or you may cause goyim to think you've got a bomb in those small boxes. Pretty remarkable story, makes me think of the novels of Chaim Potok that had a lasting imprint on me in high school:
On Thursday, a flight from La Guardia was diverted after a bomb scare. One of the passengers, a Jewish teenager, was doing his morning prayers and it alarmed the flight attendant. Not because of the prayers, per se, but because of the tefillin he was using. Based on passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy, Orthodox Jews use two small square boxes with straps attached to them and place on on the head and tie the other to the arm. Inside the boxes are parchment with Scripture.Like Cathy Grossman at USA Today, I think this is a good example of the need for religious literacy than this unfortunate incident.
I found the New York Times piece about this story fascinating. The article is incredibly sympathetic to the flight attendants and pilot who decided to ground the plane.
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