Whew.

Submitted by Yaakov Watkins (United States), Jan 10, 2007 at 19:06

Your first paragraph does not seem to be relevant to anything.

Certain people thought EL AL was doing something immoral. They protested. Do you think they shouldn't have spoken up?

Do you really believe that refusing to do business with a company engaged in immoral practices is wrong? Or do you reserve for yourself the right to determine for the rest of the world what constitutes morality?

I dress in a way that people recognize me as an Orthodox Jew. I get more negative comments from anti-religious Jews than I do from Christians or atheists. My work involves frequent interface with goyim regarding Jewish religious needs. So I see a lot of them. And with literally 2 exceptions over 14 years, they have all been supportive, polite, and have bent rules in my favor. And those exceptions were polite and respectful. We just disagreed.

Your characterization of my beliefs is simply inaccurate. I am maintaining that there is a covenant, a contract between G-d and the Jewish people as a group. The contract requires certain behavior of our nation and certain behavior of G-d. Do you disagree? If you do, then that would explain your issues.

Now you must agree that, traditionally, Jews have believed that we have a special covenant with G-d. Do you think something changed?

What don't I understand?

I do want to close with a story.

An El Al flight had landed in Tel Aviv in the middle of December. The captain said over the PA system: "Thank you for flying EL Al, please remain seated until the plane comes to a complete stop and the seat belt sign is off. The time is 3:30 in the afternoon. For those of you seated we wish you a Merry Christmas and hope that your stay in Israel is pleasant. For those of you who are standing in the aisles in complete defiance of my orders and common sense, Happy Hanuka and welcome home."

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