Op-Ed: Why Did Airplane Passengers Ignore Chabad Woman’s Warning?

Rachel Delia Benaim wrote the following op-ed, which was published in The Forward, explaining why she believes an airplane full of passengers ignored a Chabad woman’s warning that something was wrong with the aircraft:

Have you ever been discriminated against because of how you were dressed? Or how about because of the way you spoke?

Mussie Weinfeld very well might have been.

News reports have surfaced that a 22-year-old Chabad woman may or may not have saved an entire airplane full of people set to fly from Ben Gurion to Moscow when she heard abnormal sounds coming from the wing of the plane during takeoff and insisted that the airline, TransAero, check the mechanics of the plane. Initially she was laughed at by flight attendants and scoffing fellow passengers, but her persistence, the news article claims, got them to check the plane.

The airline’s narrative conflicts with the one reported on Crown Height Info, an unofficial news source for the Chabad Hasidic sect, saying that, in fact, the issue was already being investigated when the Orthodox woman pointed out the noise.

Whether or not the facts of the story as initially reported are correct, we can learn from it some very interesting things about credibility. It’s no secret that the Orthodox Jewish population is often the subject of discrimination. It’s also no secret that, in many parts of the world, women are still taken less seriously than men. Fall into both of those subsets simultaneously — you’re an Orthodox Jew and a woman — and the threshold you have to reach to be deemed credible is immediately raised.

But why is that? Why was Mussie Weinfeld’s concern about the malfunctioning wing initially disregarded? Is it because she looked different? Sounded different? What is the nature of the prejudice against Orthodox Jewish women?

As a Modern Orthodox woman, even though I always tried to be mildly trendy, my elbows, knees, and collarbone were always covered in accordance with Jewish law. Regardless of how cool I looked inside my Orthodox bubble (which, let’s be honest, wasn’t even that cool), in secular settings I always looked oddly out of place.

Click here to continue reading at The Forward.

8 Comments

  • why the big deal?

    why the big deal that she is chabad? so she was jewish-frum even? in all of the jewish websites they all make a big deal that she is chabad.

  • Reality check

    If I was on the airplane, I probably would have thought (hoped) that the girl was a little nuts to claim that there was something wrong with the plane and would have figured that there was something wrong with the girl, frum or not.

    Most of us assume that everything is okay, and that the airline would be responsible not to endanger passengers. Of course that wouldn’t necessarily be a reasonable assumption on a substandard airline like TransAero

  • She should get her facts straight

    As a native Israeli the young lady in question very likely speaks speaks Hebrew fluently.
    The overwhelming majority of Brooklyn orthodox women (and most men) speak English perfectly.
    The writer is, quite frankly, ignorant.

  • Silly article

    Stupid point to this article. It doesn’t take a fluent person in any language to realize something is wrong when one hears abnormal sounds in an airplane.

  • To No 3

    Just for the record, I know the girl and she happens to speak a fluent English!!!

  • Issue is getting tiresome

    I really don’t think one has to do with this other. This whole story from beginning to end is assumption upon assumption upon assumption with not a single fact to prove anything. The air hostesses are trained to calm down excited passengers. What would happen if the air hostesses would have said,
    “Oh you are right, that is a funny noise. There is definitely something wrong with the wing.”
    Can you imagine the panic on board with people all at once clambering over each other to retrieve carry ons from overhead cabins and trying to rush off the plane?
    I think the staff of the plane reacted perfectly without causing panic and alarm.
    Although, my comment is also an assumption, it does have a strain of both common knowledge and sense.