These two pilots took their spirituality to new heights by participating in a cockpit bar mitzvah before leaving the ground.
Rabbi Kalman Weinfeld does not pass up a chance to help a fellow member of the Children of Israel, so he jumped into action when he realized there were two Jewish pilots on the plane whose kosher food he was supervising.
“When [one of the pilots responded in Yiddish], I asked him, ‘are you Jewish?'” Rabbi Weinfeld explained, initiating an impromptu bar mitzvah for one of the pilots, who put on tefillin for the first time. The other pilot, who was also Jewish, joined in the opportunity to preform the mitzvah.
“Both pilots ended up putting on Tefillin and the three broke into a joyous dance of ‘siman tov u’mazel tov,’ celebrating a Bar Mitzvah right there in the cockpit of the United Airlines plane,” reported COLlive.