Last time I was in Israel & Palestine with Judy, perhaps 14 years ago, I was accosted by a young man in our hotel in Jerusalem. (The Inbal, I think.). He took me to task for wearing a kippah in "his" home, meaning Israel. He found it offensive, just as seeing a woman walking down the street wearing a bathing suit would offend him. (I trust I don't need to unpack that statement for you.) I was a guest in "his home" and should behave accordingly.

So you already know that this was an Orthodox young man, about 21 or 22. He was American, I imagine from Brooklyn but it really could have been any number of places, and we conducted the whole exchange in English with US accents. I tried explaining why it was important to me. I said this was my home too. I tried pointing out that I was old enough to be his mother; I may have asked if he would have spoken to one of his mother's friends like this. (If I did, he no doubt retorted that his mother's friends would never wear a kippah.). Nothing I said got through to him; he was indignant and outraged and certain he was in the right.

The person who successfully intervened was a young woman of maybe 25 or so, also observant, clear at once from her modest dress and mode of address. "Is this how your Rov (Rabbi) taught you to give mussar (instruction about appropriate behavior)?" she chided him. "To embarrass another Jew in public??" Then, "Who's your Rov?"

That shut him up. Because of course she was right, and she had appealed to two sources of authority with which he could not argue, his rabbi and Jewish teaching. She had also reminded him that his behavior reflected back on his rabbi, and not favorably in this case.

I couldn't have done it. I didn't have the language or the concept, or even the presence of mind to appeal to a Jewish perspective. She did.

Tonight we are flying home on El Al. It's now 8am by the time we embarked from Ben Gurion airport, but only 1am by our NY arrival time. The airplane switches over to destination time pretty quickly; on the way there, breakfast was served before the sun came up (truth to tell, that's the only option on a flight where the rear aisles are going to be clogged with men reciting morning prayers as soon as it gets light--another story for another time). Tonight, the cabin lights remain off, and while many people are waking, many others are still attempting to sleep.

Suddenly a fight breaks out a couple rows ahead of us. A man is yelling at a woman in Israeli-accented English. She is yelling back in what I can only describe as American-Orthodox-Brooklyn-English, by both accent and phrasing; I'm guessing toward the ultra-Orthodox but I'm no philologist in this matter. "I'm trying to sleep and he is always hitting the back of my chair!" Is the gist of his complaint. "He's only a baby, leave him alone!" Is the gist of what she says. He yells at her to move, to take him somewhere else, to switch seats. She yells back at him that she's traveling wth several children, that they were supposed to give her a seat for a baby but they didn't, but she's not complaining. (On El Al the bulkheads are equipped with anchors to hang a small airline-provided bassinet.) The altercation continues for less than a minute but it's very loud. Nobody intervenes as far as I can see or hear; it does not bring the cabin attendants running. Probably it is not unusual on this flight. Families travel back and forth to Israel all the time, and Israelis are not known for keeping their opinions to themselves.

Later, my own wife points out that the woman has a husband who says nothing; nor do they decide to divide the childcare between them so that one of them can, indeed, take the little one elsewhere for a while. That wouldn't have been an unlikely response; I have been very heartened on this trip to see both men and women involved in childcare. Secular Jews, mainstream Orthodox Jews, ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Muslim Arabs (all quickly identifiable by dress and language): I have seen men pushing strollers, men carrying and soothing babies, men chasing after their little girls as they run too far away. In all of these family groups, I've also seen men and women walking together, closely side by side. And I've seen many men pushing strollers by themselves. It surprises me and gives me hope for the future; it suggests that there is movement around gender roles even in very traditional communities. (Early secular socialist kibbutznik Israel was no bastion of equality around childcare, either, so that's an improvement over the past century, too.)

I prefer to think that in this case the woman's husband didn't speak up because there was no need to; she was perfectly capable of holding her own.

Then, as suddenly as it broke out, it quieted down. I do understand how cranky one can get when sleep-deprived; nevertheless, in public one attempts to behave as a grown-up.

And this time, a Jewish textual response come to mind. I wanted to say to him, השתדל להיות איש! "Try to be a man!" It's a quote from Hillel in Pirkey Avot (Chapters of the Fathers), the 3rd-century compilation of great quotations from the rabbis of a couple hundred years. The full sentence says, "In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man." (Pirkey Avot 2:5)

ובִמְקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

Uva-makom sheh-eyn anashim, hishtadel liyot eesh.

It's not really a gender-based comment in the original; Hebrew is an almost completely gendered language, so an equally authentic translation would be "In a place where people aren't acting like decent human beings, try to be a decent human being."

And yet, because it says "man," it would also be a direct rebuke to his behavior as a grown man. But the textual context, if he recognized it, would soften it enough that I thought I could get away with adding a more pointed comment, מי כאן הגבר ומי כאן התנוק? "Who here is the grownup and who here is the baby?"

So who is a /gever/, a grownup? (And because it's Hebrew, specifically a grown man?) One who is a /gibor/, a mighty hero. And what is the best kind of heroic man? One who keeps his temper.

Update: The altercation breaks out again less than an hour from NYC. This time I think she wants him not to lean his chair back. Because she's eating? Because her son is on her lap? He insists "It's my right to lean my chair back!" Which is accurate. Neither grownup is behaving well; she's vociferously accusing him of threatening her, he's just as loudly yelling about her behavior. She's complaining to the cabin attendant, "Did you hear what he said to me?!" It’s not clear to me that he said anything in particular, but most of this I can’t hear.

The cabin attendant in question is a slim and quiet young woman who doesn't lose patience with either of them but isn't overly sympathetic either. Somehow she seems to defuse the situation while remaining somewhat remote. I wonder if this technique was taught in the army.