Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Yom Kippur and diversity in groups

[Sue Pniewski (SPniewski]

Racheli-
I have to agree with you there in experience.
Unfortunate, but true.
My personal religion has sacred days different from most traditional.
Nobody asks.
I don't make a fuss.
We also celebrate Christmas for the spirit of benevolence.
Plus, my job kindly pays me to stay home on that day.
I suspect the only fair way to go about it is to ask everybody interested to
put their holidays on a master calendar, and then try to scehdule around it.
I suspect in practice that would never work, since there aren't many days
left.
I'm sure somebody has planned an event on the vernal equinox.
I guess I should be angry that they don't care about me.
I guess I should be hurt that my priorities/needs aren't foremost on
everybodies list.
I'm not.
In the effort to be human, compassionate, forgiving, and understanding,
I understand we all have different priorities, needs, wants, desires, and
holidays.
We all can't have it our way.
All this bickering sounds like my son's preschool class.
We can't ever please everybody.
Lets live with it and make the best of it.


-------------------------------------
Susan Pniewski, Esq.



-----Original Message-----
From: racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com [mailto:racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com]
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 10:36 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_Yom Kippur and diversity in groups



Does anyone out there know when Muslim holidays happen?
Does anyone take care not to schedule then?
I doubt it!  I haven't belonged to one group as yet which took notice of
other minorities, but whenever anyone forgets when a Jewish holidy takes
place, recriminations start flying in no time.

WHY???

R.  

>You said:
>>This is the problem with scheduling any event, there are only so many 
>days in the year, and once you limit it to weekends within a certain 
>quarter and cut out other conflicts, only certain dates are left. 
>Hopefully any event planner looks at the calendar and factors in the 
>effect major holiday conflicts have on attendance, as well as on 
>perception of the event. It may help to know that (I'm pretty sure) at 
>least one of the event planners involved in scheduling it is Jewish, so 
>it was not an intentional slight.  >

>Although it is true that it is difficult to schedule some events, and
>that many holidays do come up on our calendar, it is a completely
>different thing to schedule an event on the most important holiday of the
>year, when you KNOW that by doing so, you are sending a message that that
>particular community simply does not matter. I know that it is difficult,
>but really, is a community likely to give the same weight to avoiding a
>scheduling conflict with Yom Kippur as they would to scheduling on
>Christmas? I feel very strongly that it is NOT OK to schedule a major
>event, or an event of any kind, on Yom Kippur. Would you schedule an
>important cohousing event on Christmas eve? That is the comparison you
>have to make. Yom Kippur is the most important, major holiday in Judaism,
>which is a major world religion.

>And if one of the event planners is Jewish, does that make it OK? What if
>there was an African-American person on your committee who told you that
>the entire African-American community wouldn't mind if you held a major
>event on MLK day? Why on earth would someone tokenize an entire community
>by asking one member of the community to speak for all members? And does
>the fact that it was not intentional, actually absolve the planners from
>the responsibility to reschedule the event once they realized their
>error? I think not. We are human and we make mistakes. But to refuse to
>learn from our mistakes, especially when they affect others, is
>oppressive.



>You also said:
>>I think the reality is that as we do more and more events, we'll be 
>conflicting with each other's events as well as with EVERY religion's 
>holidays out there. The key, as I see it, is to have so much going on 
>that missing one event will not be significant, given that you know 
>another one will be along before you know it.>

>To say, "Oh, too bad, I guess some people will be unable to attend our
>event, but we'll still have it on that day" is ok if you're thinking
>about, say, Flag day or President's Day, but not on Yom Kippur. This is
>completely different because it speaks immediately to issues of privilege
>and valuing diversity.

>For me, one of the reasons why I joined cohousing was to be exposed to
>various cultures, ideas, traditions, etc. I know that this particular
>issue is one that many groups grapple with, but there are ways to discuss
>it that don't shut down the doors to communication. As a Jew, I face this
>same issue every year, and it does get old. Obviously this is an
>extremely sensitive issue for me, as well as for many other Jews. I just
>hope that people can see that, and can understand why.


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-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com (Racheli Gai)
-----------------------------------------------------------


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