Presumably he wouldn’t have resisted being carried off, because then he wouldn’t be violating the law.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Using this as a teachable moment: it would be very helpful when starting a new discussion to have a headline which summarizes what you are trying to say. The original all-too-vague headline was “Your opinions?” Not being able to read the OP’s mind, I edited it, but was criticized by a poster because the edit did not reference religious differences. That was deliberate, because neither did the print edition of The New York Times. I then changed it to match the online headline. So if anyone other than the OP still has an issue, they can address it with the NYT. 
My sister traveled with an Orthodox Jew many times. He sat next to her. He took assistance from her when he needed it. She knew he wouldn’t answer his home phone on the Sabbath, but also knew he’d listen to the answering machine as she was leaving a message, so she’d call if there was a change in flight, times, etc. She loved traveling with him because he made sure they were on a plane by noon on any Friday because he didn’t want to walk home from the airport. This guy was a fairly high ranking officer of the company - he had to talk to women, work with them, sit next to them. He was very religious (and would walk 10 miles home from the airport if necessary rather than make a cabbie work or take the bus, but he would take a ride if it was offered). When they traveled internationally, he stayed with Jewish families on the weekend because he couldn’t stay in a hotel
I think these ultra-religious men are misinterpreting the ‘laws’ and if they want to live that way, they need to stay in the community where everyone has agreed to live that way. Once they enter the ‘world’, they have to follow the general laws that say no discrimination based on sex, religion, national origin, etc. When in Rome…
I would change because that’s what a (Christian in my case - “If a man asks you to walk with him one mile, walk with him two” - IOW- turn it into a gift to him rather than a burden to yourself) compassionate person would do to alleviate his problem. I wouldn’t take it as a personal insult since it is a religious issue for him, not a rejection of me for my gender. And I’d also see it as an opportunity to examine my own life rather than his: do I choose to look at it as him making a demand/inconvenience or an opportunity for me to show compassion?
Not judging those who would get royally *&%ed off, just stating my own way of looking at it.
To me, switching seats in a plane for a situation like that is not all that different from our church making sure that we have beef sausage rather than pork when we make breakfast at the homeless shelter, just in case there is a Jewish or Islamic resident that morning. In the long scheme of things, changing a seat for a few hour flight would be a temporary irritation.
i wouldn’t change seats, because IMO acquiescing to those demands puts the individual farther away from the truth and the rest of humanity.
And because it emphasizes that women should continue to sacrifice their choices in deference to men.
I don’t believe in reinforcing negative habits.
You make a good point. I think I’d be tempted to let him know that I was accommodating him out of Christian charity.
“I wouldn’t take it as a personal insult since it is a religious issue for him, not a rejection of me for my gender. And I’d also see it as an opportunity to examine my own life rather than his: do I choose to look at it as him making a demand/inconvenience or an opportunity for me to show compassion?”
I don’t see why “it’s a religious issue” is some magical pass or excuse. Plenty of people used to believe blacks should have to sit at the back of the bus, have different water fountains and restrooms, not be allowed to sit at the lunch counter, etc. They were sincere in their beliefs and they could point to religious texts supporting those beliefs. So what?
Do you really think that if the situation were - a neo-Nazi boards a plane and refuses to sit next to a black passenger, that the black passenger should just accommodate him and move? I would stand firmly behind the right of the black passenger to remain exactly where he was in the seat he paid for, and if the neo-Nazi doesn’t like it, he can take a later flight, and if he resists, then call security and pull him off the flight. Why is this any different, really? The neo-Nazi’s beliefs about not sitting next to blacks are just as deeply held as the O-Jew’s beliefs about not sitting next to unrelated women.
Or, should a black person sitting in a restaurant “show compassion” for a white racist by offering to move to a different area of the restaurant so the white person doesn’t have to see him when eating? That’s just nonsense.
KKmama- you’re still missing the fact that it’s the man who is expecting the woman to change.
