It’s a shame that the people left picking up the pieces of a scheduling error that placed homecoming on Yom Kippur are three or four seniors at Vashon High School. They’re the ones who are now scrambling, working fast and furiously to reschedule an event that takes place in a matter of days.
At the same time, it’s unfortunate that the mistake even occurred. Yom Kippur is the holiest of days in the Jewish calendar, a day of atonement that brings millions of Jews, even those who are normally non-observant, to temples and synagogues around the world. Its significance has deepened in the post-Holocaust years. For many families, it’s a time to remember relatives who died in German death camps.
As is so often the case in a situation like this, no one really is to blame. It was a simple oversight, due in part to the fact that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur fall a little earlier on the Western calendar this year than they normally do.
The Seattle School District proactively sends out a calendar to its 90 principals letting them know about the various religious holidays that their culturally diverse schools need to take into consideration. At our tiny school district, on our remarkably homogeneous Island, no such calendar gets mailed out. Many of us, from school administrators to journalists, were paying scant attention.
Louise Olsen, president of Havurat Ee Shalom, says she hopes to address this situation. Borrowing a page from the Jewish Federation in Arizona, she’ll now send out a five-year list of the Jewish high holidays to the school district. She has also contacted some Jewish teachers at the public schools, who will likely use the scheduling error as fodder for class discussions.
And while the issue put some Jewish families into an uncomfortable spot, it also provided an opportunity, some report, for probing and heartfelt discussions. Both Matt Bergman and Andrew Schwarz, observant Jews and members of the Havurat, have daughters who are seniors; both families talked in depth about the situation their families found themselves in.
So too was the case for a handful of McMurray parents who won’t go to the middle school’s open house tonight because it’s Rosh Hashanah, another of the high holidays. Risa Stahl, one such parent, said the situation — and her personal dilemma about how to handle it — gave her an opportunity to talk to a neighbor about when to speak out in defense of cultural and religious diversity and when to stay quiet.
Olsen often uses the phrase “bashert,” Yiddish for “it was meant to be,” when life unfolds imperfectly. And so she did last week, as she discussed the complexities surrounding the district’s scheduling mistake. “Maybe there’s a reason for this,” she said. “Maybe it will lead to increased awareness and sensitivity.”
Meanwhile, we applaud those students who are working hard to move the homecoming dance up one week. We wish them a fantastic homecoming — one that many students will attend.
