By Susan Esther Barnes
I’m not one of those people who strikes up conversations with strangers on airplanes. As a general rule, I tend to keep to myself, read a book, write something, or maybe even take a nap. The exception to this rule seems to be when I run into a Jewish person.
It’s one of those peculiarities of the Jewish people that, when we meet, our first reaction seems to be as if we have suddenly found a distant relative. I don’t know if it’s because we’re a minority group, or because we consider all Jews to be a “member of the tribe,” or it’s just a more common phenomenon having to do with finding someone with whom we have something in common, but whatever it is, when I come across another Jewish person on a plane, we end up talking as if we’ve known each other for years.
The first time I noticed this happening was years ago, when I was on a plane, reading a book about Jewish Life Cycles. The woman sitting next to me told me her grandson was going to have his bar mitzvah in a few months, and she wanted to know whether my book had anything to say about the responsibilities of a grandmother during a bar mitzvah ceremony. Sadly, it did not, but that did not stop us from talking about the upcoming ceremony, her family, and any manner of other subjects.
Most recently, this happened on a plane to LA, where I was traveling on business with my boss. He and I were speculating on which country had the most Jews outside of Israel and the United States, when the man on the other side of me gave us his opinion. It turns out he was and American Jew of Persian descent. Before we knew it, we were filled in on his family’s business, what happened when one of his relatives returned to Iran, and which synagogue he didn’t attend regularly.
Of course, it’s not always all smiles and roses. There was that one time on the plane to Israel when one of the black hat Orthodox men refused to take his seat because it was between another woman and me, and he just couldn’t get past the restriction against being in such close proximity to females with which he wasn’t related.
Still, it is noteworthy that, for a person who almost never talks to strangers on planes, my longest and most interesting conversations have turned out to be with other Jews.
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