It’s hardly a secret that I take a generally dim view of religion, so it should come as no surprise that it strikes me as a little irksome that the timing of Stephen Harper’s upcoming “Fixed Election Spectacular” might be postponed by the griping of a religious minority group.
As reported in Globe & Mail today, the Canadian Jewish Congress has written a letter to His Portliness complaining that holding an election during Sukkot would make it difficult for some Jews to get to the polls and would rob political parties of workers. For fellow gentiles unfamiliar with the holiday, Sukkot is kind of like Jewish Thanksgiving that pays homage to a group of people back in the Bronze Age who, according to the Old Testament, had to live in lean-to shelters for a week.
Look, I know that it’s always like venturing into a minefield (yes, bad analogy) whenever dealing with an issue involving Jews, but it seems fair to ask whether a vitally important election that’s urgently needed to break the critical impasse resulting from the “dysfunctional” parliament that Stephen Harper has decided lacks confidence in his supreme powers of statecraft, should be delayed for who knows how long, simply out of politically-correct deference to a religious minority group that would rather be spending their time improvising unsightly sukkas or parading around with a bunch of symbolic twigs and sticks in Great Hosanna thanking their otherwise wrathful sky god for providing some primitive camping supplies on their ahistorical flight from Egypt thousands of years ago.
By the way, it’s perhaps a little ironic that an election might be put off by a holiday that’s also known as the “Feast of Booths.”
25 Comments
August 30, 2008 at 3:58 pm
October’s looking pretty bad for everyone:
1 Eid al Fitr – Ramadan ends – Islam
4 St Francis Day – Catholic Chrisian
9 Yom Kippur – Jewish
9 Dasera – Hindu
13 Thanksgiving – Interfaith – Canada
14-20 Sukkot – Jewish
20 Birth of the B’ab – Baha’i
Installation of Scriptures as Guru Granth – Sikh
21 Semini Atzeret – Jewish
22 Simhat Torah – Jewish
26 Reformation Day – Protestant Christian
28 Milvian Bridge Day – Christian
Diwali – Deepavali – Hindu – Sikh – Jain
31 All Hallows Eve – Christian
August 30, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Uhh.. that’s why we have advanced polls.
August 30, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Ummm. Ok. How about we hold an election on Christmas. Or Easter. Non-christians spend our lives dancing around religious holidays.
Why are you so peeved that a minority community might want to also be taken into account?
In fact, rather than being pissed, I’d celebrate the fact that at least one minority community in Canada is SO concerned about ensuring electoral participation that it bothers to premptively ask the PM to take it into account.
No one is suing. No one is even complaining about a selected day. People are making a request of their elected officials.
Sheesh!
August 30, 2008 at 4:42 pm
And my b-day is Oct 13th. LOL
August 30, 2008 at 4:58 pm
tomc — First of all, there’s a huge difference between being irked (for the sake of humour more than anything else, it has to be admitted) and being “pissed”….
That said, I’m sure we wouldn’t be hearing a peep from any of “The Blogging Tories” if the election date was on a Muslim holiday and the Canadian Islamic Congress or whatever had written to the PM to complain about it, now would we?
No, I didn’t think so.
August 30, 2008 at 5:56 pm
RT:
You might take an even dimmer view of religion after you read about Joel’s Army.
The Muslims are the crazy ones, Christianity is a religion of peace, and I have a mighty fine bridge for sale, dirt cheap.
href=”http://www.alternet.org/story/96945/theocratic_sect_prays_for_real_armageddon/?page=entire” Jeeaysus Keerighst
August 30, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Wow that HTML tag didn’t work out right. Try this:
Crazier than sh*thouse rats
August 30, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Wow. Just… wow. That is some scary shit.
Kind of embarrassing that Bentley is from B.C.
August 30, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Forgot to mention…apparently Palin might have links to Joel’s Army.
Christians have mental problems
August 30, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Oooo. How juicy. There I was just writing up a post on Palin, but mostly just shaking my head in wonder at what Kevin Drum called McCain’s “palpably unserious campaign” the other day.
August 30, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I absolutely agree RT. You cannot possibly run an election that won’t interfere with some religious obligation.
I do find it odd strategy though. He’s been courting that group since taking office so to tick them off now seems odd.
Indeed there are advanced polls, but it does reduce the number of volunteers etc. on the day.
It just seems to counter what Harper and ‘lap dog’ Kenney have sought to accomplish over the past 2 years.
Ticking off their base and converts doesn’t seem to be a problem for them.
I find that arrogant and to be honest, I hope that arrogance will be their downfall.
August 30, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Seems kind of funny given they’ve been pandering like crazy to win over Jewish voters in Montreal and Toronto touting their no-nonsense “pro-Israel” stance as proof that they care more about the concerns of Jews than the Liberals, or something like that, but obviously they don’t even know the first thing about Jewish culture (and I think we can safely deduce from this that there are no Jews in the ultra-WASPy PMO).
August 30, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Kind of embarrassing that Bentley is from B.C.
