If there’s any upshot to the misunderstanding that grounded a small aircraft last week in Philadelphia — and scared the wits out of two Jewish teenagers — it’s that the general public might now know a bit more about tefillin.

A 17-year-old Orthodox Jew donned his prayer phylacteries to recite morning prayers during a Jan. 21 flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport bound for Louisville, Ky. Unfamiliar with the prayer boxes — and fearful they could be a wired bomb — the captain decided to notify federal authorities of a disruptive passenger and land the plane in Philadelphia, according to FBI Special Agent J.J. Klaver, a local field officer.

Within minutes, headlines on local and national news sites reported the “tefillin incident” as reporters scrambled to find out exactly what tefillin might be. (Tefillin are a set of small leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Bible, with leather straps used to wrap around the left arm and the forehead. They are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers.)

The plane landed at Philadelphia International Airport at approximately 8:50 a.m. and was searched by the Transportation Security Administration and the Philadelphia Police Department.

FBI agents interviewed the boy, Caleb Liebowitz, and his 16-year-old sister, Dahlia, from White Plains, N.Y., but they were never actually in custody, according to Klaver.

Klaver stressed that the incident was a misunderstanding and that the passenger had done nothing illegal.

“There is no restriction against religious practices on the aircraft as long as you are not interfering with the flight crew,” he said.

The plane was operated by Chautauqua Airlines, an affiliate of US Airways. The flight had a total of 15 passengers.

According to a statement by Republic Airlines, which owns Chautauqua Airlines, “When our crew tried to discuss the issue with the passenger, they did not receive a clear response.”

The airlines said that “while we always regret any inconvenience to our passengers, safety and security must remain our top priority. In this case, making an unplanned stop in Philadelphia was determined to be in the best interest of our customers and our crew.”

Glen Liebowitz, the father of the two teens, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that federal marshals approached the situation far too aggressively. The teens reportedly were flying to visit their grandmother in Kentucky.

“Adults have to recognize that when you’re dealing with children, you have to be gentle,” Liebowitz told the Inquirer.

Rabbi Solomon Isaacson of Cong. Beth Solomon Kollel and Community Center in Northeast Philadelphia said he understood the initial confusion, but could not fathom why the matter took at least two hours to clear up.

“With what’s been going on lately, I can understand how people would be scared of something they don’t know,” Isaacson said. “Obviously they had no idea what this was. They saw a guy with a black box and they are thinking that he could be an individual who is willing to sacrifice his life.”

Once it became clear that they weren’t dealing with a terrorist, he said, “that should have been the beginning of the end of it.”

Rabbi Jay Stein, president of the Vaad: The Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia, said it’s a sad commentary on the state of the world that people have become so paranoid. He also said the misunderstanding shows how little Americans know about other faiths.

“We live in such a myopic world that people just don’t know what other people’s practices are,” said Stein, the religious leader of Har Zion Temple.

On the other hand, Stein said that fear of the unknown is certainly understandable.

“People are living in a crazy world where people are doing crazy things,” the rabbi said. “If you see somebody doing something that is out of the ordinary, of course you are going to be concerned. I would always prefer people to be more cautious than less cautious.”

In the aftermath of the incident, Agudath Israel of America said it would make more widely available to airlines a brochure it had created detailing Orthodox customs, the JTA reported.

In a statement last week, the fervently Orthodox group said it has worked closely with the Transportation Security Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to “sensitize the agency to the various religious objects and practices of Orthodox Jews,” and to reach out to American and foreign airlines.

JTA (Philadelphia Exponent)

A US Airways pilot redirected his plane last month because the crew didn’t recognize the two black boxes a passenger was wrapping around his head and arm.

The young passenger was fulfilling the Jewish ritual of tefillin. Unaware of the significance of the holy objects, the crew reacted with suspicion. A recent e-mail sent around to Jewish men’s clubs after the incident showed an image of a young man wearing tefillin superimposed over an airplane and asked how readers would respond if they had to explain the ritual to the flight crew.

“It’s one of those traditions that looks weird and feels strange, and so there’s a fairly high barrier to overcome to get people to experience it,” said Rabbi Randall Mark of Cong. Shomrei Torah in Wayne.

Thousands of men around the world will experience the mitzvah of tefillin on Sunday when the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs holds the 10th annual World Wide Wrap. More than 175 men’s clubs, representing thousands of people, are signed up for the event.

“It’s a fundamental form of prayer, which is very different than the normative prayer that everyone thinks about,” said Eric Weis, president of the Northern New Jersey region of the FJMC and a member of Shomrei Torah. “It’s nonverbal. It’s a physical way of relating to God.”

Mark, who is the spiritual adviser to the FJMC’s Northern New Jersey region, said the event gives men the opportunity to perform the mitzvah together and not feel out of place. He likened the experience to seeing a football player in full uniform. Such a sight would be normal in a football stadium, he said, but appear strange in a setting like a supermarket. The Wrap encourages learning about tefillin within the synagogue environment, he said.

“The men’s club understands that often men will do things collectively they may not be inclined to do individually,” he said.

At Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood, the seventh-grade Sunday school class will participate in the Wrap with the Sunday morning minyan. Tefillin are traditionally worn by men, but men and women will be invited to participate. In addition to putting on tefillin, students will peek inside a “non-kosher” set that has been opened up.

