In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

This is made more challenging by the fact that the holidays move around
on the secular calendar. It's quite easy for even most Jews to miss
the fact that a certain secular date is going to wind up conflicting
with a major holiday more than a few weeks before the date.

When you live in an area that is seriously multi-ethnic and
multi-religious, things get interesting. I try to have all of the major
Jewish, Christian and Islamic holidays on my Palm Pilot, but somehow a
bunch got dropped off when I bought a new one.

Well, you're doing better than I am, then. Although I do have a
Jewish calendar at home, of course, and do have access to the
information on the internet, it is not uncommon to hear things like
"When is Rosh Hashanah this year?" uttered in our home and in our
religious community. We all have the wherewithall to find out, but we
don't always have the information at hand. I put the holidays into my
Palm only sporadically, and not usually more than a few months ahead of
time. I believe there is freeware/shareware out there to help out with
this, but I haven't gotten around to downloading any. (Partly because
I have to use a custom conduit to sync my datebook to my employer's
calendar/meeting system, and am afraid to mess with it.)

I myself made an appointment for my son during Passover, even when I
knew exactly when it was. I was trying to fit it into all of our usual
weekday scheduling insanity, and totally forgot about Passover for a
moment. I did realize about 15 minutes later and called back and
changed it, but I have to agree with you that something like this could
easily be no more than an unintentional slip-up.

I agree, that in an ideal world, teachers with Jewish students in their
classes should make sure to be sensitive and find out from the families
what special needs/restrictions will arise from their religion, but I
don't think we can expect or even want teachers to try to figure this
out on their own when observances vary from family to family. No major
tests on Yom Kippur is probably a pretty universally good idea where
there are Jewish families. Expecting a teacher to realize in advance
that, for example, internet usage would be a problem for observant
Jewish families on the last two days of Passover might asking a bit much.



Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)
--
"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to
work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt