MEET THE BAUMANN SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS
SCHOOLS
011995 Justice and Mutual Tolerance Cannot Wait
The following letter was addressed to Bedford Central Schools Superintendent Bruce Dennis and is printed here at the writer's request.
Dear Dr. Dennis:
Your letter of Jan. 4 and a published letter from the principal of the Fox Lane High School, states that candles were not lighted on the Menorah in the Fox Lane School this past Hanukkah. Whether the Menorah candles were lit is of no significant consequence to our discussion. With or without lights, it is legal, just and right for our citizens to have equal and appropriate recognition of our Christmas and Hanukkah' holidays in the Bedford Central School District. That is what the School Board commissioned. But that is no happening.
I support your right to .light Menorah candles in a public recognition of the Hanukkah season at the Fox Lane School, whether or not you actually did it. But I don't propose to reduce our conversation on such an important matter as we are engaged to the level of proving whether a frog exists by focusing on whether he has a toenail. Why do you continue to focus on matters of less significance and avoid addressing the real reason that engages us?
The fact is that a beautiful and sacred Menorah was placed in a public display area with candles inserted as the holiday recognition progressed, and the Menorah had the Star of David in the center. The Menorah and the Star of David are the two most widely recognized symbols of Judaism in the world. They are religious — and good. Your display only became offensive when similar recognition was not given to the Christian vulture of Christmas.
You will recall that I have been supportive of your right to display the Menorah — lit or unlit — since the eginning of our discussions. Americans have the right to light their Jewish Hanukkah candles at Hanukkah —
and their Christian cultural symbols at Christmas. The right to display such decorations on another public building in a town within our district has already been tested in court and it has been in practice for years.
Your letter states that you have given no administrative direction "...other than to continue fostering mutual respect and tolerance for all faiths in a way that is consistent with the secular nature of the public schools..." Yet you continue to discriminate against the Christian faith. Here is what a typical citizen saw when entering the front of the Fox Lane School during the Hanukkah-Christmas season in 1994. At Hanukkah, a Menorah was displayed. With or without the Star of David, the Menorah is a religious symbol. Having both, this display was fundamentally Jewish, dynamically at-tended with the addition of candles as the holiday proceeded.
But the Christmas display — only a religiously non-descript, commercial winter-holiday tree, was left unattended, and unchanged from a shopping mall tree, except for what appeared to be a small angel on top — a religious symbol that comes from our Jewish tradition. The display had nothing religiously equivalent to the Jewish display. There was no distinctively Christian culture allowed — no addition of candles to an Advent wreath, no nativity scene, no cross — nothing that showed the Christian culture of the season. It was a decorated "winter tree" — a discriminatory display when compared to the Jewish display.
When I called you about this and reiterated my pleasure at seeing the Menorah but asking you to place an equivalent Christmas cultural display, you said you would not. You added that you don't believe the Menorah is a religious symbol. This action is not consistent with the spirit of your statement in which you claim, "mutual respect and tolerance for all faiths."
When you decide for yourself, or allow any public servant under you to decide that one symbol is religious and another is not, you are levying judgment that belongs to representatives of the faith involved, in this case the Christian and Jewish faith, not to the government of a public trust. That is not consistent with our Constitution when it says that Congress "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." "Congress" meant the law of the land. If this right can be selectively removed from our public schools, where is freedom of religion? What good is selective law?
Your repeated promise to convene a group of interested clergy is an old promise that has never occurred, despite my reminder to you about it in my letter of April 1994. You finally placed the subject on the school board agenda for Dec. 7, 1994, a little over two weeks before Christmas. You gave me a minimum of time before that meeting — I think it was three work days — to set up my schedule to attend. I chose to be harmonious by not raising several details during the meeting, since it appeared to me that the school board was instructing you to administer a balanced recognition program and you seemed in agreement.
But your letter explaining your investigation of the 1994 recognition of the Christmas-Hanukkah season shows a remarkable lack of depth and perspective. While you focus on unlighted candles, you neglect to make substantive progress on the opportunity to work suitably with the Christian public. We are not dealing with a question of whether a frog has a toenail. We are dealing with civic matters, such as an applied multi-cultural diversity. And we cannot wait for justice and mutual tolerance year after year.