and has put them all in the compartment above me, and this upper compartment is like a clown car for his luggage—more and more bags just keep coming out with no end in sight. To get at his luggage, he is forced to stand up against my aisle seat; his pelvis is the same level as my face, his crotch is the level of my eyes. I remain in profile, eyes straight ahead as he arranges and rearranges and takes down and returns, zipping and unzipping and zipping his numerous bags. It’s all about doing the best you can, and adapting within the given circumstances, I guess.
***
It’s really special to be surrounded by all Jews. I’ve never been in an environment of all Jews, for an extended period of time, in my whole life…definitely my adult life. The 40 Birthright participants who I met during our five hour long wait—all Jews. The gigantic plane, full of Jews! 500 of us aboard! There is a palpable energy to this group that I’m not sure how to describe: Bustling energy. An energy that’s both robust and focused. And for me, there is such a sense of safety. I feel really safe—the safest maybe I’ve ever felt when in an environment that’s new and I know no one.
***
I’m looking at the reflection of my name tag in my personal movie screen—it reminds me of the reflection of the moon in the windows on the streets of the Upper West Side as I sailed into NYC without traffic at 3 in the morning earlier today. It was like the moon was accompanying me on my journey—a playful compass, darting from window to window; guiding the bus, and me, onwards to Israel.
***
9:30pm EST / 4:30am Israel
After eating a 5pm EST Kosher dinner of chicken and rice and warm pita bread and Sabra humus (which after seeing the movie Zohan I view in a totally different way—a bean dip with such versatility! I’ll report back regarding whether Israeli’s do indeed dip chocolate bars into the pureed chickpeas and if they stir it into their coffee.)
So after a plane meal that exceeded my expectations, and after a two hour nap, with my denim jacket wrapped around my head in order to block out light and sound, I remove my denim turban mask and peer out. One of my Birthright compatriots, who I just met hours before, stands over me, chatting to the guys in the row in front. He looks my way and with a smile and a charming French accent says, “Wow, you don’t really look too fresh.” “I don’t feel too fresh,” I reply, and decide after packing for a three month trip, moving all my belongings out of my apartment and into “storage” in my Sharon bedroom, taking a 5 hour bus ride to NYC in the wee hours of the morning, sleeping for a total of 70 minutes at my Aunt’s after a chit chat and cup of tea, getting dressed and heading to the airport for a 9am call when the plane doesn’t leave until 2:30pm, and then waiting and waiting and waiting some more, and then going through check-in, and then security, and then boarding a plane and then sitting for five hours straight, breathing in re-circulated air, I wonder who would be fresh, especially after doing all of my crazy packing and moving and transport in the course of 36 hours, 8:30am Saturday to 8:30pm Sunday. No mint julep here. Just a stiff, disoriented, dry mouthed, slightly stinky skunk cabbage.
So I get up and move.
Which for me, is a form of prayer.
Like dovening, it shifts my energy. It takes me from a small, place to a larger one, from a place of diffusion, to one of cohesion and groundedness. Movement, like prayer, uplifts me, especially on the glorious occasions when I dance and enter into the zone. (When the Hassidim doven they refer to this transcendental experience as “running”). Since movement, for me can be a form of prayer, it isn’t surprising that to recalibrate my Self (physical, emotional, etc.) I gravitate towards the back of the plane, where there was reasonable space, and entered into the crossover “corridor,” which I’ll rename the dovening passageway. This short and narrow hallway, 2ft by 8ft, is where many of the Orthodox men congregated for afternoon prayer. And here I congregate too, a congregation of one, to move and stretch and reconnect. (See pictures!)
Some of my favorite discoveries:
The limitations of the space provides an ideal venue to do laterals, which is a fundamental movement in modern dance typical of the Horton Technique. With arms raised, standing in turned-out second position, one bends or “breaks” at the waist, in one, board-like piece, moving laterally side, until one is parallel to the floor, then one returns to the neutral, upright position. My dance teacher, Micki Taylor-Pinney, would ask us, her dance students, to imagine that we were doing this movement between two plates of glass—and now on El Al, flight number Y0022, I found the perfect tool, the perfect space to enhance and facilitate laterals. As Motel, the bumbling tailor in “Fiddler on the Roof” would say, “The two [laterals and the dovening passageway] are a match made in heaven.” I also discovered how much fun it was to fold up, kind of like a lawn chair, letting the two walls support me. (See picture!)

Amazing how transmutable creative space like that can be—it can house 7 Jews shoulder to shoulder (shuckeling aka rocking) back and forth as they doven in the afternoon, and it can house me as I do my own form of shuckling. The Hassidic men bend at the hips in a forward/backward longitudinal motion. I, too, bend at the hips and “rocked,” but from side to side in a lateral fashion. All this in a 2 x 8ft thoroughfare which in essence connects the two sides: the right aisle of the plane to the left. And what does prayer and movement do but connect this world to another, the individual soul to G-d, the individual Self to community. I wonder how a dance would “read” in a space like this, performed by 2-4 dancers. Perhaps this could open my evening length performance. We begin shuckling in this passageway and it builds into full modern dance, all the while dancing to the prayers of a Mincha service, or maybe it is a Shaharit service, I can’t really tell since time is different when flying across time zones. And it can end with the airplane announcement that we have landed successfully. (See mp3 recording!)