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Friday, November 18, 2011

New Chumra: Non-Jews Can't Celebrate Thanksgiving Either

A Guest Post By E. Fink

Despite the fact that many great rabbis sanctioned the celebration of Thanksgiving, the holy schools of New York, Lakewood and even in Los Angeles have at least some school on the holiday.

In Lakewood, the schools are in session and they want the bus companies to drive their children to school and back home after school. The drivers are not Jewish. Needless to say, this creates a serious hardship on the bus drivers who want to celebrate with their families.

The hardliners will just say that if they knew about the possibility of working on Thanksgiving then who cares if it annoys them. This may be true but it is not the way a nice person acts.

The right thing to do is to give the drivers their day off. The politically prudent thing to do is to give the drivers their day off.

For years, Jewish activists have tried to gain acceptance of Jewish holidays in the public sphere so that working Jews would be able to take their holy days and holidays without discrimination. Now that orthodox Jews are the majority in Lakewood it only seems fair to reciprocate.

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