borisp: I think you should arm yourself with a billboard and campout in protest at this school!

I think JC in its left leaning ways, listens to the small but loud voices. In this case, they decided to appease the 3% population by having Eid al-Adha a holiday. In NYC, Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur are holidays as well as Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

borisp. I have sad news. No one cares about your happiness.

population demographics, and i'm sure that you probably knew this already, but wanted to make a dumb thread anyway.

With over 310 religions and denominations within the US, not forgetting our Native American Tribal beliefs, you will NEVER keep everyone happy.

LIST OF RELIGIOUS AND U.S PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

https://diversity.umn.edu/eoaa/religiouscalendar20152016

Hi, some time ago Jersey City school board decided to close the schools for al-Adha, a Muslim holiday. According to the article I read, the motivation was to not exclude children of Muslim faith and to acknowledge diverse population of Jersey City.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the schools will be open on Rosh Hashana and on Yom Kippur too.

Now, normally I wouldn't care about that omission. Why? Well, first, I don't think that we should stop working for all possible religious holidays. Consider that Jews observe not just Rosh Hashana (that 2 days), and Yom Kippur, but there are other major holidays. Passover (2 to 7 days, depending on how religious one is), Hanukkah, Sukkot, and so on. Now, Muslims have at least 2 major Holy days. Add to that Coptic Christians and Russian Orthodox people, they celebrate Christian holidays, but on the Julian calendar, so their Christmas and Easter are 13 days behind, so that at least 2 more days of holidays. Then, there are Hindus (I am not sure, but I think at least 5 major days), buddhist - at least 2 for Tibetan buddhists, and I don't know about other schools. There may be shamanists, satanists and so on and so forth. Note, that I don't mean to disrespect someone by omitting their religion or miscalculating their holidays, it's just that I don't know much about them all. So, I figured, if we were to start closing schools and/or offices on each major religious holiday we risk adding from two weeks to a month or two of holidays. That doesn't look like a good idea.

Second, yes, I know that Christians got lucky and their religious holidays managed to become traditional ones in this country, so they got it good. However, the fact that it's not feasible to celebrate all religious holidays doesn't make me think "ok, since I can't get it, let's ruin it for Christians too!" They got lucky and it's fine by me.

I figured, as long as my employer doesn't mind that I stay home on my religious holidays, and as long as the school doesn't hold my kids' absences on the same holidays against them, we're good.

Let the school be open on those days, i wouldn't interpret it a sign of disrespect.

Or, rather I didn't interpret it as a sign of disrespect until the School Board announced that they do consider it a sign of disrespect for my religion. Which is exactly what they did as a motivation of why they should close the school on al-Adha. While I don't mind being "unlucky", I do mind very much to be consciously selected as a person of a second-class religion that doesn't deserve equal recognition from the government body. So, now I want an explanation.