The History Of El Al And Shabbat Flights

Photo Credit: Jewish Press

Officially founded on November 15, 1948, El Al, Israel’s national airline, was originally established to transport Jews making aliyah from Yemen and Iraq to Eretz Yisrael in “Operation Magic Carpet.”

Ever since, it has continued conducting massive immigrant airlifts for such campaigns as “Operation Exodus” (1990), which airlifted hundreds of thousands of Jews from Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe, and “Operation Solomon” (May 1991), which dramatically rescued thousands of Ethiopian Jews. It has also participated in covert military operations, including the one in which Israeli forces snuck Adolph Eichmann out of Argentina to Jerusalem for trial (1960).

El Al grew quickly to serve other countries and the world, becoming the first airline based outside Europe or North America to offer services across the Atlantic Ocean. The first international flight from Tel Aviv to Paris (with refueling in Rome) took off on July 31, 1949, and El Al initiated a regular route between Tel Aviv and New York in April 1951.

The airline grew from about 1,000 annual passengers in 1951 to 19,000 in 1958. In 1961, it flew 56,000 passengers, making it the world’s 35^th largest airline in only its bar-mitzvah year and, in 2012, it flew over four million passengers.

From the earliest days of Israel, operating El Al in accordance with Jewish tradition has been a source of friction. When David Ben-Gurion formed his first coalition, the religious parties refused to join unless he promised that El Al would serve only kosher food on its flights and wouldn’t fly on Shabbat. In the mid-1970s, when the airline began to schedule flights from airports outside of Israel that departed on Shabbat and landed in Israel after Shabbat, the religious parties argued that it was a violation of the agreement signed in the early days of the state. Their protests went unheeded, however.

On May 2, 1982, shortly after his re-election as prime minister, Menachem Begin rose to announce to the Knesset that his government had decided to ban all El Al flights on Shabbat and Yom Tov. He faced epic opposition, not just from El Al union officials but also from secular members of Knesset and the general secular public. Indeed, the response could be properly characterized not as mere opposition, but actual hatred, as Begin was scorned and insulted.

As Yehuda Avner describes it in The Prime Ministers, Begin, unfazed and undeterred, drew on all of his rhetorical powers in arguing for the cause. His moving oratory was greeted by shouted questions, such as whether Begin also intended to block Israel merchant ships from sailing on Shabbat, prevent television broadcasts on Shabbat, and (gasp!) even stop all soccer games on Shabbat, and he was accused of trying to return Israel to the dark ages. In a historic and beautiful rejoinder, Begin became one of the greatest Shabbat champions:

As to the “Dark Ages,” let me tell you something, my dear socialist friend: Shabbat enshrines a social-ethical principle without peer. Shabbat is one of the loftiest values in all of humanity. It originated with us, the Jews. And it is all ours….

I speak of our people’s most hallowed values and you dare stoop to mockery. Shame on you! One nation alone sanctified the Shabbat, a small nation, the nation that heard the voice at Sinai, “so that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you.” Ours is the nation that bequeathed to humanity the imperative of a day of rest to apply to the most humble of beings. Ours is the nation that gave the laborers the dignity equal to that of their employers, that both are equal in the eyes of G-d…. Ours is the nation that enthroned Shabbat as sovereign Queen.

So are we, in our own reborn Jewish state, to allow our blue and white El Al planes to fly to and fro, as if to broadcast to the world that there is no Shabbat in Israel? Should we, who by faith and tradition heard the commandment at Sinai, now deliver a message to all and sundry through our El Al planes – “No, do not remember the Sabbath day. Forget the Sabbath day. Desecrate the Sabbath day”?

I shudder at the thought that the aircraft of our national carrier have been taking off the world over on the seventh day over these many years, in full view of Jews and Gentiles alike….

