Shir Hamaylesn (A Song of Ascents)

Departure was delayed by over an hour and the passengers were, to put it lightly, getting a little restless.

On my left was a group of middle-aged Russian couples, the men outfitted in identical polyester tracksuits, the women bedecked with large haircuts and plastic press-on nails. Here and there, the odd piece of gold jewelry hung from their necks, usually in the form of a mogen dovid necklace. As soon as the doors to the airplane closed, they sprung from their seats and turned the aisle into their living room. Nonchalantly, they grabbed drinks from the plane’s tiny kitchen as though the bottles were their own and began the loud conversations that would continue uninterrupted for the next eight hours.

On the right side of the plane stood a crowd of Hasidim, ostensibly on pilgrimage to the gravesites of central Europe’s greatest tsadikim. As though they were the funhouse mirror reflection of my left-hand neighbors, they murmured amongst themselves in an austere, secretive mame-loshn. For their food and drink they reached continually into the overhead compartment, retrieving shrink-wrapped meals dotted with a constellation of stars, OU’s and K’s.

And right behind me, climbing over the heads of passengers in the middle three rows, was a cadre of Israeli pre-teens whose wild acrobatics caused permanent damage to many a personal flotation device.

The proud Magyar stewardesses tried desperately to keep their patrons under control. But this flight was no longer Malev Hungarian’s daily sojourn from JFK to Budapest—no, sir. With connections to Moscow and Tel Aviv, this flight had clientele that was at least 85% percent Jewish... Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this was the Flying Shtetl, a proud, unruly airborne microcosm of modern Jewry.