A few months ago we received an order for tefillin, tzitzit, mezuzah and kippot from a customer in Malaysia. As you might imagine, we don’t receive a whole lot of orders that ship to Malaysia. Little did I know that it would turn into a protracted shipping ordeal that I would almost call a near-international incident.
At first, when the shipment started to drag on, the would-be recipient informed me, “I received an update from DHL that the Malaysian customs aren’t releasing the shipment and are for some reason reluctant to return it. I’m pressuring them to have it returned or transferred, but right now I haven’t received any other update. Will keep you informed.”
I contacted our DHL subcontractor in Israel. He’s a good guy with a lot of experience, but I was a bit frustrated with his failure to warn me. Before shipping I had asked him if DHL ships to Malaysia. I wish he had told me that since there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Malaysia, it would get there, but would be refused entry. Sort of like if I tried to fly to Iran carrying an Israeli passport.
“I’m sorry to report that our DHL contact in Israel says the customs officials in Malaysia are not willing to cooperate at all,” he wrote. “Rather than forward it to Australia or return it to Israel, they have confiscated the package.”
I have a feeling that the difficulties dealing with the customs officials in Malaysia may be related to “trickle down antisemitism” stemming from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has been widely criticized for his antisemitic remarks on numerous occasions.
Things were started to look dire. After trying to figure out a solution, I told our customer the situation was looking bleak: “I hate to think of tefillin and mezuzah getting destroyed. Is there any way you could intervene on your end?”
A week or two later I received this reply: “Thank you for the update. We have been notified by the local DHL team as well on this situation. We have recently communicated with the local government representative from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and appealed for this release. We have written a formal request for a special permit to them today, and they are working on our case and revert on their decision in the next few days. We pray for G-d’s mercy and favor on this, as it is a great distress for me as well to allow the tefillin and mezuzah to be detained or destroyed.”
Eventually there was a happy ending to the nail-biting affair. The parcel was returned to us and then we were able to send it to Malaysia via the customer’s brother in Australia.
