YESTERDAY, many Jewish stu-dents at the University were fast-ing as part of the holiday of Yom Kippur. While religion forbids these observant Jews from eating or drinking anything for 24 hours, these students still must go to classes or are responsible for the work they miss. The University should give all students a day off on each of the Jewish High Holy Days.
According to Hillel, Jewish students make up around 10 percent of the University population. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the two most important Jewish holidays of the year: Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance, usually follows about a week later. The two most important Christian holidays are Christmas and Easter. Students at the University, like most students across the country, don't go to school on Christmas as part of winter break. Likewise, Easter always falls on a Sunday. While it would be inconceivable for Christians to have to go to school on Christmas or Easter, it should be just as implausible for Jews to attend class on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.
While the University should give these days off, it is important to note that the vast majority of University professors are very accommodating to students who miss class due to religious holidays, and they should be commended for that. The administration also allows professors to cancel classes and make them up, if the professors must observe a religious holiday. This sensitivity to religion shows that the University cares about its students and faculty. But students would not have to rely on the understanding of professors and the administration if they got the days off like they should.
Because the University has classes on these holidays, it causes an unfair competition between academics and religion. Services during these holidays often interfere with classes. While it would be possible for a student to go to class after services, it breaks certain religious laws. According to Shellby Apple, interim director of Hillel, "If the University canceled classes, we probably would have more Jewish people coming to services." Yom Kippur is so important that Sandy Koufax, the great Dodger left-hander in the 1960s, refused to pitch a game in the World Series because it fell on that holiday.
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Yet many Jewish students do in fact go to class on these holidays. They do so for any combination of reasons, but the most important one is that they don't want to miss class. Students who take off for religious holidays are then at a disadvantage. In a society in which politicians repeatedly bemoan the lack of religion, faith and morals in society, pitting academics against religion does not help the problem.
Provost Gene Block, who's in charge of the academic calendar, counters in an e-mail interview that the University does not observe any religious holidays during the academic year. He also notes that canceling class for any additional days would mean that more days would have to be added at the beginning or end of the semester. The larger issue, though, is what holidays would be observed. Block said he believes "that selecting certain religious holidays over others would be divisive."
The Jewish holidays also present a problem for the Jewish faculty at the school. Professors who observe these holidays are forced to cancel classes and then reschedule them, often at inconvenient times for many students. Prof. Sidney Milkis of the government department, who is Jewish, said, "I believe Congress observes the High Holy days - U.Va., a public university, should as well."
Milkis is entirely correct. If Congress can decide that these Jewish holidays are so important that they are not in session for them, the University certainly could make that judgment call.
While canceling classes on the Jewish holidays would be more of a matter of convenience than necessity for Jewish students at the University, it certainly would be helpful. The University must show that it has a genuine concern for the diversity which it tries to foster, and running away from the issues of religious holidays ignores the problem. The current system is fair, but that does not make it right.
(Harris Freier's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hfreier@cavalierdaily.com.)
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