Who gave Jared and Ivanka a pass

“WE OBSERVE the Sabbath. From Friday to Saturday we don’t do anything but hang out with one another,” Ivanka Trump declared in a March 2015 interview with Vogue Magazine. “We turn our phones off for 25 hours,” her husband, Jared, chimed in.

Flying on planes, it would seem, is a different matter.

This past week the Jewish world was abuzz with news that the selfproclaimed Shabbat-observant couple travelled on a plane with President Trump which landed in Riyadh after the onset of Shabbat. A spokesperson said they had special dispensation from a rabbi.

Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the couple’s Orthodox rabbi (responsible for Ivanka’s conversion), insisted he had not been consulted on the matter.

What he did not say however, was whether he would have granted permission had he been asked.

This is not the first time a “violation of Shabbat” has occurred. The Kushners were also driven in a car on Mr Trump’s inauguration day on Shabbat. Most Jews were more forgiving then as it would have been deemed a security risk for the Kushners to have walked, and risk to life is grounds for the suspension of Shabbat laws.

Flying to the Middle East, however, begs greater clarity. The plane itself was being flown by a non-Jew and, assuming there were no other violations committed, there is a range of exceptions to having a non-Jew do work for a Jew on Shabbat.

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