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This topic comprises 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Author
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Topic: Open for Christmas?
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 12-23-2003 05:43 PM
In an earlier post--maybe last year about this time-- I wrote that in IATSE Local 306 Projectionists it has always been the custom for Christian and Jewish operators to work each other's holy days, and where the composition of a theatre's staff didn't allow this to work out easily among boothmates,
the union's Replacement List would furnish the personnel needed.
Now it seems this practice in NYC is also common in hospitals, newsrooms, police stations, law offices, and even in sewage treatment plants; and among Hindus, Buddhists, and Christian groups such as Jehova's Witnesses, as revealed in a newspaper article of Dec. 22, 2003:
Source
Off on Yom Kippur? It's Probably Time to Work a Holiday
By DANIEL J. WAKIN [c. The New York Times]
From the towns of central Europe to the streets of Lower Manhattan, the "Shabbos goy" is a well-known figure, switching on the lights or turning up the heat for observant Jews, who are barred from such work on the Sabbath.
Now invert the picture. Could there be something called the Christmas Jew? He or she would be the Jewish surgeon or magistrate or police officer or reporter or bus driver who works on Christmas.
With jobs to be filled on Dec. 24 and 25, Jews are volunteering and, in some cases, being volunteered for duty. Under a silent bargain, Christians will fill in for them on their holidays.
The topic is not often discussed openly. But it is part of the social grease that keeps society working smoothly in New York, a city of hurly-burly diversity, where Jews account for roughly 12 percent of the population. The practice keeps people away from arguments over crèches, crosses and menorahs in public places and puts some meat in the bland ecumenical phrase "happy holidays."
Many Jews speak of working on Christmas as obeying an "unwritten rule," or upholding a "social contract," or, in the words of Mayer Fertig, the managing editor of WCBS-AM, just being a mensch.
"Unless it's Saturday, it would never occur to me not to work on Christmas Day," said Mr. Fertig, who describes himself as an Orthodox Jew. And he will be on duty so that a gentile colleague can be off. "There's no earthly reason why I wouldn't hope to accommodate them," he said.
This year, most of the staff members working Christmas in the newsroom, where Jews are a minority, will be Jewish. "We've joked about it: `WCBS, All-Jews Radio,' " Mr. Fertig said.
For many Jews, working on Christmas is payback to gentile colleagues who fill in on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana. Other Jews view working on Christmas as a way to fulfill tenets of the faith.
But beneath the surface, seldom acknowledged, are tricky issues.
A system of religion-based job substitutions can breed subtle resentments, said William B. Helmreich, a professor of the sociology of religion at the City University of New York Graduate Center. "People look for hypocrisies," he said, like the Jew who takes off Yom Kippur but eats pork, or the Catholic who leaves work early on Good Friday but does not go to church on Easter.
For Professor Helmreich, working on one another's holidays is a matter of basic respect. "Freedom of religion is not just to practice the religion of your own, but the freedom and decency to respect someone else's desire," he said. And that is why he worked on Christmas as a waiter at a Catskills resort decades ago. "By the way," he said, "the tips were pretty good."
The workers at the Wards Island sewage treatment facility, run by the city's Department of Environmental Protection, have it worked out. Louis Rabinowitz, who is Jewish, said his bosses and co-workers know that he is willing to work on Christmas. "That's respecting someone else's religion," he said.
A Catholic co-worker, Nick Tamburrino, sounded the same note of harmony. "We understand you have your religion, we have our religion, and you work it out," he said.
The contrast between how society treats Christmas and how it treats the Jewish High Holy Days is apparent to some. Jewish law requires a halt to work on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, which are not legal days off. Religious strictures on working are generally looser for Christians on Christmas. Yet Christmas is a legal holiday.
For some Jews, particularly those with roots in Europe, Christmas can be a time of ambivalence because of memories of anti-Semitic exhortations during sermons, said Rabbi Yaakov Y. Horowitz, a member of the Bostoner Hasidic branch and founder of American Jewish Legacy, a nonprofit organization that promotes Jewish heritage in the United States. "Christmas and New Year's and Easter were times when many Jews would hide in basements," he said.
None of a dozen Jews interviewed for this article said they objected to being asked to work on Christmas. At the same time, Marc Stern, a lawyer for the American Jewish Committee, said that in his 27 years on the job, he had never heard of Jews being forced to work the holiday.
Under federal law, employers in businesses of more than 15 workers must "reasonably accommodate" religious needs unless they can demonstrate "undue hardship." A religious need includes taking a holiday off. An accommodation can include allowing a holiday swap.
Others who help accommodate are Muslims, Hindus, other non-Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses, who do not celebrate holidays.
Carmelo Cruz, a Jehovah's Witness, said he and a Chinese Buddhist co-worker often fill in for other technicians on Christmas at a Con Edison steam plant at 74th Street near the East River. "They know I don't observe, so they ask me, `Can you come fill in?' " Mr. Cruz said. "I oblige."
At the city's Bowery Bay sewage plant in Astoria, Queens, three Hindu engineers of Indian origin and a Muslim from Bangladesh were often available to work on Christmas, said Vincent Rubbo, an engineer for the city's Department of Environmental Protection and a Catholic. He now works at the Wards Island plant, where all 10 engineers in his department are Catholic.
Hospitals are a major locale where Christmas schedules are worked out. Dr. Eugene Ornstein, an anesthesiologist at the Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital, makes the schedule for anesthesiologists at the main operating rooms and has a simple system for Christmas: "I go through the list of the people that are Jewish and put them on."
There have been few complaints, he said. Most doctors understand, although there have been problems with Jewish doctors married to Christians who want to be home with the family. They are accommodated, Dr. Ornstein said.
Dr. Robert van Amerongen is an observant Jew who is director of pediatric emergency service at New York Methodist Hospital. Although he is senior enough to be able to take Christmas off, he said, he always works. "That just infuses good will," he said. But he said his motives were suffused with Jewish principles, one being that it is "man's purpose to fix the world." Another principle, he said, is an obligation for Jews to act in a way that reflects well on the faith.
Like hospitals, the legal system must stay open, too. Judge Laura A. Ward, an acting State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan who is Jewish, said she always volunteered to handle arraignments on Christmas. She volunteered this year and was scheduled to work but in the end was not needed. Her volunteering for Christmas duty is practical, not altruistic. She expects judges to cover for her and others on Jewish holidays. "When you're a professional, you do for your colleagues," she said.
Judge Eileen Koretz of Criminal Court in Manhattan cited an unwritten rule: "If you're Jewish, you're going to take off your holidays, and you appreciate the fact that other judges are going to cover for you, and you cover the Christian holidays," she said. "It makes you feel good that you're all working together toward an end."
At the 112th Precinct in Forest Hills, Queens, Detectives David Shapiro and Kieran O'Halloran have been partners for five years. Detective O'Halloran, a Catholic, makes sure to work on the Jewish holidays so that his partner can be off, and he receives the same courtesy. "It's a nice gesture by Dave, and we like it," he said.
Detective Shapiro will be working both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. "It's more important for me," he said, "to know that these guys are able to be home with their family and kids for the holiday."
[ 12-23-2003, 07:05 PM: Message edited by: Gerard S. Cohen ]
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