The Religious Right to Wear a Kippah or a Hijab in School

The Religious Right 

to Wear a Kippah or a Hijab in School

The Incident:

Over the past few days there has been a viral attack on social media against a South Orange teacher who tried to lower a muslim girl's hoodie. It appears that hoodies break the school's dress code.  There is accusation and denial regarding the teacher's intent.  The teacher asserts it to be accidental: that she was unaware that the girl did not have her customary hijab on underneath, and she stopped when she realized that.  The worst attacks against the teacher paint her as deliberately denigrating the value of the hijab.  The incident is experienced by the parents and their religious community to be a gross and intentional example of bias and a form of assault.  For the teacher, it is a tremendous misunderstanding followed by terrible and false accusations. 

As a Jewish community, we have experience, advice and support to offer for all who are involved.

To the parents and the child:

Many of us identify first and foremost with you in this incident.  As Jews, we value and understand covering our heads for so many of the same reasons.  Many of us wear head coverings to remind ourselves of the need for humility and the ever-loving presence of God in all places and times.  Many women in traditional Judaism cover their hair as a protection of their personal modesty, reserved in marriage only for their spouses and closest family to know and experience.  Many of our people cover their heads in sacred moments to indicate their intentional participation in a ritual act or prayer - binding them to our people's long and meaningful history.

When our head coverings are removed against our will by others, we are hurt, embarrassed and feel disrespected or demeaned.  Many Antisemitic attacks in recent months have taken the form of random assaults knocking off traditional head garb from visibly identifiable Jews in the streets.  We identify with your experience.  We stand in solidarity with your right to wear your religious clothing and symbols freely and proudly without fear of stigma or oppression, and we will work in all spheres to support those rights for you and for us.

To the teacher:

Many of us identify immediately with you, as teachers and educators.  We value you and your love of teaching. We admire your years of service and know that your skills and heart have been devoted to this child and all children for many years.  We hear you and see you for who you are, and identify with the pain and fear that comes from exaggerated accusations, twitter flames and the threats against you that have arisen as a result of this incident.  We hear you when you say you had no intent of removing religious clothing, and we believe you.  We live in a world where teachers can not touch students, and believe that this incident has dramatically and negatively reenforced that message.  

We also identify with you now as a victim of hostility, anger and baseless hatred that has been proliferated on the internet against you.  We share that victimization far too often, and we stand in solidarity with your right to live and work in peace and to be protected from those who wish you harm.  We will work in every way we can to make sure that you are safe and that community law enforcement understands the credible nature of those threats against you.

To the school:

Cultural competence is the responsibility of the administration.  Every teacher, counselor, coach and employee must be trained in modern understandings of diversity, whether it is racial, cultural, ethnic, gender identity or religious.  This circumstance was predictable and will certainly happen again.  Both the teacher's actions, and the parents' interpretations, demonstrate that school policy is not sufficiently competent and not sufficiently understood in every level of the community.  When distrust is the first reaction, not enough relationship building has occurred.  It is time to circle back in community forums, parents circles, teacher training and more.  Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose, so you have work to do.

To all of us:

Stop the instagram, twitter, facebook, Quora, Reddit, or whatever reactionary flaming and accusing you are a part of.  The parents, the child, the teacher and the school are all good people.  They have overlapping shared values.  It is not so hard to find the way forward.  Give them the space they need to confront, converse, heal and rebuild.  Be a human - be a mensch.

For More information on Head Coverings and Religious Clothing in Public Schools:

Please read the EXCELLENT legal summary and conclusions from the Intercultural Development Research Association Here.

For a Jewish statement on the values, please see the AntiDefamation League's 2018 statement on dress codes, here.

Afghanistan - Pick a President to Blame

 As we watch the final departure of US force from Afghanistan, joining the narrative of the British and the Soviet Union before us, we remember actor Wallace Shawn's pithy delivery of line in The Princess Bride (1987), 

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is 'never get involved in a land war in Asia'..."

So as the self-congratulatory Monday morning quarterbacks all start to say "I told you so" even when they didn't, it is fair to say the following.

1) The Neo-con attempt at installing democracies during the Arab Spring has finally lost its last straw man as the President of Afghanistan has fled for Tajikistan.  Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan... none of them have emerged as a peaceful democratic system of government.

2) The US invasion of Afghanistan achieved a 20 year pause in Taliban governance,  which will now be relegated to history. 

3) The US post-9/ll military strategy did significantly break down the central organization of Al Qaeda, and implemented broad intelligence and military capabilities throughout the region in the form of cyber war, imaging, surveillance and drone warfare - all of which are ongoing.

4) Liberal attempts to build social democracies based in civil rights, political freedom and gender equality have not been successful or enduring in the region.

So who do you blame?

Bush II, who started it all?  His strategy was to find Osama, defeat the Taliban on the battlefield, and establish a pro-Western government in Kabul with US military support

Obama, who increased our presence there?  His strategy was counter-insurgency, rooting out Taliban cells, protecting civilian targets nation wide, building social institutions like schools and medical facilities and trying to re-integrate former Taliban supporters into the new society?  

Trump, who largely left the war to the generals while periodically pushing a strategy of "why the hell are we still there?" His strategy was to pursue negotiations with the Taliban to protect the US forces from attack with the promise of departure, while increasing materials and funding to the Afghani army, police and government.

Biden, who continued the Trump policy of withdrawal, and continued to underestimation of the Taliban's eagerness to take the country back.  His policy was to get out and to support the Afghani government financially and materially.

All four presidents have reason to blame.  Perhaps Trump was the most realistic of the four.  In hindsight, the place where mission creep shifted to a long term disastrous failure was under Obama.  

In retrospect it seems clear that the deeper military investment, the "surges" to drive back insurgents and create living spaces for civilians - all with an eye towards nation building or even building of a liberal society - were the ideas that got us stuck for another decade.  These were the ideas of the Obama white house.  

On the other hand, Obama did in fact pull out of Iraq and was later lambasted for creation a power vacuum for ISIS in the region.  Had he also pulled out of Afghanistan, one might argue that would have been even worse across a larger swath of the map.  And he hadn't found Osama in Pakistan yet at the beginning. Surely we had to stay to have the ground game to support that search.  Perhaps.  But once Osama was gone, and the war on ISIS was underway in Iraq and Syria, it seems hard to see what the goal in Afghanistan was any more.

Let's be clear:  the government and society that Obama hoped for in Afghanistan would have been a wonderful thing.  That is exactly the kind of country we form close allies with, and I believe make the world a better place for humanity.  The question is, how do countries become that?  Somehow our experience in Germany and Japan continues to tell us that we can be successful conquerors of other nations in this manner, despite the absolute differences in historical, cultural and political context.  We need to admit:  we can not change another country by military force.  This was the siren's call that led Obama astray.  If only we can carve out peaceful areas to allow our values to grow, they will be so desired by people anywhere that they won't be able to avoid becoming open democracies.  This is fool's gold.