New York – 17 Year old, MTA Yeshiva University High School for Boys student, Calev Liebowitz who was taken off a Kentucky bound plane and put in handcuffs for wearing Tefillin during the flight and his 16 year old sister also handcuffed by Federal agents will share the details of their ordeal on TALKLINE WITH ZEV BRENNER, tonight Motzi Shabbas January 24th at 12:00 AM midnight on WMCA 570 AM and online at talklinecommunications.com
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The teenagers parents, Glen and Amy Liebowitz, in a Talkline exclusive, will speak for the record on their reactions to have their children cuffed on the recent flight of their children to visit their Grandmother
The interview was arranged with the help of VIN News.
**UPDATE** Sunday Jan 24 8:30 AM
Replay of the show click here
Cool! Keep it up VIN!
Sorry, but I don’t think its a good idea to make a “hero” out of this kid who exercised such poor common sense by putting on teffillin on the plane. Even a teenage would or should know that it would be somthing certain to raise concerns and alarm among passengers who have no idea what teffilin are at this time when everyone is so alert to strange actions on airplanes.
The kid only did it because the flight was out of laguardia not some thrid world country. get with the program.
These kids were handcuffed and the girl was yelled at to get down on her knees while she was crying and scared and handcuffed and the airlines didn’t appologize!
what about puttig on tefillin around women on planes who are not dressed k’halacha? Yotza sechoro behefsedo.
thousands of jews put on tefillin in plane every year.
its a misunderstanding and tsa and fbi and airline should apologize to this kid who was probably quite freaked out by the experience.
16 yr old frum girl to be put in cuffs?
why were either of them cuffed?
fbi and tsa major schkutzim
From this story you could see again how there is NO COMMUNICATION within the agency’s as if they would have communicate tsa & fbi & … someone would for sure know what these boxs are and they still claim there providing us safety
Get a lawyer and sue. Next time opening up a book could and should arose suspicion. I am sure it is not the first person putting on TAFFILIN on this airline. To cuff them was ridiculous.
yeah dont bother profiling the bhaymos that need to be profiled since they are the ones to do the damage but hound on a 17yo putting on tfilin.
maybe he was running late and had no time to put on teffilin before the flight you dont know what happened so dont judge him
There is something funny about this story. New York is the greatest kibbutz of frum yidden in the world. On any day probably more frum yidden go through La Guardia and JFK than any other airport in the world, including Tel Aviv. It is inconceivable that there weren’t at least 10 people and one crew member on board who knew what teffilin are. I suggest we wait a bit until we have more details before passing judgement. What do the TSA, the FBI and the actual crew members concerned say?
The pilots of these aircraft are just out of school versus the pilots who fly internationally have seen Jewish men put on tefilin.
Flying on an airliner today is not the same as before 9/11 everyone knows that. To be ignorant and start davening while peoples nerves are on edge about what happened a few weeks ago is not being considered towards other people who don’t know about davening and tefilin. Pick a flight that you don’t have to daven on or daven in the airport. Yes 10 or 15 we all davened on planes. When I was a kid you could smoke on a plane too. Times change and when it comes to davening we have to use common sense. We cannot take everything we used to do for granted anymore. Put yourself in other peoples shoes and see how you would react if someone starts doing some voodoo on a plane and you have know idea what he is doing. Most of us in today’s environment would wonder what is going on.
There are Jews living in NY who’ve never heard of tefillin. Not everyone lives in our insular world. How much do you know about Buddism? After what happened on the flight to Detroit, better to be safe than dead
Although I am sorry for the ordeal these kids endured, I am still glad the flight attendants acted first and asked questions later. That is exactly how I want them to act when it comes to safety.
In light of todays atmosphere, perhaps we should rething the prudence of putting on tfillin or airplanes.
The Agudah wants the TSA and Airlines to train all their staff about orthidox jewish practices. I am assuming that the Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, rastifarians and Breslovers would want the same for their practices. Now, when anything suspicious happens, the poor crew member would have to wrack their brains before taking action. That is nuts. It is much easier for us to adapt our behaviour than to upend the whole system.
Besides, if special consideration is given for tfiilin, that all a terrorist has to do is dress like a chusid and bring a pair of tfillin with a bomb seald inside. The straps could be the fuse. As a matter-of-fact Yussuf Khattab would be able to pull this off no problem.
listen to zev’s interview he asked why did they let the boy keep the tefillin for a nother 20-30 minutes until the plane landed. if the tefillin would have been a risk and god forbid they were a bomb by the time the plane would land it would be to late. if she felt the tefillin were dangerous she should have takem them away from the kid and make sure he stays in his seat. so don’t go blaming the kid or adults if tefillin should be used on the planes or not. the flight attendents should be taught some common sense.
I have been rather surprised by all the comments expecting the rest of the world to know what teffilin are. If there are 1 million frum jews in the u.s. and half are males then only .0016 percent (i.e. a tiny fraction) of Americans use teffilin. These are also the people who are least likely to interact often with non-jews (certainly not with their teffilin on) and tend to live in a few select urban areas. It shows some degree of self-centeredness to expect others to know about teffilin. It is also easy to understand how unusual and even scary it might look on an airplane, particularly in this day and age of explosive underwear and other potentially dangerous contraptions. While its terrible that these teens had such an awful experience, we need to step out of our shells and look at this from the perspective of others. Lots of those would be suicide bombers are young, religious males and we can’t expect the rest of the world to be able to distinguish between a muslin suicide bomber praying before trying to blow up a plane, and a jewish youth putting on teffilin. Perhaps the lesson to prevent future problems is before donning teffilin on a plane, tell the flight attendant
Well, one things for sure………..the whole world now knows what tfillin are so when the Chabad bachurim will do their mivtzoyim – one of them being Tfillin – they should have an easier time….They won’t have to explain as much.
See every story has a silver lining!!
All kidding aside – it is interesting – with this little tale the world learns how a Jew declares his service to Hashem daily. Ok, we can debate whether he should or should not have done this on the plane – but would the world know about this Mitzvah if he waited? Remember – it is all hashgacha pratis.
In the end of the day I think it was a good thing.
C’mon klal yisroel let’s agree on something – this was not a chillul Hashem and just maybe it was a kidduch Hashem?…….
Personally this kid is an idiot! Times are totally different today. When I was a kid, my Rebbe, taught me the short form for the morning. I have had to use it from time to time when traveling. Why didn’t he get there earlier,, or daven a little later? Where does common sense come into play? I have grown up in small towns, were the gentiles knew nothing about tifillon, let alone tzystits. When I have traveled with a group of people, even with Jewish members, I davened when I got up. Sometimes, 5:30/6:00 am. We had to be on the road by 6:30/7:00 am. But then we didn’t live in a time of terrorism, bombs on planes etc. This flight was not on El Al. Just some common sense, j ust a little goes a long way. The Rabbis in the Yeshiva’s should be teaching theses things to their charges..
lAl!