Archive: Opinions

Pesach (Passover) begins on Monday, March 25th at sundown.  The Lansing Central School District has also scheduled a Board Of Education meeting around sundown that night.  While Jews are certainly a minority within the district, scheduling a public meeting on a major religious holiday is wrong.  It would be unthinkable to schedule such a meeting on Christmas Eve.  Why is it thinkable to do so on Pesach?

We live in a democracy, and we are all familiar with the concept of 'the majority rules'.  Any Jew with half a brain understands this and is fine dealing with it.  While members of minorities are sometimes treated hatefully because they are different, the most constant reminder is from well meaning people who are ignorant of their traditions.  But for the most part you let it pass.  It's part of life, no big deal.

The Christmas or Easter of the Jewish tradition are the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanna (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).  While there are a half dozen important holidays I think that most Jews consider Pesach (Passover) to be right up there with the High Holy Days.  It celebrates the liberation of Israelites from bondage in Egypt.  It should be important to Christians as well, because some scholars think Jesus's last supper was a seder.

The seder is a combination of a religious service, a retelling of the story of the Exodus, and a really tasty dinner, conducted in Jewish homes.  Pesach lasts eight days, but most Jews in this country consider the first day (which begins at sundown) most important, and this is when most seders take place.  Some families will have it on the second day so you can celebrate with your family the first night and your spouse's family the second.

When school is held on a major Jewish holiday I don't think it's so bad.  Jewish children are excused for religious observance and can make up the work later.  They participate every day, so one or two missed days does not diminish their experience.

When a public meeting that invites community input is held on a major holiday it is a different matter.  The public has a chance to weigh in on issues that directly impact their children, lives, and wallets only twice each month.  Sure Jews can watch a Passover school board meeting on TV, but they can never get back that rare chance to participate.  Holding a school board meeting on Passover is like saying, “We don't want to hear from Jews in our district tonight.”

By the way, I am not one of those people who thinks we should take the 'Christmas' out of Christmas.  I think it is very nice to be wished a 'Merry Christmas' by Christians who are hoping I will be merry at a time that is significantly meangful to them.  It's less nice to be wished 'Happy Holidays' when we all know the phrase only exists to placate the politically correct -- don't even get me started on the tyranny of political correctness!  Chanukah is a lesser holiday that happens to fall around the same time as Christmas.  Giving it the same weight is distasteful, I think, to Christians as well as Jews.  So I think 'Merry Christmas' is a very fine thing to say to anybody.

The first of four questions traditionally asked by the youngest present at a seder is, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”  The answer is supposed to be that God took the Israelites from a society in which they had no rights and no voice and facilitated a journey to the promised land where they would have those things.

I certainly understand that realistically almost nobody takes advantage of the community input opportunity at school board meetings.  But the symbolism of taking away one group's voice, especially on this night, is very troubling, disenfranchising and disrespectful.

The dates of Jewish holidays are easily found in a Google search.  There is a synagogue located in our township (Lansing is the only community in the county outside of Ithaca that has one), and two Rabbis that I know of in Tompkins County.  It is not hard to find out when these holidays take place.  Pesach doesn't fall on a Monday that often, so it isn't even an issue most years.  I hope Lansing school officials will take a moment to look up the dates of all their constituents' major holidays when planning future Board Of Education schedules.

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