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“What Are You Doing to My Brother?”
In October of 2007, my mother (AY) became ill and was hospitalized. I dropped everything and flew home, taking Lufthansa through Frankfurt to Tel Aviv.
The connecting flight was a packed 747, overwhelmingly filled with Jewish passengers headed to Israel.
I had specifically requested an aisle seat. But when I reached my row, I found an elderly Jewish woman sitting in it. Beside her was a very religious-looking man in his seventies.
As I started toward my seat, he immediately stood up.
“No! No!”
I understood what was happening. From what I knew of Orthodox Jewish religious practice, I figured he was uncomfortable with an unrelated man sitting beside his wife.
And being a Muslim, I understood the concern.
So rather than make an issue of it, I offered to take the window seat and let him sit in the middle—a “buffer” between his wife and me.
Problem solved.
Or so I thought.
Once we were seated, he began speaking to me in broken English.
“What is your name?”
“Where are you going?”
“Jerusalem,” I told him. “Palestine. The city of my birth.”
He looked at me.
Then, to my absolute surprise, this man who had been struggling with English answered me in perfect Arabic:
“I too was born in Al-Quds.”
And just like that, everything changed.
As we talked, I learned that he had emigrated to Australia in the late 1960s and was a chief rabbi there.
I told him why I was traveling—that my mother was sick and hospitalized and I was rushing home to see her.
He promised me that he would pray for her throughout the flight and again as soon as his feet touched Jerusalem.
A Muslim Palestinian and an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, both born in Jerusalem, sitting together on a 747 somewhere between Frankfurt and the city we both called home.
But our seating adventure wasn't over.
As more passengers boarded, an Orthodox Jewish family arrived. The mother and children were seated directly in front of us. The father's assigned seat, unfortunately, was the window seat I was now occupying.
And he wanted it.
He made a fuss and refused to sit elsewhere because he wanted to remain near his family. Even the rabbi's pleas couldn't persuade him. Eventually he called the flight crew and demanded his assigned seat.
The rabbi and his wife were visibly distraught.
So I stood up.
“Find me another seat,” I told the flight crew. “Anywhere. Let them stay together.”
Eventually they found one.
As I prepared to leave, the rabbi stood.
I extended my hand to shake his goodbye.
Instead, he took my hand—
and kissed it.
Then he kissed it again.
And he hugged me.
In Arabic, he said:
“Thank you, my dear brother.”
The cabin seemed to go silent.
Here was an elderly Orthodox rabbi, aboard a plane filled largely with Jewish passengers headed to Israel, publicly kissing the hand of a Palestinian Muslim and calling him brother.
You could hear a pin drop.
I thought that was the end of our story.
It wasn't.
When we landed at Ben Gurion Airport, I encountered something much more familiar to me: I was pulled aside and being led away for “further questioning.”
Normally, that could mean four or five hours of security questioning for me.
Then suddenly, the rabbi appeared.
He hurried toward us, took my hand again and kissed it.
Then he confronted the security personnel:
“What are you doing to my BROTHER?”
Apparently, having a chief rabbi vouch for you carries some weight.
They let me go.
It remains one of the few times I can remember passing through Ben Gurion without spending hours being questioned.
And there is one detail that matters.
In Palestinian and Arab culture, kissing someone's hand is among the deepest gestures of respect. This rabbi didn't know whether I needed his respect. He didn't know whether anyone around us would understand what that gesture meant to me.
But he did it anyway.
Twice on the airplane.
And once more when I needed someone to stand beside me.
Nearly twenty years later, I don't remember his politics. I don't remember everything we discussed on that long flight.
But I remember his Arabic.
I remember his prayers for my sick mother.
I remember his lips touching my hand.
And above everything else, I remember one word:
“Brother.”
Sometimes humanity doesn't announce itself with speeches, flags or slogans.
Sometimes it finds you at 35,000 feet, in the person you were supposed to see as the “other,” and quietly reminds you that we were brothers all along.
~ Mike Odetalla (Seems like a lifetime ago)