Female EL-AL Pilot
The first Haredi female El-Al pilot
Itamar Eichner
Published: 14.06.17
A
mother of 4 and observant of the prohibition regarding touching (Shomer
Negiah), Nechama Spiegel Novak makes history as the first Haredi pilot to fly
PM Netanyahu, as he visits Greece.
Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took off this afternoon to Thessaloniki for a
trilateral summit meeting with Greek and Cypriot leaders.
So far, this has been a routine matter, but this
EL AL flight possessed an exciting historical element: it was the first time a
prime minister was flown by an ultra-Orthodox female pilot.
The
plane is flown by two pilots: Captain Yinon Hadar and first officer, Nechama
Spiegel Novak, who, as was first reported in Yedioth Ahronoth, was accepted to
El Al pilots' course in 2015 and successfully completed it several months
ago.
Spiegel
Novak was educated at Beit Yaakov institutions in Jerusalem. She is married and
has four children and lives in a Haredi community in the Jerusalem area.
At the
age of 20, she caught the aviation bug and started taking flight lessons in the
US.
She
received a pilot's license in the United States and has since tried to get
accepted to the EL AL pilot course.
In
recent years, she passed the threshold requirements, but since she did not
serve in the air force, she fell through on the lack of sufficient flight hours.
But
Spiegel Novak did not give up, and made sure to fly to the United States every
year to study and accumulate flight hours.
After
meeting all the requirements and passing all the tests, she was notified in
2015 by El-Al that she had been accepted to its pilots' course set to be opened
in October of that year.
During
the course, she gave birth, and after her maternity leave, she returned to the
course and completed it.
An ultra-Orthodox pilot is not a matter of
convention, to put it mildly, in the ultra-Orthodox sector, but Spiegel Novak
tells her friends that "her life's dream has always been to be an
active pilot, and my husband is very helpful in it," even if
working as a pilot entails being away for long periods of time and working
irregular hours.
Her
family also praises her for her choice.
Spiegel
Novak is not the only trailblazer to come out of the Beit Ya'akov institutions.
A
close friend of hers is Yael Gold Zamir, the first of the ultra-Orthodox Beit
Yaakov school graduates to become a sixth-year medical student at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
Gold
Zamir is a social activist for the advancement of Haredi students and
coordinates the field of ultra-Orthodox students in medicine in Israel.
She is
a lecturer in nursing and a member of the Health Ministry forum to reduce gaps
in the provision of health services.
And if that
isn't enough, Spiegel Novak is the friend of another trailblazer: Rivki Ravitz,
the chief of staff of President Reuven Rivlin, who is the mother of 11
children.
Ha·re·di - KHäreˈdē,häˈrādē/
a member of any of various Orthodox Jewish sects
characterized by strict adherence to the traditional form of Jewish law and
rejection of modern secular culture, many of whom do not recognize the modern
state of Israel as a spiritual authority.
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