The Zeitgeist

The 747 in My Sukkah;

Captain Sully at My Shabbat Table

(Note: This article appeared during the first week of November 2014 in The 5 Towns Jewish Times and deals with some very hyper-local NIMBY issues in my neighborhood)

When the rabbis who wrote the Talmud set forth all the intricate rules for the construction of a Sukkah, including how its roof is to be partially open to the sky, they knew about rain, wind and cold, but no had idea about jumbo jets screeching overhead.

If it’s raining, extremely windy or bitterly cold, we are in fact enjoined from eating in the Sukkah because we’d be uncomfortable. But what about deafening noise pollution? Would this detract from the performance of the mitzvah of Sukkah or provide a legitimate excuse for relocating indoors? If you can’t hear yourself (or anyone else) talk, if the heavy noise would cause headaches, make you irritable or even rattle your bones wouldn’t this be on a par with being rained on?

As fantastical as these questions may sound, over the past six weeks in many parts of the Five Towns, this has not been hypothetical or theoretical. Sections of our area have been bombarded with an aural blitzkrieg that at certain times of the day and evening make our neighborhood seem like it’s situated atop the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Since Rosh Hashanah the southern and western ends of the Five Towns have been under unremitting and unrelenting air “attack” at some of the most inconvenient hours. Planes have routinely been careening across our nighttime sky from 10:30pm to 12:30am. Naturally, these are the hours when most people are trying to go to sleep. This is seven days a week. The planes have been coming over about every 90 seconds or so without pause. If you went to the Woodmere Town Dock at the end of Woodmere Blvd, you’d have seen dozens of planes all lined up in their descent to JFK just a few hundred feet apart from one another. No end of people coming to New York.

The planes resume their auditory assault at about 5:45am running past 8:30. This is also every day. Who needs an alarm clock or 1010 WINS when you can know exactly when the midnight flight from Tel Aviv crosses over your house? It could be argued that the FAA is concerned that we make it to the 6:30 minyan or that the kids all catch their buses, but the time we arise in the morning ought to be our choice, one shouldn’t be jolted out of bed by the sound of jet engines while in a semi-somnolent state.

On the weekends, having a Shabbat shalom can be difficult to say the least because the planes have been coming over uninterruptedly day and night.  Saturday and Sunday afternoons have been a nonstop jet scream fest. Because on Saturdays most of us have no electronic media options to masque the noise, we have planes as our Shabbat companions. Again, I’m sure the FAA, in its own way is urging us to sing plenty of zmirot at the Shabbat lunch table to improve our ruchniut and drown out the cacophony. Plenty of food and alcoholic drink will be necessary for that Shabbat nap if your consciousness is to contend with the planes screeching overhead as well.

Because this time of year we’re not using air conditioning, there are fewer noise buffers. If you want to open your window, the noise gets louder and louder yet. Interestingly, it’s actually less noisy while in the plane or at the airport as the planes and terminals are girded with heavy noise insulation. Not so most of our homes.

The planes come in across Hewlett Bay, fly over the southern streets of Woodsburgh and then continue on over parts of Woodmere, Lawrence and Cedarhurst. Why the planes can’t fly over Reynolds Channel (or the Atlantic Ocean) and then make a right turn to the runway after bypassing the Five Towns, I have no idea. At La Guardia the planes take some sharp turns to make the runways, why can’t they at JFK?

Our villages don’t allow construction work or gardeners before 7;00am or after dark or on Sundays in most of our neighborhoods, why then is JFK permitted to send planes over about every 90 seconds late at night and before dawn day in and day out? This materially detracts from our quality of life.

We just had elections a few days ago A lot of our local elected officials were running for reelection. There were a slew of candidates looking to fill vacant seats in Congress, the Assembly and elsewhere. Yet air noise was not high on the agenda of folks on the ballot. It seems as though from candidates to residents, everyone has become resigned to the notion of living with intense levels of noise pollution, kind of like the way a lot of our ancestors in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries made their peace with pogroms by the Cossacks. Why all the candidates weren’t championing this key quality of life issue is mystifying. Why we weren’t pushing them (and our sitting officeholders) about it is ridiculous.

Equanimity in the face of a major diminution of our quality of life is no virtue. (Apologies to Barry Goldwater). One of the few elected officials not on the ballot last week has been just about the only one who has taken these complaints seriously and has actually tried to do something about it. I’m referring to Senior Town Councilman Tony Santino.  When alerted by yours truly to the deafening situation he got on the phone with the FAA and sent strong letters out to our US Senators and Congresswoman. Unfortunately, it’s resolved anything yet. According to one of Santino’s staff people: “It's a constant finger pointing game between the FAA -- who controls flight patterns and approach and landing routes (a federal matter under their jurisdiction)  and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who administers the number of aircraft slotted to takeoff and land from gates at JFK (LGA and other area airports as well).”

“In addition to Councilman Santino's continued work to pressure the FAA to alter their flight, departure and arrival patterns ensuring all communities surrounding the vicinity of the airport share the burden of the noise -- and as someone who was there[in the Five Towns] all weekend myself less than a mile and a half from your home, I can concur that this has happened -- it was plane after plane landing as I was at Rock Hall with friends and on Central Avenue yesterday. It's really ridiculous. I believe that when multiple governmental complaints are lodged, the FAA and Port Authority seem to take the concerns more seriously.”

Which brings me back to getting our officeholders and candidates on the horn to the PA and FAA on our behalf. Having our representatives stand up for Five Towns residents to the airport managers would be a direct, tangible benefit that would improve our daily lives.

Last week it was announced that after something like a ten year wait, the Feds finally approved the expenditure of millions of dollars to install noise meters in our area to gauge the decibel levels overhead which means they’ll let the planes continue their patterns so they can compile data for a tome-like study replete with myriad suggestions to mitigate the noise. It’s high probable that implementing those eventual suggestions will take as many years as it did to get the noise meters installed in the first place. The planes fly quickly overhead as the wheels of government grind ever so slowly.

Most of us pay a fortune in taxes to live the suburban dream here and we shouldn’t be victimized by our own government (in the form of the FAA and the Port Authority) by living under bone-crushing noise pollution. Noise pollution is just as bad as air pollution or toxic chemicals. We’d be appalled by the specter of either of the aforementioned forms of toxicity if they were directly upon us and so we should also be angry about crazy, uninterrupted deafening sound levels.

If you’re as upset about the air noise as I am and would like to be proactive, you can call the FAA’s manager at JFK. His name is Jerry Spampanato and his office number is 212-435-3640 and his mobile number is 718-244-4111 (found on the FAA noise complaint web page). You can also email the FAA’s Noise Ombudsman at

9-AWA-NoiseOmbudsman@faa.gov.

In Fiddler on the Roof someone asks the rabbi if there is a blessing for the Czar, and to paraphrase the rabbi’s answer, “may G-d bless and keep the planes far away from us,” so we can enjoy some of the peace and quiet most of us moved out of the City for in the first place.