Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Catherine Harper (tylikeskimo.com) | |
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:19:07 -0600 (MDT) |
Just a moment to note my own background. I'm pagan, and pretty darned visiably so (though I'm not currently involved with organizing many large public events). I'm part of a religiously and culturally diverse community (for that matter, quite economically and racially diverse, though politically only along a much narrower spectrum), that includes within it a number of communities of close physical proximity and greater or lesser degrees of intentionality. On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Racheli Gai wrote: > Wow, it sounds like you have a serious chip on your shoulder: Do you > really believe that if an event is scheduled on a Jewish holidy it means > that people don't think Jews exist? Could > there be other reasons for the scheduling, which don't have anything to do > with ignoring/disliking Jews? Okay, to me this doesn't sound like a serious chip on one's shoulder to me at all. To me this sounds like something indicative of how much people are aware of other people's constraints, and to what extent people are really considered to be part of the community. First off, scheduling sucks. Anyone who's done a large amount of event organization knows that, and everyone makes mistakes sometime and the only thing you can do is get by as best you can. (Or, sometimes it's not even a mistake, per se, it's balancing several conflicts and settling on the one you hope will be least conflicted.) But when you're in a community, and feel part of a community, especially if you feel like members of whatever affiliation in question make up a fairly large part of the community, it feels really weird when your constraints do not seem to be evaluated equally against those of those of other people's. (Though Samhain, for instance, gets a certain amount of coattails cover because of Halloween.) The truth of the matter is that in the US, almost nothing will be scheduled to conflict with Christmas of Easter, but nothing else is given that kind of consideration. Most pagans (at least those beyond the flaming teenage variety) seem to feel a social obligation to be "good sports" about this kind of thing... and yet I have mixed feelings about it all. I mean, I think discussions along this line always go better with a fair dose of humor and compassion. But I don't think being a good sport means you should sit down and shut up, either. I think even such exchanges as "Hey, um, there are a lot of us that will be effected by this, did you notice us or take us in to account." "Oh, no we didn't, I'm really sorry, let's make sure that these things are at least on the calendar for next year" (or alternately "Yeah, and I'm really sorry about hte conflict, but these other factors left us without any good choices.") are really important. I'm not talking about hard and fast rules, I'm just talking about courtesy and acknowledgement. Scheduling is hard, and it won't be perfect, but we can at least treat eachother well in the process, yes? > I think that you must realize that if *everyone's* holidays were taken > into account, the possibility of finding times to meet will be reduced to > somewhere around zero - since holidays are not the only element which puts > constraints on organizing events. > Within a community the issue is different: Of course I don't think we > should schedule meetings on *any member's* holy (or highly significant) > days! This isn't the same, IMO, as trying to arrange general-public > events. I don't think there's such a clear line between events inside and outside of a community. When I have organized open invitation events, I usually have a fair idea who is likely to be interested. There are whole classes of events I can be pretty certain my Christian friends are unlikely to be interested in, so when scheduling those I know I'm relatively free not to worry about that set of constraints (but I try to keep my eyes open anyway). I know one of my Mormon friends feels pretty strongly about avoiding commerce on Sundays, so I'll at least make an effort avoid planning group shopping expeditions she'd otherwise be interested in. A lot of it is as simple as knowing that if it is held at a certain time, all these people I'd like to see won't be there. As events get bigger and more public, it does get complicated... but at the very least, if you need to make a decision along the lines of "gee, in this case the interests of everyone else are going to have to override the needs of this particular group" it's important to be diplomatic. Because there is an implicit message of either "we didn't consider you" or "we don't think you are a large or important enough part of this community to schedule around". Pagans are a fairly small and fairly new religion (or philsophy, or culture affiliation, take your pick) and I think for the most part we don't expect a lot of respect, and are generally satisfied if we can avoid public ridicule. (And yet, I know there have been complaints when a folk music event was scheduled on top of Beltane, because there are a *lot* of pagan folk musicians and it was considered insensitive. It depends on the event...) Having said that, I know that I at least feel an enormous debt of gratitude to my Jewish friends, both for the ways they have helped me question general mass culture assumptions (for instance, the amount of activities associated with Christian observances -- though often, amusingly, with pagan roots -- that are in the public schools) and given me and members ofmy community both moral and material support in questioning such things publically. It's always a difficult question, when to go with the flow, and accept that for many things the majority will carry the day, and when to challenge the assumption that says "you must understand that you are a minority and that your customs simply don't matter to the rest of us." Catherine _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L
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Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Emily Pitt, September 26 2003
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Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Racheli Gai, September 26 2003
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Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Jeanne Goodman, September 26 2003
- Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Racheli Gai, September 26 2003
- Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Catherine Harper, September 26 2003
- Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Jeanne Goodman, September 26 2003
- Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Diane Margolis, September 27 2003
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Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Jeanne Goodman, September 26 2003
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Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Racheli Gai, September 26 2003
- Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Catherine Harper, September 26 2003
- Re: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups Howard Landman, October 1 2003
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