Lessons Learned

Congratulations to Brookline's Maimonides School, which won the state mock trial championship! The school is located about a block from where I live. Maimonides is a co-ed Modern Orthodox Jewish school. Maimonides is now eligible to compete in the national championships, and a problem has arisen. It seems that the nationals are being held on a Friday and Saturday, the latter being the Jewish sabbath day. So, like all good budding lawyers, they have taken legal action:
When tournament organizers refused to tweak the schedule, the students’ parents and school officials did what supporters of any attorney-in-training might do: they hired a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, a renowned litigator who has tried cases before the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Lewin filed a complaint of religious discrimination with the Department of Justice, which promised to investigate.
I'm afraid I can't get behind this. If you choose to not work on a particular day of each week, then fine, but don't expect the rest of the world to stop and wait for you. It's not unreasonable, it seems to me, to accommodate religious holidays that occur once a year, but if you are talking about 14% of the days out of each year then that's another matter. The sabbath is Sunday for most Christians. Muslims have Friday prayers. Who knows what other days of the week people might object to. From Wikipedia:
The Uposatha has been observed since Gautama Buddha's time (500 BC), and is still being kept today in Theravada Buddhist countries. It occurs every seven or eight days, in accordance with the four phases of the moon. Buddha taught that Uposatha is for "the cleansing of the defiled mind", resulting in inner calm and joy. On this day, disciples and monks intensify their practice, deepen their knowledge, and express communal commitment through millennia-old acts of lay-monastic reciprocity.
Are we to accommodate all of these?

This also seems to be more evidence that these days anyone can sue anyone for any reason at any time. Ok, this isn't a lawsuit, but it is "legal action."

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