Jordanian airport officials refused to let an Israeli rabbi board a plane out of Amman until they had cut the straps off his tefillin, which they said was necessary for security reasons.
Rabbi Moshe Haliwa, who was catching a connecting flight Monday on his journey from Tel Aviv to Dubai, said that as a security guard sliced through the leather straps he had flashbacks of how the Nazis humiliated Jews during the Holocaust.
“It reminded me of images from the Holocaust of Nazis cutting off the payot [sidelocks] and beards of Jews,” Haliwa told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “It was quite harrowing.”
Haliwa, originally from England, now lives with his family in Israel while also serving as the head of a Sephardic community in Dubai.
He flew from Tel Aviv on a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight that landed at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman. From there he was to catch another RJA plane to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where he has led the small community center for about a year.
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