I would certainly expect that most of us are well above "(the Kohen's) personal or intellectual level" and that of his rabbi. This is just plain idiotic. How about covering up in the wind when actual material from the cemetery can blow onto him, or even contamination from a mentruating woman or someone equally "unclean?" Sorry, but spiritual "contamination" will not be warded off by a plastic bag.

For the reason explained in the article I respect his action, if it would have been to remain "pure" from women's presence I'd have considered him a nut, but there were real moral motives behind this.

always amazes me that in an effort to emphasize how outstanding a man is the rabbis insist on mentioning army service they themselves wont do

Man in Bag: I was following rabbi's orders - If he told him to jump off a cliff would he ? Haredi passenger photographed wrapped in large plastic bag. The New York Daily News later explained that the man was a Kohen, a descendant of the Jewish priests who presided over the Temple, and as the aircraft flew over a cemetery he covered himself in a plastic bag so he could remain pure. Under Jewish law, Kohanim are banned from going near cemeteries. - Let’s go through the logical flaws in the argument. There are about 6.9 billion people alive today on the planet. Going back 5,773 years (to satisfy the biblical literalists) there has been about 40 billion people who have ever walked on the earth. Let’s say 75% were buried on land, 20% cremated and the others lost at sea. So we have about 5.175 billion grave sites. Say each occupies 2 sq.m. each. 30 billion burial sites x 2 sq.m. each = 60 billion sq.m. = 60,000 sq.kms. i.e. 1:8500 of the total land mass. (Maybe we can get Google to map all the world's cemetries ? Tumah-Free Airlines IPO coming up. Go long plastic bag manufacturers.) So over six millennia the total number of places where people have died, been buried in cemeteries and elsewhere is remarkable. Even if we can say that the burials were concentrated on only 10% of the landmass, you are left with a remarkably large total area. Now, I believe in respecting the dead as much as possible. (When we forget the rights of the dead we are apt to forget about the rights of the living.) But perhaps if were to limit ourselves to places where there was no “Tumah” or impurity we literally wouldn’t be able to walk, drive or fly anywhere. So all Kohanim should live in a sterile box just to make sure. - The issue of where is “impure” is interesting. If we put a poppy on every place on the planet where an act of child sexual abuse, rape, murder, domestic violence, terrorism or war had taken place the view of earth from space would be swathed in blood red. (Some American Colleges have done something similar on their campuses. Also, see “Shadowed Ground - America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy” By Kenneth E. Foote.) So the key is that we need to redeem, i.e. counter-balance the past evil of a place by good actions. This includes the land, sea and air of Planet Earth. (Maybe the role of Kohanim in the currect era should be about them trying to purify or uplift wherever they are on the Planet. i.e. The Light Unto the Nations idea. Flying through the air in a shiny new airplane should be a positive experience. Sharing a space with others can be fun if everyone co-operates. Also, how about the uncomfortability of the passage ? How about breathing etc. ? Rabbi Yosef Brook "I am convinced that none of those who reacted is at (the Kohen's) personal or intellectual level." - Want to bet...

following this line of thinking... wouldn't the plane itself act as a 'container with a lid'? The plastic bag seems to be an unnecessary addition to this stringency.

... if an airplane can't be considered a "container with a lid fastened on it", then I don't know what is! Also, how can you even tell if you'll be flying over a cemetery or not? In fact, how can you NOT fly over a cemetery? I've flown on hundreds of flights with orthodox and ultra-orthodox passengers - both on ElAl and other airlines. It cannot be that NONE of the flights I was on flew any cemeteries, OR that not even ONE of the passengers with me was a Cohen. Why, then, have I never seen this before?

A man wraps himself in a plastic bag on an airplane and the good Rabbi calls the critics "Primitive."

Almost every single flight on a given day flies over a cemetary? This makes no sense whatsoever. Kohanim should be wrapped in plastic on every flight then. How do they know when flying over Europe or anywhere else for that matter at 35,000 feet if they arent flying over a cemetary. Not to mention if one is six feet over the ground and not touching, halachikly it is permissible. IE: if a pregnant woman who is the spouse of a Kohen enters a cemetary they need to be lifted six feet above the ground to enter so as not to defile the fetus of Kohen status.

It backfired, so they make up a story! And it's also racist. I am sure every Zulu "tribesman", such as SA's president, know what a telephone is. And , by the way, it's not the sound waves which travel hundreds of kilometers (they only travel 3-4 cm to the membrane, and back from the transducer), it is an electrical signal which does the way. And since there s no up-and-doen in a space-time continuum, it does not make a difference if I am 8 km in front of, or "above" a cemetery. And it is weird to assume the transparentvplastic bag around you separates you better than the metal of the plane. It remains a primitive, repelling, and utterly senseless action to put oneself into a giant condome. It also a primitive concept of god this person has.

Next time get a large size canning jar get in with the hat and clothes on, prior to it ask someone to pour over you a mixture of formalin and salt water and cover it hermetically so the future generations can adore a preserved specimen of an orthodox freak stupidity and have an idea how did you look and dress.

