by Reuvena Leah Grodnitzky – Chabad.org
Ken Kaplan, left, regularly dons the Jewish prayer
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.”