VA…could you give the readers digest summary. Sorry…I don’t open links from here…not worth the risk.
Orthodox Jews traveling to Israel often ask female passengers to make seat changes so they don’t have to sit next to a woman who is not their wife. It sometimes causes delays in taking off. It’s NY Times if you want to google it yourself.
So they want to sit next to other men, not women.
As a woman who chooses my seats carefully when I fly…if someone asked me to swap seats, I would say no. The only time I have switched seats was to help accommodate a family traveling with two young children. They couldn’t have two kids and one adult in the row…so I swapped so that the parents could each be with a child.
what do the airlines do to accommodate these religious issues?
To me, depends on whether the seat offered was “better” than mine - like an exit row or 1st class 
I would not change seats if the seat offered was inferior (aisle when I want window). If someone (Orthodox Jew or otherwise) is not happy with their seat, that is their problem, not mine.
I wouldn’t change either. Where does it stop? I probably would to accommodate a family with small children, if I was asked nicely. Sometimes people are so entitled and it’s a huge turnoff!
A definite NO! Except for a better seat for me. Travelers with such concerns need to never inconvenience other passengers with selfish requests like this. As one person in the link stated, there is no fear of anything sexual when two passengers have to sit close together on an airplane so men afraid of creating desires in themselves are off base. Destination doesn’t matter, either.
Sometimes willing to trade seats to accommodate families that can’t get seats together. Married for so long and spend so much time with my H that not sitting together can be fine (or better). One recent flight we traded for a family. The father was so grateful he was willing to pay for my meal or buy me a drink- I refused thinking the family needed the funds more than I did. Found out by the end of the flight that he also was an MD like H and I- all in well paid specialties and could afford things. My H got to talk to the wife while I was stuck near a noncommunicative couple, sigh.
There’s an easy solution for men who fear encountering women minding their own business in public: stay home. I’d say that if you are so sex-crazed that you regard sitting next to a strange woman on public transportation to be an occasion of sexual temptation, you have major problems that YOU, not the object of your inappropriate lust, need to deal with.
The reality is that I actually don’t believe that these guys are genuine concerned that they might be “tempted” by some random woman. I think they come from a deeply sexist, misogynistic, self-righteous subculture and they want to seize this opportunity to exert their will over a woman and shame her.
I just traded seats when I flew last week. A man traveling with his young daughter asked me nicely, so I did. I thought it was a reasonable request.
Something about this is insulting though. I would not trade places simply because I am female. Really?
Let the gentleman purchase two seats, so the seat next to him can be empty!! I would not change for a middle seat even for a family. I might change seats for $1,000 cash, but probably not anything else.
Any man that thinks this way should buy 2 seats for himself to ensure he doesn’t sit next to a woman. It would be a cold day in heck before I would move!
I agree - I’d swap only if I prefer the seat offered or if it was because a family with young kids was split up (because who wants an unhappy kid on a flight).
People who are picky about who they sit next to should figure out a solution by themselves. Pay for an extra seat, or always travel with a companion, or something.
I would not swap for this reason either, unless it’s to a better seat. This reminds me a bit of another NY Times article about segregating female and male bus passengers (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/nyregion/bus-segregation-of-jewish-women-prompts-review.html?smid=pl-share)
Heck, we all have our things. Respect for each others religious preferences makes the world run a little more smoothly, obnoxious or misogynist though it may be. I’d switch, so as to not make a big deal, as getting in the air is a big enough deal regardless. But not happily if it kept me from MY thing, which is my beloved window seats.
I would not move in this situation unless I’m offered a much better seat! I will trade seats with people who were separated from their SO or a child through the stupidity of the seat assignment by the airline - if asked nicely.
A coworker once told me a story about the issues they had with a very observant religious person whose religion I will not name. When they hired this guy, they had no idea that the new hire would refuse to work in the same room with a woman! That was a small company, and their operations were limited to a one-room facility… The word has spread through the tight-knit community… with the easily imaginable consequences.
Well, this is a genuinely held religious proscription – that men and women can’t sit next to each other because of the possibility that they accidentally touch each other. I guess I understand it, but I don’t know what I’d do.
I wonder if the OP could ask a moderator to change the thread title so that when you see it you have SOME idea of what the subject is.
I once asked someone to trade with H so he could be next to me for long flight. The trade was from a middle seat to an aisle seat, so she was glad to do it. (I prefer window seats, too). I would trade for the same or better seat so family members could be together–or for any reason or no reason at all. I would only trade into a middle seat if I were already in a middle seat, and the people on the sides of the new seat were small (like me) and not oozing into my space. I would want to check out the new seat first to make sure there wasn’t something very undesirable about it. For a short flight I wouldn’t care much, but the longer the flight, the more I’d care. I don’t want to sit next to a gross smelly guy, for example.
Moderator - Pls change thread title, this one is useless.
I’m certainly fine switching if families want to sit together and it’s no skin off my back but no way in hell am I switching if an O-Jew refuses to sit next to me. The airlines can do with him what they do with anyone else who is disruptive - call security and get them removed from the plane.
Never has a NYT comment section been so unified lol
I don’t mind as long as the guy ask in a nice way. I had an Orthodox Jew as an office mate and I learned tons of stuff from him, the religion is very restrictive, something like can’t turn the light on Saturday so he had to program the lights to be automatic.