For many students, holidays come and go. Christmas and Easter pass by every year without much thought.
Some take the holiday as an opportunity to embrace their faith, and some simply appreciate their day off. Other students don’t get to enjoy either option.
A day in the life of a Jewish person on Yom Kippur is as follows: wake up, have ample time to practice their faith, fast until sundown, experience the “Sabbath of all Sabbaths,” go to sleep. Yom Kippur is a day of worship and rest, and requires the complete focus of the practitioner.
For the small number of Jewish students at LFHS on Yom Kippur, it’s quite different: wake up, go to school, go to practice, do homework, study, go to sleep.
With Yom Kippur fast approaching and Rosh Hashanah this weekend, how can Jewish students express their faith when they are instead trapped in the confines of school?
Many students battle this question and struggle to decide what to do on most Jewish holidays.
Yom Kippur is a holiday spanning this year from Sunday, September 24th to Monday, September 25th and is considered the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. It’s a day that allows Jewish people to ask for forgiveness from God, which includes partaking in a day abstaining from all work as well as fasting.
It can be difficult to follow the rules of Yom Kippur when being required to go to school. Not only is it clearly difficult to abstain from all work while at school, it is also difficult to fast when engaging in both mentally and physically exhausting tasks.
Of course, a student can miss school on a holiday for religious reasons, but this will result in a student missing vital learning time. School is still in session and the student will have to make up all the work they missed, which could lead to stress during the holiday.
Many schools in the area allow all students off on the Jewish holidays, including Stevenson, Highland Park, Libertyville, New Trier, and Vernon Hills. While Lake Forest has a small Jewish population, that shouldn’t undermine these students’ efforts to partake in their culture.
LFHS should consider how to better accommodate religious diversity to promote the proud celebration of that diversity.
Not only would students benefit from a change of this kind, but faculty as well. While it may not be practical for the school to close on the Jewish holidays, perhaps a group of administrators and students could work together to allow those who would take off to not have the burden of needing to “make up” the missed work.
An initiative of this kind could provide valuable learning opportunities for all students. If the school allows students to openly recognize their faith in a way that is visible to students of other faiths, those students can all learn about other traditions and come to a better understanding of how our diversity makes us stronger.
Jewish students, as well as students of any other culture, deserve to celebrate their faith without having to compromise their learning. A solution may not be easy, but a solution is necessary.
