Israel Diary, Day 1 (Retry)

We arrived Tuesday evening, Lag B'Omer after an artificially extended Swiss (nee Swissair) flight. The plane was scheduled to leave JFK at 7:30. Like good little travelers, my wife and I wanted to be there 3 hours beforehand. To get to JFK, like good little Newyorkers, my wife and I wanted to leave 90 minutes before we wanted to arrive. As a trained posek, I determined that it would be trei-derabanan (aka "sayag l'sayag," aka "a fence around a fence") to leave at 3 so we decided to leave at 4.

We met some of the craziest, snarliest, traffic ever seen on a non-holiday, good-weather, Monday afternoon. Our driver, a pleasant hyperactive middle-aged South-Asian, was ideologically opposed to traffic and called Queens his home. Whenever we met traffic, we'd sharply veer off onto a side-street or wadi, getting us to the airport in 90 minutes. We may have gotten there at the same time had we stayed in the original traffic but I adhere to the driver's orthodoxy of "Keep Moving."

I was expecting heavy security at the airport. The last time I took an international flight was in November 2001 - so soon after 9-11 (and before Crazy Shoe-Bomb Guy) - that the security dudes didn't know the drill. As it was, I was positively profiled as a friendly "Good Ol Boy" with a hair-covered wife. Yet another time in my life when I was glad to be a lily-white black-hatter.

Behind us on the Swiss(air) line was a man who was to be that trip's requisite wacko. We've nicknamed him Rashbi, the acronym of Rav Shimon Bar Yochi. This dude, 6 foot tall, penguin-dressed Chassid, with long salt-n-pepa beard, no jacket, and blue-crystal cell-phone. We knew there was trouble from the start when he was having one of these cellphone conversations: "Hi Shmuely, I just got cut off" (babble for a minute, pause) "Hi Shumely, got cut off again" (rinse, lather, repeat).

When he finally finished his phone call, he turned his sights on us and asked if we were going to Switzerland or Israel. Note, I was wearing The Hat - which is recognized in most countries and all restaurants as the sign of RELIGIOUS JEW. When we said "Israel" he said that we could still make it to Meron, the hometown of Rashbi, in time for the last of the Lag B'Omer celebrations. I took control of the conversation by using Weirdo Countermeasure #2 - blunt and uninteresting. It worked for a moment, until we saw him again in Geneva for the plane-switch.