Having difficulty to stay
awake when watching TV or at the computer results in no blog.
“Congress shall make no law
respecting the establishment of a religion or prohibit the free exercise
thereof”. Those are the first words of the “Bill of Rights”.
SOPUS has interpreted that to
mean that religion should have no place in government down to the smallest
political entity.
That means that there should
be no law favoring or forcing upon others any religion be it Christian, Muslin,
or Jewish or any of their various sects. There shall be no action that is
offensive to the sensibilities of any one of a different religion.
Celebrations of any religious
holiday should not result in the forced closing of any civic institution. The
only exceptions, Easter and Christmas, are not legally mandated, but result
from what was the near 100% domination
of Christianity in various forms from the beginning of this nation when there
were too few not at worship for the institution to function.
Blue laws are
unconstitutional. Stores and services have the right to do business and cannot
be made to close by any laws.
It is true that schools in
Plainfield used to be closed on the Jewish Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. That was because so many of the teachers were
Jewish and would be absent. It would be too expensive to hire substitutes if
they could be found. Also the large number of Jewish students would have had a
negative effect on attendance records.
Recently a similar
accommodation has been made for the Muslim holy days.
However, there should be one self-evident
principle; respect for those of a different religion. Don’t deliberately or
ignorantly disfranchise any citizen by scheduling meetings on their religious
holidays. Meetings can be moved from traditional days for many reasons including
those that are personal to some of its members. In fact in November the Agenda fixing
meeting and the business meeting have been combined and rescheduled for a
Tuesday, November 1.
This October the Agenda
setting Session was on Rosh Hashanah and this Tuesday the Council meeting will
be held on Tuesday night, Kol Nidre* night of Yom Kippur, the most holy of Jewish
holidays.
Need I say more?
*Kol Nidre is the opening
prayer of Yom Kippur asking for absolution from all vows made to God in prayer
or stress that were not done.” "All
vows we are likely to make, all oaths and pledges we are likely to take between
this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be
relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let
our vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths.”
It is sung by the Cantor and Reformed congregations with music from an organ
and cello.
