A plea to allow some ultra-Orthodox Jews to fly inside body bags -- to avoid becoming ritually "unclean" when traveling over a Jewish cemetery -- was rejected by Israel's El Al airline, which sometimes takes off over a cemetery in Tel Aviv. "When El Al's security chief heard about it, he called me in alarm...and said it was unsafe. I said that if it is unsafe, I am dropping the idea entirely," El Al company rabbi Avshalom Katzir said. Under ritual law, Jews descended from the biblical Israelite priests must not enter cemeteries. A recent ruling by a prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi expanded the ban to include overflights. An ultra-Orthodox travel agent said some members of the priestly caste had found a way around the problem -- they took late-night flights that for noise pollution reasons are routed away from the suburb of where the cemetery is located.
Body Bags Bagged
A plea to allow some ultra-Orthodox Jews to fly inside body bags -- to avoid becoming ritually "unclean" when traveling over a Jewish cemetery -- was rejected by Israel's El Al airline, which sometimes takes off over a cemetery in Tel Aviv. "When El Al's security chief heard about it, he called me in alarm...and said it was unsafe. I said that if it is unsafe, I am dropping the idea entirely," El Al company rabbi Avshalom Katzir said. Under ritual law, Jews descended from the biblical Israelite priests must not enter cemeteries. A recent ruling by a prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi expanded the ban to include overflights. An ultra-Orthodox travel agent said some members of the priestly caste had found a way around the problem -- they took late-night flights that for noise pollution reasons are routed away from the suburb of where the cemetery is located.
