Re: "Horror" w szkole??!!

On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 13:08:57 GMT, "Adam R. Tomaszewski"
<artomaszewski@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Defying 'Silent Night' in Pennsylvania
>By JUDY MALTZ
>
>Moze ci ludzie powinni wrocic do Izraela , panstwa demokratycznego , nie
>religijnego gdzie to nikomu nic sie nie narzuca a Arabowie nie sa zmuszani
>swietowac swieta Hanukkah?? moze to jest jakies rozwiazanie??

Very good point, Panie Dyrektorze.

Sa ludzie ktorzy bez zadnych protestow spiewaja piosenki
chrzescjanskie, muzulmanskie czy komunistyczne, a inni wredni chca
aby w szkolach publicznych nie popierano zadnej religii.
To wszystki wina tych glupich amerykanskich "founding fathers", ktorzy
chcieli odgrodzic religie o rzadu. Co zrobic - glupi narod, glupi
"founding fathers".

Zalek


>
>
>I must admit that I never knew the lyrics to "Silent Night," that most
>famous of Christmas songs, until I was well into the prime of my life.
>
>There was no reason I should have, though. Growing up in a tightly knit
>Orthodox community in New Jersey, I attended Jewish day schools and Jewish
>camps and was active in Jewish youth movements, as insulated from the
>Gentile world as anyone could possibly be.
>
>My first real contact with non-Jews came during my college years in New
>York, but even then, most of my closest friends were Jewish, and my
>Christmas experiences, if you could call them that, were limited to an
>occasional sip of eggnog at a dormitory party.
>
>Most of my adult years were spent in Israel, also among Jews, though not
>necessarily Orthodox ones.
>
>Then, a few years ago, my husband, Amit, was offered a faculty position at
>Penn State University, with an adjunct position for me thrown in as part of
>the deal. It sounded like the perfect antidote to our crazy lives in Israel:
>a quiet college town surrounded by mountains and streams, endless kilometers
>of bike paths, a three-minute commute to work, great public schools with an
>average of 18 to 20 children per classroom. Without deliberating much, we
>packed up our possessions and four kids and headed out to rural America for
>our little adventure.
>
>The truth is that after living so many years in Israel, we didn't give much
>thought to what Jewish life would be like out there in central Pennsylvania.
>We knew there was a small Jewish community centered around the university,
>one small synagogue with several hundred members, yet no full-time Jewish
>schools. But that was fine for us. After living so many years in Israel, we
>thought it would be a good idea for our children to experience something
>they could never experience in the Jewish state: feeling what it was like to
>be part of a minority.
>
>James Carville, the political consultant and former Clinton aide, once said
>that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and
>Alabama in between. This Alabama is precisely where we landed in the summer
>of 2004 with four Hebrew-speaking children who had never seen snow, sung
>Jingle Bells or heard Silent Night.
>
>But not for long.
>
>Right after Thanksgiving, when the neighbors began decorating their homes
>with Christmas lights and trees, we were able to confirm what we had
>suspected from the start: that we were the only Jewish family on the block.
>Next to all the brightly lit and ornamented homes, many of them featuring
>Nativity scenes on their front yards and giant Santas on their roofs, our
>own unlit undecorated house stuck out like a sore thumb.
>
>Our third child, Iddo, then five years old, pleaded with us to dress up our
>house like all the others. Those lights are for Christmas, we tried to
>explain to him, and Jewish people don't celebrate Christmas. "Not even one
>teeny, tiny light?" he begged.
>
>If that's when we learned we were outsiders in the neighborhood, our
>children had already discovered that they were not like everyone else in
>their respective schools. Matan, then in fifth grade, and Tamar, in third,
>turned out to be the only Jewish children in their public school. Iddo had
>one other Jewish child in his.
>
>It was at about this time last year, when our children had their first
>exposure to Christmas, that we received an invitation to an evening event at
>their school called the "Holiday Sing." All we were told was that the
>children would be performing songs for their parents that they had learned
>in their music classes.
>
>How could we have known what we were in for? It all started rather
>innocently with the children singing what we have since learned are called
>"secular Christmas songs" - an oxymoron if there ever was one. Granted, the
>name of Christ was not mentioned in these songs, but watching my little
>Jewish children up there on the stage with their classmates singing
>Christmas classics like Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer did
>make me cringe.
>
>And that wasn't the worst of it.
>
>After the children had finished performing, a group of parents handed out
>sheets with the lyrics to all the songs that would be sung in the next part
>of the event, the group sing-along. That's where I was introduced for the
>first time to the lyrics of Silent Night. To say that I was stunned to find
>myself in an American public school surrounded by parents and children
>singing out verses like "Christ, the Savior is born," "Son of God, love's
>pure light," and "Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth" would be an understatement.
>
>The auditorium was so crowded that Amit and I were forced to sit at opposite
>ends. Somehow, though, we managed to exchange horrified glances across the
>room. Silent Night was followed by several other religious Christian songs,
>and then, as if to add insult to injury, Dreidel, Dreidel, I Made it Out of
>Clay - a silly Hanukka song popularized in America.
>
>After we came home and put the children to sleep, Amit and I stayed up late
>talking about what we should do, feeling rather sickened by the entire
>experience, but thankful, at least, that our children were still not fluent
>enough in English to understand what had been taking place around them.
>
>What was clear to us was that singing songs glorifying "Christ, the Savior"
>in our children's school was a no-no. But as the new Jews on the block, we
>asked ourselves, should we share our concerns, risk ruining everyone else's
>Christmas party and having ourselves ostracized in the community, or should
>we simply just not attend the following year?
>