There is no way of assessing the religious, national, social, historical, and ethical values of the Sabbath day by the yardstick of financial loss or gain. If it were not for the Shabbat that restored the souls and revived the spiritual lives, week by week, of our long-suffering nation, our trials and vicissitudes would have pulled us down to the lowest levels of materialism and moral and intellectual decay….

In a word, one need not be pious to accept the cherished principle of Shabbat. One merely needs to be a proud Jew.

Begin closed by citing Achad Haam’s famous dictum: “More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath day, the Sabbath day has kept the Jews.” With this speech, Begin turned the tide, and the Knesset approved the Shabbat law on a narrow 58-54 vote.

However, only a few days later, on May 11, 1982, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the vote, arguing that the usual Knesset process for enacting a law had not been followed. On August 26, 1982, though, the Knesset Finance Committee overcame the final hurdle and approved the law by the narrowest of margins, 11-10.

Protesting El Al workers became so virulent that Israel radio had to terminate its broadcast of their protest and police had to be called to restore order. Airline employees, arguing that the law would irreparably damage El Al financially, blocked charedim from boarding their flights. Rav Menachem Porush, an Agudat Yisrael Knesset member for over three decades, commented that he never thought that he would live to again witness Jews being barred, let alone in the Jewish state.

Some critics argue that Begin didn’t act altruistically or due to any particular Jewish conviction but, rather, out of sheer political necessity. He was reelected in 1981 with a very narrow margin, making the four votes of the Agudat Yisrael Party crucial to his coalition government, and Agudah used its disproportionate power by threatening to bring down the government unless Begin pushed through the Shabbat measure.

Such critics further argue that, in any event, the charedim did not accomplish their goal since cargo flights continued on Shabbat and summer flights depart five minutes after Shabbat ends and – clearly – passengers and crew on these planes violate Shabbat to get to the airport on time.

However, such arguments are belied by the raw emotion that Begin brought to his speech and by the general tenor of what Begin stood for throughout his life. Whatever his level of personal observance, Begin was – first, foremost, and always – a proud Jew and, while he understood better than most that the law would not end Shabbat violations, he also understood the importance of the Jewish state not lending its official imprimatur to Shabbat desecration.

In this historic May 5, 1982 correspondence on his prime minister letterhead written shortly after his powerful address to the Knesset, Begin writes to Rav Porush:

The government, in its Sunday, 9 Iyar [May 2] 1982 session, adopted the following resolution:

1. It is in accordance with the essence and foundation of government policy to state:

From clause 27 of the fundamental law: “education is based upon the eternal principles of the Torah of Israel.” From clause 34, to wit: “the government cultivates an attitude of respect for the Heritage of Israel, and bequeaths its principles.” And with faithfulness to the agreements of the political coalition [which specifically includes Agudat Israel] to uphold the rule that agreements must be kept, the decision of the government is that the airplanes of the national aviation company [i.e., El Al] will not take off, will not fly, and will not land on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

2. To establish a committee of government ministers who, together with the leadership of “El Al,” will determine the schedule for “El Al” flights, in order to implement the first clause of the resolution.

3. The committee of ministers will be given three months from the date of receipt of this resolution, to the arrangement of the flight schedules as described, and to establish the additional arrangements.

With my notice to the Knesset on 10 Iyar 1982 (May 3), I voiced, among other things, the following:

“…yesterday the government also resolved that, after the setting of a flight schedule by a special committee of ministers, and additional arrangements…there will be no more flights on Shabbat and Jewish holidays of the airplanes of the national aviation company “El Al.’”

As you know, the Knesset confirmed my notice and also issued parliamentary conformation regarding the halting of “El Al” flights on Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

This is the only interpretation of the government resolution of 9 Iyar 1982.

Even today, the issue of El Al flying on Shabbat seems far from resolved. A huge battle to remove Shabbat flying proscriptions commenced anew when the airline became privatized in 2004 but, fearing the loss of religious passengers, which comprise about 30 percent of its customer base, it ultimately decided to maintain the Shabbat ban.