If the man goes off and finds another man who is willing to trade seats with him, no harm no foul. If the man expects the woman to move, but he insists on his own seat - he IS out of line.
I might help out if I found out he had done everything he could to accommodate his religious beliefs, but then factors beyond his control put him in the seat next to me: say that he had arranged to travel and sit next to other men, but then the airline had rearranged his travel arrangements at the last minute, then I might help, provided I didn’t have to sit in a middle seat.
But if he just expected to swan onto the plane and kick me out of my seat because some sky fairy tells him that women are inferior, forget it. I wouldn’t accommodate him for his wacky religious beliefs, or for any other wacky beliefs that involved his bullying me out of my seat. His wacky beliefs are his problem and he has to solve it, not me.
IMHO, there is a big difference between a religious man who has been taught that it is wrong to sit next to a woman (who, in their religious view, but not in our more common cultural sense is being honored) than a neo-Nazi deciding that a black is inferior. The Jewish man isn’t declaring the woman to be inferior, just different from him - there is no VALUE assigned to one over the other. CAN’T because of religious viewpoint is different than WON’T because of prejudice.
Yes, he should probably be the one who changes his seat. But if the plane is full, him moving is going to require SOMEONE to move. Is it okay for him to ask another man to move into his old seat, more so than for him to ask the woman to move? Either way he is displacing a person. But it is not that unreasonable request. He’s not insisting that all women (or black people, or whatever) deplane.
And in a way, isn’t judgment against the Jewish man for holding his belief putting HIM down for who he is and what he believes as much as some of you are accusing him of judging the woman to be inferior? He can’t change his religious mindset from birth much easier than the woman can change her gender. Just food for thought.
During the Nazi era, Jews were sometimes forced to eat pork or be killed. Many of the people on this board would condemn that action. But sitting next to a woman is just as much a religious concern to an Orthodox Jewish man than having to make that decision. Not to outsiders looking in, perhaps, but to them it is a matter of honoring God.
Let both sides be respectful - him in how he asking for accommodation, and her not seeing it as an insult but a chance to be kind and considerate.
Since the person who is claiming a religious exemption knew about those constraints beforehand, conceding to their demands reinforces their belief that it is other people who should make the accommodations.
Instead of chartering a plane, try purchasing a row or other solutions that don’t require your fellow passengers to do you a favor.
I am all for doing what I can for others. I donate time & money to the local and global community and individuals. But I try and encourage people to examine their beliefs to help them become better people.
Take a bully, or a child who throws tantrums.
When they are allowed to get their way, they have little motivation to change, and will inflict their will at the next opportunity.
They are making it more difficult for the next person who had to deal with them.
I really do understand that people who have been indoctrinated from birth, may find this difficult to understand. But that’s perhaps why we are here. To learn from one another.
The call for tolerance goes both ways.
Bus lady needs to buy a car.
If a handicapped person comes aboard, she HAS to move, right? by law, she has to, right?
I don’t mind if men sit next to me, as long as I get an armrest.
There are four handicapped seats on a bus. She takes over two of them. It has only happened once in my 30 years of commuting that there were more genuinely handicapped people on the bus than seats, so if she simply removes her possessions from one of the seats and sits completely on the other seat, there would be no problem. But what she does is hem and haw about moving her stuff and suggest that the person sit elsewhere. It doesn’t have to be a handicapped person, the last stop on our bus is a transfer point so there are often a lot of people there who need seats. The seat next to her is almost always one of if not the last seat to be taken because she makes it so clear that she doesn’t want anyone sitting there. If the bus is crowded she will move her stuff for a woman. If the bus is not crowded she will ask a woman to sit elsewhere, and if a man asks to sit next to her she will explain why she can’t allow that. It has only happened a couple of times that there were no other seats for the man, but it happens regularly that when that is the only seat left drivers will tell people there are no seats available so they wait for the next bus and don’t get on.
