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

[Emily Pitt (epitt]

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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