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

[Racheli Gai (racheli]

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.


>_______________________________________________
>Cohousing-L mailing list
>Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
>http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

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


_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L