El Al and the Haredi

A Haredi Jewish group called the "Council of Rabbis for the Holiness of the Shabbat" may call for a boycott of El Al after one of its flights landed two hours after the start of the Sabbath. There was a similar controversy last fall when El Al scheduled a few flights for the Sabbath to make up a backlog after an airport strike. The airline has an agreement under which Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar gets to decide whether passengers on the airline can fly, regardless of whether or not they are religious Jews. The Jerusalem Post's source said El Al has an obligation to meet the needs of its religious customers, which in Middle Eastern lingo means theologically conservative. Unfortunately, these needs often conflict with those of Israel's majority, which is one of the country's main sources of tension.