On Sunday, a 6:45Am flight scheduled to take off from Ben-Gurion Airport to Budapest, had some technical difficulty with the aircraft, forcing the company to return the passengers to Terminal 1 to wait.
According to the Chareidim10 News report, four hours later, passengers were brought sandwiches from the Cafe Café branch located in Terminal 1. But then, after some of the passengers had already eaten, one of the passengers got up and declared out loud: “The sandwiches do not have a hechsher.” The kosher passengers began shouting at the El Al employees for distributing such food to them.
A Rabbi Yosef Dorfman, who was on the flight, confirmed that they had indeed been given sandwiches from the Cafe Cafe store located in Terminal 1, which operates on Shabbos and doesn’t have a hechsher.
Rabbi Dorfman immediately contacted Rabbi Yochanan Hayut, the rav of El Al, who announced that he would deal with the failure immediately. “Of course, people already ate,” he says.
It should be noted that despite the shouts of passengers, the El Al personnel continued to distribute the sandwiches to those who requested them.
El Al’s response: “The presentation of things does not match the facts and reality. When it became clear that the takeoff was delayed, the ground crew approached the passengers and asked who was interested in a mehadrin sandwich.
“The passengers who announced that they were interested in mehadrin were provided with sandwiches in line with their kashrus to their satisfaction. There was no failure chalila, but a desire to provide what is needed for the welfare of the traveling public.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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18 Responses
The Obvious response should be “Mi Kiamcha Yisroel” & “Nebach”
They went out of thier way to buy things for hungry passengers but Nebach they do not even know about kosher
But Boruch Hashem they still have a jewish heart and want to give.
Yet another reason to insist on mehadrin.
Does anyone seriously expect the airline of the Medina to follow Halacha? Legit?
why is this a story? that non-frum people gave out non-kosher food to non-frum people? where’s the scandal? did they claim it was kosher? fabricate a false hechsher? anyone who ate it before checking its source obviously didnt care too much in the first place. I don’t get why this is more of a story than “Man orders sandwich in a cafe”
If you don’t see that there’s a hechsher, it’s your fault. They offered mehadrin but not everyone listened to the announcements.
Any yid with half a brain who is shomer kashruth would obviously look to the wrapping of a sandwich not from the airline’s catering to confirm the hashgacha. The flight attendants meant well and were providing food to those who were not shomer kashruth…Yuingerman has is right…”where’s the beef” (bad pun)….
I agree with “yungerman123”. What is the issue here??? The flight was delayed, so someone at El Al sent someone “run buy a few sandwiches for the passengers”. The “someone” who went to do the shopping is a regular Israeli El Al employee living in Cholon or Yehud, that does not live a kosher life on a daily basis, and it didn’t even occur to him/her that maybe the airline policy is that everything served to consumers has to be kosher etc. etc. They made a simple mistake, just as any human being makes constantly mistakes in life. The only one to be blamed for eating something non-kosher is the person who ate it!!! When I travel, I check every item presented to me to see if it is kosher or not, and the pretzels served on BA flights I wont eat as they are not kosher, but the pretzels on American based airline flights I will notice the star-k on it and eat it. And the same applies when I sit on an El Al plane, I examine every food package presented to me to see if it is adequately kosher. And every person who was raised in a frum jewish home I would expect this to come naturally. So whoever ate those sandwiches without inspecting the kosher status first can only blame themselves.
I agree with the Mi Keamcha Yisroel part.
Most El AL staff members are good to excellent, They are also generally accommodating for Davening and other special needs.
It just that they, unfortunately, have a large number of workers that are steeped in the ugly Israeli yellow media against Charedi Jews. That attitude, which is usually dormant, shows through whenever things don’t go so smooth.
Just when calm positive behavior is needed, that is also the best time to make a positive impression on customers
They behave the complete opposite. Blaming the Jews…
It’s a shame, That some bad apples kill the reputation of an otherwise good airline.
As a frequent flyer, I have had my bad experiences with them. From switching seats and schedules to missing handbags. and the uncaring attitude when filing a complaint. Also watching them handler other Charedi issues
I have had too many heartaches with them, and I stopped using them.
I now fly Aeroflot. Which is slowly becoming a world-class airline, The price is also right. I wouldn’t touch Turkish, or Ukraine. Whoever does that proceeds on his own risk.
Every few years I try to resume my EL AL flying, but invariably it ends wit Agmas Nefesh
I think people are missing the point. We dont fly El Al for its cuisine! Our foremost thought should be getting to our destination safely. Evererything else is simply unimportant compared to the larger picture. Pack yourself a couple sandwiches whenever you fly! El Al isnt perfect but nothing compares i terms of security. I trust them and only them with my children and that says a lot.
The cafe is milchig and does not serve meat.
It lacks a heksher because it’s open on Shabbos, not because it’s serving treifos.
Those who wanted food from a place with a heksher were given food from a place with a heksher.
“The kosher passengers began shouting at the El Al employees for distributing such food to them.”
Was there any boisterous clapping and singing too ?
Shouting is of course the way to go ..
Mi K‘amcha
Wake up religious people and internalize the artscroll stories that you read about gedolim from yesteryear petrified of embarrassing another person .
Wake
Up
And stop acting like entitled animals .
A erliche yid never leaves home without taking food along for at least twelve hours
Please check the food before eating.
Kosher is not “mehadrin”. If they asked who needs a “mehadrin” sandwich, many people would not reply, because they don’t need “mehadrin”, normal kosher is good enough for them. That doesn’t mean you can give them something that has absolutely no guarantee of being kosher at all.
It has been suggested that the cafe is really kosher after all, it just lacks a hechsher. That’s possible, but how can anybody know? Without a hechsher the cafe has no reason not to use actual treife ingredients, or to use bishul akum, which is treif.
“The kosher passengers began shouting “
To me this was the most disturbing part of the event, what does anyone gain from “shouting “, you can talk , you can complain but leave shouting for sports and for when needed. It’s hardly ever appropriate
To Milhouse:
I would guess was a simple misunderstanding and for the El Al person, “mehadrin” meant insisting on an actual heksher, rather than buying from a cafe that he assumed was kosher. Perhaps some passengers misunderstood this.
BTW, bishul akkum is an issur d’Rabbonon, not “treif.”
And it’s also not so certain that anything that might have been served to the passengers was necessarily bishul akkum, both because Jews were likely involved in the cooking (if there was any) and because the stuff they served was probably sandwiches, not something that is עולה על שלחן מלכים.
And it’s very, very unlikely that the cheese or tuna sandwiches were from anything other than what is commonly available in Israeli stores.
It’s El Al. With Israelis, if you don’t shout, you don’t get anywhere. That’s a simple fact.
As someone who lives in Israel I feel I should point out a few things:
1) Many Israelis want kosher food and fly El Al for that reason. Those of us who are sophisticated and experienced travelers are familiar with how to ensure we have kosher food when traveling and know what to look out for to avoid possible problems. I’ve spoken to Israelis who literally do not know that you can order kosher meals on foreign airlines.
2) Traditional Jews assume that El Al will not serve them something that isn’t kosher.
3) I’m guessing that, in this case, the crew did not perceive the food from the airport branch of Cafe Cafe as being of doubtful kashrus and probably didn’t understand what the fuss was about.
4) For those complaining about Israelis shouting when they are upset about something, I’m afraid you just don’t understand the cultural norms here. One of the first things I noticed about Israeli flatmates of mine nearly forty years ago in London was, that when they talked to each other, the volume of their voices shot up!