In December 2006, prominent rabbis in Israel led by Rav Chaim Kanievsky issued a boycott of El Al when the airline decided to make up for flights delayed during a nationwide strike, resulting in a company pledge to never again fly on Shabbat.

In perhaps its greatest debacle, a Thursday, November 15, 2018 flight to Israel was significantly delayed due to snowstorms. When it became clear that the plane would land in Israel on Shabbat, Shabbat-observant passengers demanded to deplane and, though the crew assured them that the aircraft would return to the gate to permit them to disembark, that promise was not kept.

The flight was diverted to Athens, where 150 Shabbat-observant Jews were treated to a memorable Shabbat by Chabad of Athens (on only an hour’s notice), and other passengers were rebooked on a flight to Israel three hours later – which landed on Shabbat. El Al initially tried to blame its own mismanagement and misrepresentations by smearing charedi passengers and accusing them of physically and verbally assaulting the crew, but it was later forced to withdraw these false allegations.

Adding to El Al’s black eye, most people do not know that on the very same night of that unfortunate El Al flight, United Airlines returned a plane to its New York terminal, canceled its flight to Tel Aviv, and permitted passengers to deplane when it realized that the plane would not arrive in Israel before Shabbat.

In this September 27, 1995 correspondence, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin assures Rav Porush that El Al is not flying on Shabbat:

I received and read your letter to me dated 22 Elul 1995.

With reference to the performance of work on Shabbat of building roundabout roads: I originally thought that this work is vital and touches on the idea that saving life trumps Shabbat observance, but I became convinced that it is possible to forego this work on Shabbat. As such, I ordered to cease such work.

And, as to the subject of flights by “El Al” on Shabbat: towers in the air. [i.e., pure fantasy.]

An important factor in facilitating Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is building “bypass roads” around Palestinian villages and enclaves, which serve to protect citizens from Palestinian terrorist attacks. As he explains in our letter, Rabin apparently believed that building these roads was so important in protecting Jewish life that work on them could go forward on Shabbat, but he apparently changed his mind and decided to halt Shabbat construction.

Even after the El Al Shabbat law was passed, Lod Airport (later Ben-Gurion Airport) continued operations, and charedim and religious groups were concerned that Jewish workers were being forced to work at the airport on Shabbat. In this January 6, 1972 correspondence as Minister of Transportation, Shimon Peres writes to the Counsel of Emigrants from “Gruzia” (the Latvian name for Russian Georgia):

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Respected persons:

…The airfield at Lod, which is Israel’s only international airfield, is required to be open and to operate 24 hours, without break, even on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays in order to provide service to the various airplanes of the international airlines (which number 16) flying to and from Israel.

This fact mandates – as is dictated by logic – that people work on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays. However, in spite of this, the Airport Authority does not force any worker to work on Sabbaths or on Jewish holidays against his will.

More: From amongst 180 workers who serve in loading and unloading (and among them are 59 emigrants from Gruzia), close to 120 men do not work on Sabbaths because they are observant. Nobody forces them to work on Shabbat, and the Airport Authority recognizes completely the right of every religious worker not to work on Shabbat.

Truly, the case we are discussing is completely different.

During the past months of November-December, a need arose to add workers to load and unload, and the Airport Authority accepted 30 temporary workers, among them the 14 emigrants from Gruzia we are discussing. To each of these 30 new workers, without exception, it was declared explicitly, before his acceptance of the work, that this work involved morning, noon, and night shifts through all the days of the week, including Fridays, Sabbaths, and Jewish holidays.

This was an express condition of their receiving this work and they agreed to this; no person was forced, and nobody forced anything on them….

Faced with these facts, you will certainly agree with me that no force was used for work on Shabbat and that an observant man was not required accept upon himself at the outset a job that requires Sabbath work.

Particularly with new Israeli elections on the horizon, the struggle between Orthodox Jews and secular Jews, including the debate over whether Israel’s national airline should fly on Shabbat, is likely to continue into the future.