Just in time for Passover, the Transportation Security Administration is offering travelers faith-sensitive pat-downs at airports — to safeguard their matzo.
Instead of stuffing the brittle, unleavened bread into a plastic tub and sliding it through a scanner, Jewish folks can opt for a more gentle screening of the holiday food, the agency said.
“Passengers traveling with religious items, including handmade matzoh, may request a hand inspection by the TSO [transportation security officer] of the items at the security checkpoint,” reads an advisory posted on the agency’s Web site.
“Some travelers will be carrying boxes of matzo, which are consumed as part of the Passover ritual. Matzo can be machine or handmade and are typically very thin and fragile, and break easily.”
The TSA advisory also explains that its officers are sensitive to other Passover-related items likely to be carried by Jewish travelers before and after the holiday, which begins April 14 at sundown and ends on April 22 at nightfall.
“Our work force is aware of the unique items carried by individuals and religious practices individuals may engage in while traveling,” the TSA site says.
“This may include reading of religious text or participating in prayer rituals. Observant travelers may be wearing a head covering, prayer shawl and phylacteries — Hebrew, kippah, tallit and tefillin.”
The TSA announcement may read like it was drafted by the PC police, but the agency hasn’t always been so sensitive.
This week, TSA officers refused to let a deaf and mute woman, Heidi Wright, onto a flight to Phoenix because she wasn’t able to say her name while an agent checked her identification, Wright’s sister claimed.
The daughter of a 67-year-old disabled woman filed a complaint against a TSA officer last year, claiming the agent pulled her mom out of her wheelchair and frisked her backside in front of other travelers at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Maryland.
A breast-cancer survivor claimed in 2012 that a TSA officer in Phoenix ordered a pat-down of her prosthetic breast in a public terminal.
The TSA is readying for an increase in travelers during the Passover holiday.