Haredi hatred knows no bounds: Angered by a social media post, someone decided to change a Haredi's flight - to Shabbat

The following bizarre story ranks among the top stories you've heard, and it only demonstrates how much social networks have become a bad and sick place, with the old favorite at the forefront - hating Haredim, or Jews.

This unbelievable but true story happened to Racheli Freifeld, a respected Haredi publicist, married and mother of three children from the Bayit Vegan neighborhood in Jerusalem, and the daughter of Rabbi Akiva Hamnick, head of the Chayei Olam Yeshiva. Freifeld is well-known on social media for her sharp and excellent humor.

Freifeld posted on Twitter (now X) about her husband traveling abroad and leaving her alone at home, an apparently routine post that went viral following hateful responses from a large secular audience, who for some reason resented the traveler. But if the poison directed at her wasn't enough, there was an anonymous person, whose identity is still unknown, who decided to take it a step further and changed her husband's return flight date to the holy Sabbath. How did this happen and what was the outcome? Here's the bizarre story as Freifeld tells it to 'Kikar HaShabbat'.

"Two weeks ago," Freifeld began, "I posted a birthday tweet here with a picture of a flight ticket with a friendly joke about my husband who chose to surprise me on my birthday with his flight to New York. In response, people got angry at me for daring to express feelings on a platform where people express feelings about my husband abandoning me for a vacation (it's not) when there are women whose husbands leave them for reserve duty. I didn't take it to heart, just hate from annoying people. It passes by me."

Freifeld continues to describe with her characteristic humor: "I also didn't take the separation from my husband hard. I'm a strong and independent woman who doesn't need a man to lean on, it will pass without me feeling it. A few days went by, I didn't count, eight days 23 hours and 39 minutes, Wednesday, the day before he was supposed to return, my husband calls me hysterically."

At this point, Freifeld describes what her husband told her: "You don't understand what a hallucination this is, I happened to have a few free minutes so I went to the El Al website to check in. What do I discover, my flight is on Saturday???? I don't understand, is it possible I got confused about the date? It doesn't make sense, I'm a thousand percent sure the flight was on Thursday. Maybe they postponed the flight and didn't notify me??? I'm trying to reach them and they're not answering me, I'll update you, but be prepared that I'm probably not coming back on Thursday and who knows when the next closest flight is."

She hen said what happened next: "I already on edge, I've already made a bang in my wig, what next? No way am I going through another Sabbath alone. The kids catch me in hysteria and ask what happened, I carefully update them that there's a possibility dad won't be back before Sabbath. Shock, crying, screaming, but in the end, they managed to calm me down. After an hour my husband gets back to me. 'Listen, it's only getting more bizarre, I spoke with a customer service representative, the flight wasn't postponed, there is a flight tomorrow, but he insists that I was the one who went into the website and changed the date.'"

Freifeld described the conversation with her husband: "I explain to him that there's no way, I'm a religious person, I don't travel on Sabbath, but he insists that according to what he sees, the ticket holder requested to change the flight." Boom. The realization lands late like a low-cost flight. "Tell me, even if we assume you went in to make a change, weren't they supposed to contact you to charge you for the postponement?" I ask. "No, it's a flex ticket that allows free changes." I can't breathe."

"Here they entered a ping-pong of inquiries," Freifeld continues, "that didn't lead anywhere, until the representative remembered to mention that there is actually space on tomorrow's flight but they need to check with the sales department if it's possible to change back. Long story short, by heaven's grace and the sales department - it's possible. 'Listen, this is bizarre, maybe I received an upgrade email and accidentally confirmed it? I have no idea how this happened.' I do. I take a breath. 'Listen?' Flashback to the discussed tweet, among the flood of hate and good wishes I received a few responses that warned me that the picture reveals too much information that allows anyone who wants to cancel/change the reservation details."

According to her, "I didn't really pay attention, my husband was already deep into the flight and also like, why? would someone? want to???? Who is bored and psychopathic enough to try to enter the website and disrupt a stranger's flight??? What I didn't take into account was that the ticket was round-trip and that I'm on Twitter, the only place where there are bored and psychopathic people who have been hit hard enough by life to try to enter a website and disrupt a stranger's flight, just because his wife tweeted something they don't like or just because they can."

Freifeld is rightfully angry and says: "Someone simply wakes up, sees a tweet with their morning coffee and says to themselves, 'Well, I'm going to ruin a religious person's week who did nothing to me, without any purpose,' and then they enter the website, input details and change the flight date. To Saturday. Just like that, without knowing him, without knowing the circumstances under which he's flying, without thinking about the damage that would be caused if he doesn't return on time, about the high price he might have to pay to find an alternative flight not on Sabbath, about a super important event he might have missed. Hit and run. And also, like, what does he get out of it."

She further describes: "I have no idea who he is so I don't know if his message is 'stinking Haredim go do military service' or 'stinking Haredim you ruined the country' or 'stinking Haredim only Bibi.' Just hurting for the sake of causing pain. Probably all the spare luck we had my husband used up when he decided by chance to check in early and thus discovered it in advance. What if he had discovered it at the airport? If there was no space on the flight? So many things could have gone wrong along the way."

"Thank God," says Freifeld, "the story ended well, but this time I didn't take risks, I waited for my husband to come home, unpack his suitcases and take out the trash before I tweeted this. But I've learned my lessons, next time I won't tell him it happened because of a tweet on Twitter, what a card he has against me now. I'm done."

In an interview with 'Kikar HaShabbat', Racheli Freifeld says: "I simply can't believe this is happening to me, it shows how toxic and disgusting the discourse on social networks has become, I can't understand how much evil there is in a person to do such a thing, hatred of Haredim can make people lose their minds and in this case, it indeed happened. I'm still processing what I went through."