Oh, big surprise. Bentley has stepped down from his ministry after having committed what seems to be adultery:
Bentley is currently separated from his wife, Shonnah. They have three children. It has been announced by the board of directors of Freshfire Ministries that Bentley has stepped down as leader of that ministry following the revelation of an “unhealthy emotional relationship of an emotional nature with a female member of his staff” and the current estrangement between him and his wife.
How come these people never follow through on their commitment to stoning adulterers?
August 30, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Religion can be annoying but in this case it might be useful. Julie Couillard’s book is due to be released on the 14th of October. So any delay that might allow Quebecers and other Canadians to properly absorb her no doubt fascinating yarn BEFORE they cast their votes can only help the anti-Harper side. I know this sounds a little desperate, but let’s face it, these are desperate times…
August 30, 2008 at 8:38 pm
RT/Dave, look up something called Acquire the Fire (I forget the other name), its like Joels Army but for kids. It comes off as very Hitler Youth.
Oh, and it rolls through Canada.
August 30, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Clayton — Thanks, I’ll do that. I’m just starting to wade through some of this stuff after reading that link Dave provided.
August 31, 2008 at 3:24 pm
No RT, I agree with you completely. There’s always some special interest group of minority group that summons their calender as a reason not to be inconvenienced by the goings-on of what the rest of secular society is doing.
Religion should never, under any circumstances, have any dictates on the scheduling of affairs of the secular government.
August 31, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Ah yes, Mr Harper and the Jewish Question.
Trying to suck up big time to the Jewish community, wear a yarmulke when appropriate, dazzle them with the baubles of what a friend you are with Israel, ignore the insults of Tony Clement refusing to attend an event at a synagogue because he’s Christian, ignore the millenialists on the right praying for the Jewish in-gathering, and then whack ‘em with an election on one of their holy days in the Fall. Ah, it’s only the Jews, they can vote in the afvanced polls.
Really not all that different than the story of the scorpion and the frog to me. [http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html] -”I couldn’t help myself. It is my nature.”
September 1, 2008 at 8:18 am
The title ruins my joke. I’ll tell it anyway.
PM to Jewish community: if you don’t like the election date, Sukkot!
Since so many of these holidays fall on Friday or Monday, It’d be 1/3 the nuisance to change elections to Tues/Wed/Thurs.
September 11, 2008 at 10:56 am
I don’t entirely disagree with you, but I find your tone very offensive. My wife’s physician posed us this question last week (yeah, two Jews visiting a gentile doctor, go figure) and we said we thought that the election should go ahead as scheduled. I’ve never personally celebrated Sukkot in a big way, though it is a nice holiday with an agricultural feel. I particularly like the etrog (or “citron”) a proto-citrus fruit used as part of the holiday ritual.
That said, I feel I should point out that not all things are exactly opposite. Being Canadian isn’t the exact opposite of being American, being a woman isn’t the exact opposite of being a man, and being Jewish isn’t the exact opposite of being Christian or Muslim. Sukkot is a very important holiday to orthodox Jews, up there with Yom Kippur and Passover, and far more important than better-known but really minor festivals like Chanukah*. Jewish law obligates orthodox Jews not to work, light fires, use electricity, drive, write, spend money or generally engage in secular activities on the Sabbath or on major festivals. Islam and Christianity (at least in the modern era) have no parallel to this kind of prohibition. The most pious Muslim works during Ramadan and even born-again Christians drive cars and write letters on Sunday and Easter. Putting a secular event like an election on a major Jewish festival ensures that the orthodox portion of the community at least will be completely blocked from taking part. In this instance, I think the mechanism of advance polling will compensate for that, but it will certainly run Elections Canada off its feet in certain neighbourhoods, and will strip them of necessary poll workers on the main election day.
So paint all religions with the same red tory brush if you must, but keep in mind that just because it’s easy for you to lump them all together into one undistinguished mass, that doesn’t make it so. And next time, maybe you could make the same point without the snark.
September 11, 2008 at 11:05 am
Yawn me a river.
September 11, 2008 at 11:25 am
*Sorry, forgot the asterisk in my previous post. There’s a really great Israeli movie set during Sukkot called Usphizin (or “The Visitors”), about a former lowlife type who becomes an ultra-orthodox Jew and is surprised by a visit by two cronies from his old life who have escaped from prison.
The kicker here is that visitors during Sukkot are considered holy (something I didn’t know myself) and you may not do anything to turn them away.
September 11, 2008 at 11:35 am
Shouldn’t that be “yawn me a breeze?” It would have to be “piss me a river.”
September 11, 2008 at 12:14 pm
My wife’s physician posed us this question last week (yeah, two Jews visiting a gentile doctor, go figure)
That anyone would think this detail of ones’ life is worth mentioning strikes me as bizarre.
September 11, 2008 at 3:05 pm
The Jewish community isn’t alone in enduring an election timing dis. The Governal General was called away from a visit to the Chinese Paralympics, nary a peep uttered by Stephen Fletcher. These followed the Chinese Olympics the PM didn’t attend. China, BTW is who we have to diversify our trade towards if the Americans don’t steepen their tax-rates fast.