Tag: Rabbi Sol Solomon

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #197 (7/10/2025): Airport Shoes

airs July 12, 2025 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch here: —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoVkSYV2-60

 Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-July 2025.

Rarely do I enjoy going barefoot. It’s nice in the shower, lying in bed, giving my bunions a soak in a shissel of epsom salts. Otherwise, I prefer my feet covered. Even on a beach. On a blistering summer day, didja you ever try to run from a blanket to the ocean on hot sand? When you finally get your burning tootsies in the water, you step on a clam shard and a jellyfish stings your big toe. This is not enjoyable.

So, okay: wear socks. I LOVE SOCKS! Around the house, creeping on the porch to grab a newspaper, visiting friends without getting shoe-shmutz on the carpet. Socks enable you to go shoeless yet still perambulate safely, liberated from the tyranny of heavy footwear. You’re home? Unlace those Florsheims and relax. Taking off your shoes means freedom.

Except, for the last 19 years at airports, when Uncle Sam ordered you to ditch your shoes at the worst possible time. You’ve been waiting in a massive line while carrying half a ton of luggage and trying to inch forward. Then you pull your shoes off, toss them in a bin, walk on filthy carpeting, pass through a metal detector (that somehow detects weapons between your head and your ankles but no lower), show your I.D., grab your belongings, and at long last wrench your shoes back on while a dozen angry people behind you give you side-eye for taking so long.”

At the time, the government’s reasoning seemed reasonable: fear of Arab terrorism. In the late 1990s, an English putz named Richard Reid got Islamicized and traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to learn all sorts of ways to destroy the western world. By 2001, he was ready. Three months after 9/11, Dickie Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63, and, rather than watch the in-flight movie or grapple with one of those neck-pillow things, he tried to blow the plane up. An attendant noticed him lighting a match and warned him it was a non-smoking flight. (I guess she didn’t think to warn him it was also a non-mass-murder flight.) Passengers saw Reid light another match and discovered he had a fuse connected to his shoe. They wrestled him to the floor and prevented him from detonating the explosives he’d stuffed into his Aspen workboots. Hilariously, the main reason Reid didn’t go kaboom was his nervous foot sweat dampening the fuse. It reminds me of the time, at our temple’s Purimspiel, when, as a gag, one of my parishioners lit his fart . . . except it was more than a fart and he had to pay $3,000 to clean the Torah. And Mrs. Feinberg’s blouse.

But the point is Richard Reid, an incompetent moron, was just one of a gazillion airline passengers since the Wright Brothers achieved liftoff. Leave it to the American government under George W. Bush to take this anomalous episode and make it another reason why we can’t have nice things. The Transportation Security Administration, citing aviation safety, ordered all flyers henceforth to remove their shoes before boarding an aircraft. This was such an urgent matter after the December 2001 shoe-bomb attempt, that the TSA rule took effect immediately…in August 2006. 

You can’t make this shit up. Actually, they did make this shit up, because, obviously, the shoe mandate had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the government testing just how much control they could exert over the American sheeple. Turns out, quite a lot. And it came in handy when they forced small stores to close during COVID, and now, when they’re sending ICE to randomly check if brown people are American citizens.

The ballsiest hypocrisy of all is that for years, you could pay for a TSA PreCheck. Eighty dollars meant skip the line, and keep your computer zipped, your belt buckled, and your shoes tied. Bounce onto the Boeing while all your fellow travelers glare and mutter, “Who does he know, and who did he blow?” 

Truth is, money talks, always. Either that, or Homeland Security somehow believed that jihadists would spend months planning a hijacking but then balk at spending an extra 80 bucks. Jews would haggle, but Arabs? Arabs have so much oil money, they use 80 dollar bills to clean their 10 dollar bills.

The shoe rule was one big sham and scam, security theater creating the illusion of protection.  Like putting an unopened condom on your nightstand before having sex. It looks reassuring, but if it’s not on your hoo-ha, it ain’t doin’ doo-dah.

Anyhoo, this is all by way of sharing some actual good news for once: 19 years after instituting the sandal scandal, the TSA is finally discontinuing its shoes-off nonsense. They’re trying it at selected airports and then expected to roll it out cross country, even Newark. Will this speed up airport check-ins? Will this make the boarding process less pointlessly anxious? Will air travel stop feeling like sitting between Lizzo and Shrek on a crosstown bus? 

As a practical pessimist, I’m guessing none of the above. But at a time when everything feels worse—even if it isn’t, and the government, albeit with good intentions, brazenly threatens Constitutional free speech and free assembly, at least let us shower kudos on whoever in power put one ridiculous regulation in reverse: you can do as you choose with your Jimmy Choos. It’s a win for de-feet. Now, is it too much to ask for four ounces of shampoo in a carry-on? 

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. One, two, buckle my shoe—and keep it buckled! 

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—> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoVkSYV2-60

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=12924