I’m back in Israel again, basking (or should I say basting) in the August sunshine. My flight home from London was particularly comfortable because, for the first time ever, I got an upgrade to business class.
I usually count the minutes until we disembark from the moment I get on a plane. This time I was disappointed at how soon we were told to fasten our seatbelts for landing.
Lucky I wasn’t returning to Israel from Paris, or I might have been on the same flight as Rivkah, the Israeli woman who recently paid El Al an estimated $32,000 to ensure that she and her beloved boxer dog, Or, could travel business class by themselves.
As reported in the press, Rivkah didn’t want her “baby” to travel in the hold, which is where animals usually fly. “I didn’t think for a minute to leave Or, my little Orchuk, with the cargo,” she said “All that mattered to me was to have my baby with me during the flight so that I can take care of him.”
Having enjoyed the comfort of business class so recently - the attentive stewards, the wide seats, the extra legroom - I can well understand why Rivkah wouldn’t want Orchuk to travel anywhere else.
A joke comes to mind:
A woman travelling to Israel checked in her baggage and asked for special care to be taken with the cage containing her beloved white poodle. The flight was uneventful. After landing, her baggage came through on the carousel in the normal way, but the dog cage did not appear.
As they unloaded the plane, the Israeli baggage handlers noticed that the dog wasn’t moving and was, in fact, dead. They surmised that it must have died in the cold baggage compartment. They decided to dispose of the body and find an identical white poodle to put in the cage.
The woman meanwhile kept asking about her beloved dog and was told that it was delayed because of the special handling required.
The baggage handlers found a replacement dog in a pet shop, which they put into the cage. A ground steward eventually brought the cage to her. She looked inside and gasped in horror. "This is not my dog!" she cried. “My dog was dead, and I was bringing her to Israel for a proper Jewish burial."