boxes known as tefillin with the assistance of
Rabbi Eli Silberstein.
But weeks after that incident, a similar case – this time of a super-vigilant passerby sounding an alarm among U.S. border officials – led to the detaining of a rabbi and his Jewish driver as they tried to return to New York from Canada.
It was just before sunset when Rabbi Eli Silberstein, director of the Roitman Chabad-Lubavitch Center serving Cornell University in Ithaca, suggested, as he had done time and time before, that his driver, Ken Kaplan, don tefillin while it was still daytime. The two men, who were heading to Montreal, stopped at a gas station in Watertown just before crossing the border.
“He likes me to put on tefillin, because I drive him all over the place,” said Kaplan, who has driven Silberstein for four years. Besides for the religious requirement, “it’s good luck.”
Another Tefillin Scare Arouses Suspicions of Border Officials
boxes known as tefillin with the assistance of
Rabbi Eli Silberstein.
When a plane made an emergency landing back in January after a teenage boy donned the black Jewish prayer boxes known as tefillin, people across North America treated it as something of a humorous oddity.
But weeks after that incident, a similar case – this time of a super-vigilant passerby sounding an alarm among U.S. border officials – led to the detaining of a rabbi and his Jewish driver as they tried to return to New York from Canada.
It was just before sunset when Rabbi Eli Silberstein, director of the Roitman Chabad-Lubavitch Center serving Cornell University in Ithaca, suggested, as he had done time and time before, that his driver, Ken Kaplan, don tefillin while it was still daytime. The two men, who were heading to Montreal, stopped at a gas station in Watertown just before crossing the border.
“He likes me to put on tefillin, because I drive him all over the place,” said Kaplan, who has driven Silberstein for four years. Besides for the religious requirement, “it’s good luck.”
The pair got out, Kaplan popped the truck, and soon the rabbi was helping the driver wrap one of the box’s leather straps around his arm.
No sooner had they finished, that a person approached the car.
“It was right after I put the tefillin back in the trunk that someone came up to us and said, ‘You can’t leave now, I need to talk to you,’ ” recalled Silberstein. “He was so suspicious of what we had been doing that he took our license plate number.”
They tried to explain and Kaplan drove off. At the border, Canadian officials inspected the car and, finding nothing suspicious, waved them through.
“When we got to Montreal, I got a call from my wife saying that the police in Watertown were searching for us, and that we were under suspicion for trafficking babies across the border,” said Kaplan. “The guy in the gas station saw us standing over the trunk with the straps and assumed that we were doing something criminal.”
On their return, Kaplan and Silberstein were held up for hours as more than a dozen officers combed through the vehicle.
They managed to keep their sense of humor about it.
“I was so annoyed to be detained like that, we were there until 3:00 in the morning,” said Kaplan. “But it was funny. I was laughing during the whole thing. I guess life can’t be boring.”
Milhouse
Babies?! Where did the idiot come up with that idea from?
mm
come on thay now that it is no horm
hahaha
this is frikin hilarious
Milhouse -- Take off the blinders!!
B“H
Oh, come on Milhouse:
You know all of the blood libel stories (and the timing, this close to Pesach, is about ”right” for such frightful hijinks by these goyishe ignoramuses)!
Do you really think that, just because we aren’t in Europe or Russia, this kind of treatment of Yidden is a thing of the past???
The G-dless go after the G-d-fearing
Some American goyim in Haiti just got in trouble with the goyishe authorities, for trying to get Haitian orphans (R“L) out to the US to be adopted.
You know they can’t pick on goyim without trying to ”balance it out” by picking on some Yidden, too.
More free publicity for Mivtza Tefillin
This is the best free publicity — for the mitzvah of putting on tefillin — that we could have ever gotten. Baruch Hashem that Rabbi Silberstein and Reb’Ken were merely inconvenienced, and not anything worse.
Thank you for the mesiras nefesh!
B”H
The mesiras nefesh of the shluchim, and their community helpers (and families — think of Rabbi Silberstein’s worried wife!), always takes on new forms. I am truly inspired by them.
Tefillen
I think it is crazy that people don’t know what tefillen are and that they can mistake them for being dangerous. We live in the 21st century not the dark ages, I thought people were more educated than that.
AsherMo
As a former Cornellian, go Rabbi Eli!
CN
Rabbi Eli (and his wife) were just honored as “parents of the year” (see your Jan. 12, 2010 article) at his daughters’ school in Monsey.