Different Ways To Make A Journey

I can't sleep on airplanes. I don't know what it is. Something in the combination of excitement about my destination, uncomfortable seats, and my still-present, wide-eyed wonderment at the fact that a giant metal structure carrying hundreds of people is able to soar through the air largely without incident prevents me from achieving slumber. To make matters worse, our plane embarked on its 9+ hour journey at 2:30 pm. As we flew east into darkness, I couldn't help but feel like a bird whose cage was slowly being covered by a blanket in hopes that he would sleep. As they turned off the cabin lights a mere two hours into our flight, I decided that I would not be so easily duped as my avian counterparts. Besides, we were going to Israel! How could one sleep at a time like this? Luckily I had some recorded episodes of Israeli Cash Cab playing on the monitor in front of me and my trusty iPod to keep me company.

The host of Israeli Cash Cab.

After the novelty of watching a show in your home country be adapted to and performed by another country wore off (which was pretty quick), I made a note to re-appreciate the comparatively nuanced performance of Ben Bailey when I got home and then turned on my mp3 player. For whatever reason, I ended up listening to a lot of Wu-Tang. Like, a ridiculous amount. I started out with a few tracks from 8 Diagrams and then listened to 36 Chambers in its entirety. After that, I moved on to the solo material. After giving this year's excellent Only Built For Cuban Linx II a thorough run through, I listened to a couple of tracks each from Supreme Clientele and Fischscale, the latter being the superior album in my opinion by the slightest of margins.

As I was pondering the relative merits of Ghostface Killah's two preeminent solo records, a curious thing happened. Orthodox Jews began streaming in droves towards the back of the plane, where I was sitting. There are hundreds of different sects and subsects and sub-subsects within the Orthodox movement, so I won't pretend to know the exact nature of these particular Jews*, but I can describe what I saw. They were all men. Each wore a black suit with a white dress shirt underneath (no tie). They all had beards of a somewhat unkempt nature, each one proportionate in length to his age. On top of their heads they wore a wide, circular-brimmed black hat and just below this, meticulously curled sidelocks snaked out downward towards their chins.

These weren't Jews; they were Jews. Movie Jews. The kind of Jews one might expect Israel to be overrun with if one had never been to Israel before and had no idea what to expect. I had never encountered Orthodox Jews of this nature before, so I couldn't help but observe them as they went about their business.

Each produced a small, plain, black book from within their suits, opened it, and began reading aloud from it in a quiet but fervent voice. It was a disarming sight. These men appeared totally transported and willfully oblivious to their surroundings; the words that they were reading seemingly occupying every space of their body. Indeed, many began rocking back and forth and nodding their heads rhytmically to the syllables gushing from their mouths.

I sat in my seat, rapt, watching these rituals take place while the sounds of Ghostface's distinctive, passionate delivery remained playing in my headphones. I suddenly became aware of a symmetry between the rap music I heard in my ears and the religious rituals taking place before my eyes. While reciting their prayers, the Orthodox Jews were bobbing their heads in perfect time to the beat of the music I was listening to! Further, the almost unconscious way in which they delivered their words was strikingly similar to the stream of consciousness lyrical flow of Dennis Coles' music.

The superficial differences between the rapper I was listening to and the worshipers I encountered on the plane were many. Dennis Coles is a Muslim man who calls himself Ghostface Killah and publicly recounts his many and varied experiences with drugs, alcohol, and women. These Jews were a bunch of quiet fellows in plain clothes who do not drink or do drugs and are not allowed to so much as look at a woman until they are set up with one.

But there are similarities. Important ones. For example, when I was young, my Rabbi gave me a Hebrew name (Yosef) in addition to the regular name my parents gave me (Corey). While "Yosef" is not nearly as cool as "Ghostface Killah", the two are used in similar ways. When I was called to read the Torah during my Bar-Mitzvah, my Rabbi addressed me by my Hebrew name. When Dennis Coles raps, he is addressed by his pseudonym. There are a lot of reasons why a person may use a second name. Maybe going by this name allows the person to access or let out a different part of themselves. Maybe a more spiritual or passionate or fundamental part. Put more simply, "Yosef" represents the part of me that is Jewish; "Ghostface Killah" represents the part of Dennis Coles that is a rapper.

Even more similarities can be drawn between the act of praying and the act of rapping or performing music. After all, when Ghostface raps, he almost certainly feels just as fervent, transcendent, and sacred as these Orthodox Jews do when they pray. The mere recitation of a learned, rhythmic series of words and phrases can be an extremely evocative experience regardless of what those words and phrases actually mean. If they were to mean something very deep and important to the speaker, that experience may become very intense. A religious experience, if you will.**

In all likelihood, Ghostface Killah and those Jews would probably look at each other and assume that they could not be more different, while the truth of the matter is that they could fill up an entire 9 hour plane ride talking about their similarities. While I was thinking about all of this, the group of Orthodox Jews finished praying and shuffled back to their seats. I smiled to myself, turned up the volume on my iPod, and began bobbing my head to the music. Sleep or none, this was going to be a great trip.

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*I also don't know every Jewish person in Atlanta, so you can stop asking.

** ;-)