Born in Belgium, she fled with her family during the Nazi occupation in 1941. She had a religious upbringing, attended an Orthodox Jewish school in New York, where a strictly modest dress code applied, and she still observes most of the laws of the Sabbath. Both her second husband, who died three years ago, and her first (they divorced in 1986) were rabbis.

She described one of her grandchildren as being Hasidic or Haredi, and said, “The idea of having a Haredi population is wonderful, as long as they don’t tell me what to do.”

Ms. Rabinowitz had been visiting family in New York before boarding the Dec. 2 El Al flight home. By her account, the flight attendant had a brief conversation in Hebrew with her ultra-Orthodox seatmate-to-be, which she could not understand, then persuaded Ms. Rabinowitz to come and see the “better” seat, at the end of a row of three.

“There were two women seated there,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oy, if they are going to talk all night I am not going to be happy.’” She asked the flight attendant if he was suggesting the switch because the man next to her wanted her to move, she said, “and he said ‘yes’ without any hesitation.”

WHEN Ms. Rabinowitz returned to her original seat to collect her hand luggage, with the attendant’s assistance, she asked the other passenger, “Why does it matter? I’m 81 years old. And he says, ‘It’s in the Torah.’ ” After briefly arguing the point, she moved to the new seat. “I thought, ‘He’s going to be unhappy,’” she recalled. “There was no other seat available for him next to a man so I thought I’d try it.”

The other women in the new row were busy working and did not chatter. Still, Ms. Rabinowitz said she felt further insulted because the attendant had tried to mislead her.

“The flight attendant treated me as if I was stupid,” she said, “but that’s a common problem in Israel if you don’t speak Hebrew. They assume things about you. They assume they can put one over you.”