>The decision was made for us when Tamar, now in fourth grade, joined the
>school choir earlier this year and informed us with great excitement that
>the members had begun practicing for the upcoming "Holiday Sing." The
>thought of our darling Tamar standing up on the stage singing Silent Night
>and other Christmas carols is what prompted us to action. What we didn't
>realize was that by taking a stand on what has become a highly sensitive
>issue in America today - the right of the Christian majority to celebrate
>Christmas wherever it wishes - we had taken sides, the wrong side it
>emerged, in the so-called "war against Christmas."
>
>We asked to meet with the school principal. We were na ve enough to believe
>the matter could be resolved in a short, friendly chat. We'd tell her that
>it was very uncomfortable for us, as Jews, to take part in a school event in
>which religious Christian songs were being sung, and she'd say that she was
>terribly sorry, that she had no idea this was offensive to non-Christians,
>that she had no idea that Dreidel, Dreidel was not the religious equivalent
>of Silent Night, and the Christmas carols would be removed from the program.
>
>But the conversation proceeded along rather different lines. When we
>questioned the appropriateness of having Jewish children sing songs that
>refer to Jesus Christ as "the Lord," the principal became defensive, arguing
>that there was nothing unconstitutional about singing religious songs in a
>public school, as long as it wasn't during school hours.
>
>What's more, she explained to us - introducing us then to a term she would
>use more than once when trying to justify religious activities in her
>school - banning Christmas songs from the school would be "robbing the
>babies." She also warned us that we might want to think twice about pursuing
>the matter, because forcing our views onto other parents in the school might
>have the effect of "having fingers being pointed at your children."
>
>Having made her own position crystal clear, the principal then absolved
>herself of any responsibility, pointing out that the "Holiday Sing" was not
>a school event, but rather a PTO event (a distinction we have yet to
>comprehend), and therefore it was best that we address our grievances to the
>PTO.
>
>We did that several weeks later, and the PTO not only "got it" but voted
>unanimously to take all religious Christian songs out of the program.
>Unprompted by us, the PTO also decided to rename the event "Winterfest"
>rather than "Holiday Sing." The only person attending the meeting who
>expressed reservations about the decision was the principal, who suggested
>we all think carefully about the ramifications of "robbing the babies" of
>their Christian songs.
>
>We assumed the entire issue was behind us, until we received the invitation
>to the upcoming "Holiday Sing" - not "Winterfest" as had been decided - and
>realized that something was amiss. A few phone calls later, we understood
>that the principal had bowed to pressure from several dissenting parents and
>had unilaterally overruled the PTO decision to ban religious Christian songs
>from the school event. All this, without bothering to inform those of us who
>would obviously be offended by their inclusion.
>
>The next day we called the superintendent of the school district and asked
>to have our children transferred to another school in the district right
>after Christmas break, a school I knew had other Jewish children and a much
>more ethnically diverse population.
>
>With the encouragement and support of the local Jewish community, we also
>requested a meeting with the superintendent to present our grievances, not
>threatening legal action, but then again not ruling it out entirely.
>
>At the same time, a far bigger drama involving the issue of separation of
>church and state was being played out in another Pennsylvania school
>district not far away from us, in this case over the constitutionality of
>teaching "intelligent design" in public school biology classes. The ensuing
>court battle, which made international headlines, ended last week when a
>federal judge ruled that teaching intelligent design - which holds that the
>universe is so complex that it had to have been created by a higher power -
>is the equivalent of promoting religion in school and, therefore,
>unconstitutional.
>
>We were somewhat amused by the reaction of one of the school board members
>who had been behind the attempt to change the biology curriculum out there
>in Dover County, Pennsylvania. "We didn't lose; we were robbed," he said.
>Once again, that reference to robbery.
>
>The day Tamar told her classmates she was leaving the school, I encountered
>the father of a classmate of hers, a reverend of a local Lutheran
>congregation. "Why not?" he asked, when I said we did not feel religious
>songs should be sung in American public schools, in response to his queries
>about our decision to pull Tamar out. "I think it's intolerant to demand
>that Christians not be able to sing their songs."
>
>And by the way, he said, he was happy that his daughter had had the
>opportunity to meet a Jewish child and learn "lots of things" about the
>Jewish religion. "Tamar taught my daughter that 'shalom' means hi, bye and
>peace," he said.
>
>Sad, but true. Just a-year-and-a-half in America, and my children now feel
>more Jewish than they ever did in Israel. Tamar understands exactly why
>we've pulled her out of school. Iddo, who has a general idea, has found his
>own way to assert his beliefs. After complaining for several days that a
>child in his class had "bragged" to him that Christmas was a better holiday
>than Hanukka, he decided to take revenge. "I told all the kids in my class
>at lunch that Santa was dead," he informed me the other day.
>
>I'm not so sure that Iddo is convinced, though, because the next day he
>asked me if he could send a hate letter to Santa. "Why would you want to do
>that?" I asked. "Because he's a big fat jerk," he replied.
>
>We did not attend the "Holiday Sing" this year. But I know that our presence
>was felt. Otherwise, how to explain why the principal, as reported to me by
>others who attended the event, greeted the audience with the following
>words: "I know I'm taking a risk by saying this, but Merry Christmas
>everyone."
>
>Thanks to this attitude, I find myself today painfully familiar with the
>lyrics to Silent Night. In fact, waging my own private Christmas war has
>forced me to learn them by heart.
>

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