NEW YORK — Orthodox Jewish teachers in New York City have lost a grievance challenging a decision by the New York City Department of Education denying a religious observance day to prepare for Passover, the New York Post reported Saturday.
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About 20 teachers filed the grievance after the department required them to use personal or vacation time to take the day off to prepare for the holiday.
Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, criticized the decision, saying it breaks with a practice dating back to a 1999 arbitration ruling that had allowed such requests. The United Federation of Teachers will decide whether to seek arbitration.
public schools close Dec 24th in preparation for xmas.
A practice since 1999 I wonder what changed
Do other religious groups get such days off to prepare for their holidays, if they don’t have a case
I worked for a Jewish Organization and got off all the Jewish Holiday but not Erev Pesach.
I would take it off as a vacation day.
This is not the hill to die on
So actual holidays aren’t enough now we need “Accomodations” to prepare for Tom Tov?
I can’t help but be reminded of what a Rabbi wrote over 160 years ago about America.
“Moses once rebuked our people, — “Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked,” — let us take heed that we grow not dizzy with the height of prosperity to which we have attained, that we reel not and stagger not on the summits of freedom, that the very loftiness of our happy state be not the means of giving impulse to our downfall, by which we might lose forever our honor and our privileges.”
As a union attorney, I need to explain to people that you don’t lose a grievance. The government denies the grievance and the union has the right to go to arbitration. At arbitration, one side loses or the arbitrator sometimes splits the baby.. but, as usual, this is poor editing and the title to this article is more like clickbait than accurate.
Usually erev pesach can be taken as a religious observance day. This means that you can take the day with a cut to your pay, and don’t need to use a personal day. However to clarify, this grievance was for last year when erev pesach was actually on Shabbos. The teachers wanted to take Friday off as religious observance, eren though it was not actually erev pesach, but the day before erev pesach. The argument was that the religious rituals usually done on erev pesach was pushed back to Friday, but DOE said no. And honestly, as someone who works for the DOE, i agree that this is like a child stomping his foot over not getting another candy. They already accomodate us so much, so just take a personal day and say thank you.
Why should we be a spoiled people?
This is a tricky one, which depends on whether similar accommodations are granted to others and what the union contract provides, since every preparation can be done in advance on one’s own time (including burning the chametz, which can be done as early as one wants on Erev Pesach). It also involves an issue of “tafasta meruba lo tafasta.” To protect the right to be out and not to work at all on Shabbat and Yom Tov and to leave work early enough on the previous days, it is imperative not to overreach. I heard a story in which an Orthodox summer intern at a professional firm told her boss on a Friday that she had to leave by mid-day for Shabbat. The boss, who was Jewish but not observant and was normally very understanding, told her that he knew that Shabbat did not begin until about 8 PM. She told the boss that she had to go home to wash her hair and cook for Shabbat. That did not go over well.
They can use the 38 week pregnancy leave