I was waiting in line to board a flight to Johannesburg, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find an average-looking man smiling at me.
“I think I know a shortcut,” he said. “Follow me.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “I’m from the tribe, too.”
I knew we wouldn’t have much opportunity to speak in the few minutes we had before we’d board, but when he pulled out his boarding pass, I saw his seat was right next to mine.
It was a long flight, and we spent the first few hours chatting comfortably. He told me his grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. Her bitter experience made her want to forget she was a Jew, to spare her family from the horrors she went through. She kept her heritage a secret for many years. Even after the family found out, they had no interest in learning anything more about their Yiddishkeit.
We both dozed off. When I woke up a few hours later, sunlight was streaming through the airplane’s windows. I washed my hands and went to the back of the plane to daven. As I wrapped up my tefillin, I debated whether I should bring them to my seatmate. From what he’d told me, he wasn’t interested in anything Jewish. But how could I not even offer? I figured it was worth a try. To my surprise and delight, he agreed, and accompanied me to the back of the plane.
“The Shema prayer we recite is the same one said by thousands of Jews as they were marched to the gas chambers,” I told him as I wrapped the straps around his arm. “It’s the quintessential statement of unbounded belief in G-d – a faith that has sustained us for millennia.”
As he repeated each word of Shema after me, he broke down in tears that even he couldn’t explain.
“This is so unlike me,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t even say kaddish at my mother’s funeral! We must be closer to G-d, up here in the clouds.”
*Names changed to protect privacy