Nooooooooo! That is the worst sort of enabling. Someone has to wait for the next bus because of her selfishness? Please write to the bus company and explain all this and tell them how wrong it is. Heck, tell us all what the bus company is, what route it is, etc., and we’ll all write to them!
Well, some extreme actions by the ultra orthodox aren’t all bad: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/15/kim-kardashian-ultra-orthodox-newspaper-photo_n_7071412.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=WorldPost
(Yes, it is bad, I know, I know. It’s still kind of funny.)
KKMama, how far would you take your compassion? I guarantee you on any given flight there is someone in a middle seat who has claustrophobia issues, or problems with their joints, or OCD/ fear of germs, or desperate need to work with binders of material or some other issue that makes flying in the middle seat extremely uncomfortable or inconvenient or even downright painful. Maybe they are immunodeficient and they are seated next to someone with a cold; maybe this flight is the only opportunity to have a serious talk with a spouse; maybe the person has a fear of flying and would like to sit next to someone they know; the possibilities are endless. Would you change your seat with any one of them?
If not, why would you prioritize a person’s religious preferences over other issues, some of which at least are equally worthy of compassion?
The problem I see is many, many people on any given plane will have some sort of reason for why they are deserving of a better seat, many of them entirely worthy. However, our system of air travel would be hopelessly bogged down if these individual claims had to be adjudicated by the flight attendant staff before a flight could take off. 99% of the people in the world suffer the fate of their less-than-desirable seat in silence. Why should we make accommodations for this one group and not others?
(Somehow, I don’t think there’s a problem when the trade results in a more desirable seat for the person being asked to move).
Well… I would give up my seat if asked to accommodate a family in need or an elderly person but I would only give up my seat which I carefully selected if I was going to get a better seat and if it worked out to accommodate a Haredi man so be it I have friends, a couple en route to Israel who happen to observant in that they keep a Kosher home and make Shabbat dinner on Friday but are not totally Shabbat observant… so they were on trip and had window and middle seats and a Haredi Jew was assigned the aisle seat. He asked if they would switch so that he could sit next to the husband and not the wife and my friends declined. They did relocate him somewhere else in the plane. Younger d was coming home once from London with a friend and the plane was full of ultra-Orthodox men coming to NY to attend a conference. The flight attendants had their hands full as they absolutely refused to sit down and buckle up for landing because it interrupted evening prayers for Mincha… the plane had to circle until they could finally get the passengers to cooperate. We were waiting to pick up d and her friend and were getting nervous because the plane was not showing on the board as having arrived way after the eta.
So this has not yet happened that I am aware of on the subway… I am of course aware of the issue in Monsey with the community protesting about a female bus driver to drive young religious boys to yeshiva. The NYS Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school district on that one.
By the way I believe that NYS is the only state in which there is a designated Mincha area off the NYS Thruway.
When my son was a lap baby we used to travel a lot and we had a trick-reserve the window and aisle seats in a 3-person row. If the flight was undersold we’d have the whole row to ourselves. If the flight was full the person assigned to the middle seat was always happy to switch to either the aisle or window.
So this is my solution. Book a business class seat. If you’re seated next to a man enjoy your warm nuts and champagne. If you’re next to a woman suck it up and ask the flight attendant to find someone seated next to a man who’d like to move from economy to business.
As to whether I’d move, it depends a lot on the asker’s attitude. I’ve moved a few times for harried parents with small kids whose tickets were scattered all over the flight. I’ve been there myself when the airline made a mistake or our first flight was late and we had to take a later connecting flight. Asking politely and humbly is key.
Not so long ago I was seated next to a morbidly obese man, one whose size made it impossible for him not to encroach on my seat space. The thing was, it was impossible to be mad about it because he made such a concerted effort to be a good neighbor. He wedged himself as far as he could against the window and put down the armrest between us. In the end we had a very pleasant chat and although slightly uncomfortable physically I was not at all irritated.