“It creates an awareness so our students know what [tefillin] are,” said Rabbi Sharon Litwin, Temple Israel’s education director. “In the Conservative movement, most people come on Shabbat morning [when tefillin aren’t worn]. This is an opportunity for people to see what they look like, how they’re worn, what’s inside them.”

To help educate children, Ira Ungar, chair of the FJMC’s tri-state region in Pittsburgh and one of the Wrap’s co-chairs, created the build-a-pair program, which distributes kits for children to make and decorate their own (non-kosher) tefillin. The sets make kids comfortable with tefillin, Weis said.

“They have fun doing it,” Ungar said.

While the Orthodox world has maintained the mitzvah, the non-Orthodox world has forgotten about it, Weis said. He credited Rabbi Charles Simon, executive director of the FJMC, for bringing tefillin back into Conservative practice.

“This is a Jewish mitzvah, it’s not an Orthodox mitzvah,” Weis said. “It’s a Jewish practice that went out of fashion, but we’re bringing it back.”

The US airways incident became “a teachable moment,” Mark said and gave a boost to FJMC’s efforts to raise the profile of tefillin.

“It raises the whole issue that Jews at a minimum should know what tefillin are and everybody else should have some idea,” said David Millman, of the Brandeis Men’s Club at Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood. Millman is also the correspondence secretary for the Northern New Jersey region of the FJMC.

Ungar created the e-mail challenging some 7,000 men’s club members on how they would react if they saw someone putting on tefillin on a plane.

“The idea is to educate Jewish men as to the significance of putting on tefillin and hopefully if ever faced with a similar situation, they’ll know what to do,” he said.

For more information and a list of participating men’s clubs, visit www.worldwidewrap.org.

“Wrappers” at last year’s World Wide Wrap event at Shomrei Torah in Wayne. Courtesy Eric Weis

Fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers won’t be the only ones praying on Superbowl Sunday.

Across New Jersey, the United States, and the world, men, women, and children will gather to participate in a morning minyan, or morning prayer service. But many of those who gather on this particular Sunday will perform an ancient ritual for the first, or the only, time this year.

The Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs, which oversees men’s clubs at Conservative synagogues around the world, has once again organized the World Wide Wrap. Scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 6, the 11th World Wide Wrap is an international, coordinated minyan encouraging Jews to participate in one of the basic mitzvot, or commandments, in the Torah: the wrapping of tefillin. Synagogues, prayer groups, and individuals can register to participate at www.worldwidewrap.org. The site records numbers of participants and their locations around the world. Administrators post pictures of synagogue members and other groups praying with tefillin as the pictures come in from Jewish communities in locations ranging from Australia to India to the United States.

As of Tuesday, close to 10,000 people have signed up and organizers are hoping for thousands more.

“Twelve years ago we learned many people didn’t have the tradition of wearing tefillin at morning services,” said Stan Greenspan, FJMC vice president of programming. “It seemed tefillin was the mitzvah some people were forgetting. It’s an important ritual and important prayer.”

In response to the FJMC’s discussions on the subject, Temple Israel, a conservative synagogue in Charlotte, N.C. organized a gathering of 100 men to wrap tefillin and pray together. That event provided the inspiration for the national program that became the World Wide Wrap, according to Greenspan.

The goal is not to have people don tefillin only on Superbowl Sunday, but on every weekday during the year. The WWW is meant to educate and inspire participants, not limit them to one day of observance.

Some local congregations have been regular participants and are gearing up to participate again. Eric Weis, past president of the New Jersey region of FJMC, stressed its desire to demystify the rite. Weis is a member of Cong. Shomrei Torah in Wayne and of Temple Israel Community Center/Cong. Heichal Yisrael in Cliffside Park, both of which are participating on Sunday. (The Wayne congregation expects 40 people at its event.)

“The event is designed to make it a communal and enjoyable practice, not one that is esoteric, because many people look at this rite as strange and unsettling,” he said.

The ritual consists of wrapping straps around one’s arm and head to hold in place written biblical texts, including the Sh’ma: “Hear O Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is One” — because it contains the commandment to wear tefillin. The texts, handwritten on special parchment by a qualified scribe, are housed in small leather boxes, held in place against the head by the leather straps.

While in some communities wrapping tefillin is an activity for men only, women participate in the World Wide Wrap, according to Weis.

“I’m told and I believe women did this in biblical times, and it’s not a matter of Torah but of custom that some men say, ‘It is ours,’” he said. “We do welcome women’s participation in the ritual.”

In fact, the Babylonian Talmud tractate Eruvin 96a-b informs us that Michal, the daughter of King Saul and first wife of King David, wore tefillin without objection from the sages of her day.

The FJMC chose Superbowl Sunday as the date for the event each year because it believed that date would help to bring families together.

“We made a conscious choice to have it on Superbowl Sunday, the second biggest family day after Thanksgiving in the U.S.,” said Greenspan. “People are in their homes and do not travel that day.”

For many Jews, including Weis, putting on tefillin is a conduit to greater spiritual connection.

“You are living those words,” Weis said. “You are binding yourself to God, loving God with all your heart by wrapping tefillin around your arm, with all your mind by putting the words to your head, with all your might by wrapping yourself really tightly.”

For him, the practice is also about continuity.

“My grandfather, when I was 13, did this with me,” Weis said. “He took me to his synagogue in Passaic.… I can’t remember many things about my grandfather, but I remember the joy he had, doing this. It’s all wrapped up — no pun intended — in carrying on what my grandfather and great-grandfather were doing.”