I am amazed that a Rabbi would not understand the 6 cubits (2 meters / 7 feet ) distance rule. 10,000 meters / 30,000 feet is much more than 6 cubits.

#5, you went right to the heart of the matter. Touch of cult madness in that pic. If his rabbi told him he was obliged to catch that flight buck-naked & read the Torah with his face painted up like a clown, he'd do it. A former secular & IAF veteran reduced to that half-wit posture? Disturbing, but not enough to halt the laughter.

This is YNET. All is judged here. A man makes an absolute damn fool out of himself flying over the ocean. He must be judged. This is YNET.

that one of the hallmarks of schizophrenia is to suddenly become extreme in one's religious views. My father was a Cohain and he never did any such thing whilst midair. As for doing whatever some religious leader tells you to do? I suppose we can all be grateful his rabbi did not tell him to light his shoes on fire and try to bring down the plane like Richard Reid's imam told him to do in London.

Please don't compare your religious beliefs to electromagnetic waves. You're entitled to believe whatever superstitious nonsense you want, but to claim the that those beliefs are undetectable like EM waves is offensive to science. Your belief of "impurities" is a completely without a shred of evidence. You look foolish trying to compare the two.

Please respect the intelligence of a former Israeli pilot that has chosen his way of handling a issue acoording to the Law of The GD of Israel.

First of all, if you don't believe in the entire notion of spiritual impurity then just keep your clueless "expertise" to yourselves. There are thousands of Talmudic pages and thousands of halachic responsa dealing with these issues, and you with all your ignorance in one puff and foolishly mock our traditions. And if you feel ashamed of this guy because he practices what he believes in, then too bad!! Just remember how the "culturally attuned" Germans felt repulsed seeing any Orthodox Jew with a beard and peyos. Now regarding those of dont understand why the plane isn't considered hermetically closed in regards to tuma, the answer is that there are many leading scholars rishonim and achronim who hold that any vesel that is made from metal cannot protect from tuma because metal is a material mentioned in the Torah that contracts tuma iteslf so it cannot keep out tuma, on the other hand plastic is not a material that contaracts tuma so even if its only 1mm thin it can protect against tuma. But again not all scholars accept that, but there allot of disscusion going on in the responsa about about this, so to all of you who didnt study, just live and let live.

You say he was lieutenant colonel who served in senior and classified positions in the Israel Air Force? It looks like he's not the only religious freak serving in IDF, just the other day IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz refused to place flag on 'non-Jewish' soldier’s grave because he was not kosher Jew according to halakha an orthodox Jewish law ,...

I'm a n evangelical christian who believes in observing sabbath and abstaining from eating everything forbidden in the book of leviticus , but show me in the Bible where it says that you cannot touch women and that you have to wrap in a bag; that has more to do with middleastern superstition than the Bible , and believe me I know , I'm arab.

they are crazy? If this is halha I'm an ape!!!

...get into the graveyard, not away from it! I'm also still amazed that he didn't suffocate. The religious do absurb things, and people usually do turn a blind eye. But endangering ones own life deserves criticism. If someone told him to jump off a roof to distance himself from a woman, would he? Unless it wasn't really plastic. In which case it wasn't really effective and he made a fool of himself (yes, a fool) for nothing.

He knew for a fact he would be flying over a cemetery so thats why he decided to this. Most orthodox Jews either don't think about it or they don't see a need for it because they are in the plane. This guy interprited the law different and he believed that the only way to stay spiritually pure was to wear this bag. I don't imgine he enjoyed doing this himself so I actually respect him for it because even if there was no Halachic ruling that would obligate him to do something like that he believed it was the only way. Certainly have alot more respect for this guy that Women of the Wall.

The ultra orthodox haredim who are cohanim know that the flight path for landing at Ben Gurion is either straight in from the sea or out to Modiin, turn around and landing from the opposite direction. The pilot does not know his landing instructions until late into his flight and they are dependent on weather and security conditions. When this happens the landing path is directly over Morasha cemetery and of course very low. This is what happened in this case. I am of course only offering an explanation for the insane "logic" of this particular person. As an afterthought, would he never travel in a car along the adjacent road to that particular cemetery, much closer I would think and much more "contamination". Each to his own.

The plane is shut, hes enclosed, why the need to add another thing?

fruitcakes, with loads of nuts therein. Shameful as to what is happening to our great religion. Its being hijacked by the quacks. Its time to throw the ultra-orthoquack to the curb. Thay are destroying the Jewish nation and people.

Mr. Cohen has become impure because plastic is not the material fit for insulation, it has been invented after the creation of this rule. They should search the history to find up what the proper insulating material should be.

You ask why. When a person with normative values and behavioural patterns witnesses another person acting clownishly in public he usually thinks in terms of the degredation of human dignity. More so when the action is done by a member of your household or community. I most often am fraught with shame when I witness and hear of the actions of these folks, for instance the annual chicken throwing or the Uman rejoicers.

All these tells with Haredim are very funny, but the Jews on talkbacks are irritated. I believe that some of the Arabs are amused to, consequently they interrupt from time to time the hatred with breaks of amusement and sympathy. Probably, after a long period of time, they will declare love to Jews.