Hampstead: Quiet mandated for Jewish holidays
Hampstead has put the cat among the pigeons with a new bylaw mandating the reduction of noise during Rosh Hashanah – Thursday and Friday this week – as well as Yom Kippur, coming up October 8. 85% of the suburb’s residents are Jewish, but the cultural communities minister says she is “surprised.”
jeather 12:53 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
The by-law also doesn’t allow construction and other noise on Christian holidays, and appears to have come into force 18 months ago, not just today. This sounds like a dogwhistle article.
Kate 12:58 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
Then bringing it up on Rosh Hashanah itself seems pretty egregious.
Tux 13:15 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
Hampstead is usually pretty darn quiet anyway. Not sure if anyone would have to change their behaviour, really, except maybe people putting in new pools or having landscaping done… Hampstead is my favourite place to take a walk. It’s quiet, it has nice gardens and houses, and most evenings my wife and I see at most 2 or 3 people during our walk.
jeather 14:09 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
It’s just another article attacking those Jews with their not-our-kind ways. How dare they disallow noise on (some) Jewish holidays. Not allowing it on Christmas or Easter is an entirely secular decision. (The bylaw specifies stat holidays, but of course those include the major Christian holidays.)
(I’m not entirely sure whether or not I agree with the bylaw, but the articles definitely make me sympathetic to it.)
Bill_the_Bear 15:20 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
I disagree with all laws which benefit any religious group, and believe that the state should be secular.
Kate 15:35 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
jeather, you’re right. Quebec has a problem of pervasive Christian culture most people don’t even notice. Half the city’s streets are named after saints or Catholic religious concepts, and our supposedly secular institutions like hospitals and schools, ditto. It seems natural to have things quiet on Christmas or Easter but the majority still feels Rosh Hashanah (or Eid al-Fitr) are too exotic – are some kind of threat.
I don’t know what the answer is, because Jews have lived here for two centuries and the wider society has had plenty of time to get used to their culture as part of the urban fabric.
jeather 16:26 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
Bill_the_Bear, I assume you wish to remove Christmas and Easter from the list of statutory holidays. Until no religions are given special benefits by the government, there will need to be other laws protecting members of other religions. (Lawnmower noise is minor, of course, but in general.)
Quebec has the same problem of pervasive Christian culture that most of North America does, though in somewhat different ways. And it’s not the street names or the cross on the mountain — like many people, I don’t object to the fact that the history of Quebec is a Catholic history, and that there are things that reflect it like street names and hospital names and a big light up cross — it’s the crucifixes in the government, it’s the Christian=normal, everything else=special accomodations.
Steph 18:45 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
All of these “mandating the reduction of noise” bylaws are kind of silly. I’m busy 7 days a week and if any ‘special day’ happens to be the day I’ve got time to mow my lawn, neighbors be damned, I’m going to mow my lawn. At least it’s not overgrown.
Bill_the_Bear 20:14 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
jeather, of course I do. No religious holiday should be a statutory holiday, and no religion needs protection from those who don’t belong to it. That’s why I find the Hampstead by-law so maddening.
When I moved to Québec 40 years ago, I can remember when you couldn’t buy beer in a dépanneur on Sunday, much less go to an SAQ store on Sunday. (Back then, too, the SAQ outlets were closed on December 8th for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, believe it or not.) We’ve certainly gotten well past that…and it’s time to get past the rest of it.
I certainly agree with you about the crucifixes in the National Assembly, and the high number of Saint/Sainte streets and town names in the province. I would prefer to go much further, namely taxing all religious real estate at its appraised value. Why should we do less?
Marc 22:44 on 2011/09/29 Permalink
The Hampstead thing and stat holidays are two separate issues, but I digress.
@ Bill_the_Bear: While employers must legally give you Christmas off, there are no shortage of non-Christians who celebrate it. Fact is, Christmas has largely been secularized; and if you don’t agree, explain Frosty the Snowman to me?
jeather 06:47 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Bill_the_Bear, glad to hear. A lot of people want no religions given special exemptions, but Christmas is different, somehow (see Marc, below). I remember when stores were finally allowed to open on Sundays, other than in the lead up to Christmas. (Of course, the use of Saturday nad Sunday as weekends is another, even more entrenched problem.)
There is no shortage of non-Christians who would be delighted to be able to work on Christmas, which they do not celebrate as it is not a secular, religion-neutral holiday, and to be able to take off their own religious holidays without losing vacation time instead. Do some non-Christians celebrate it? Certainly. (By non-Christians, let’s exclude cultural Christians, who grew up Christian, became atheists, but still celebrate Christmas.) Is it likely that a lot of non-Christians celebrate it because there is nothing else to do on December 25, and because it’s fun to give & receive presents? Yes.
Gosh, it’s an early start to the war on Christmas this year.
Robert J 07:45 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
I think you have to take into consideration that there is a difference between maintaining statutory holidays, religious or secular in origin, that already exist, and introducing new holidays entirely religious in origin. We should gradually phase out laws preventing businesses being open on Christmas, Easter, etc. in accordance with the basic principles of secularism. Adding new legislation of special public restrictions on religious holidays should probably be straight up illegal. Hampstead is being unnecessarily provocative here. The very existence of Westmount, Montreal West, Hampstead, TMR is somewhat ridiculous (though democratically we can’t force them to join Montreal).
Kate 07:52 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
I’d like to see Quebec face up to its pervasive Catholicism and continue the work of dismantling it that began in the 1960s – but if I moved into an 85% Jewish suburb I would not make a racket on the major Jewish holidays, not because it was mandated by law but because I would want to be a good neighbour. The lawn can wait a couple of days, you know?
Franck 08:21 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Religion, just like sexual orientation, is a PERSONAL thing. Imposing one’s religious beliefs on other individuals is thus intrinsically and fundamentally WRONG. It is a sign of intolerance and shows that you probably haven’t understood very much about religion in the first place.
Kate 08:35 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Franck, if you’re talking to me you’ve actually got it very wrong that I don’t understand much about religion. I’ve actually studied religions in depth and I find it very shallow to say religion is only a personal thing. In all of human history there have been only very rare circumstances in which that has been true.
Nobody is imposing any religious beliefs on anyone in this story; they’re being a little heavy-handed in imposing conditions for the comfort of their own religious practice. That’s not the same thing at all.
But if you live in an area where the overwhelming majority is of a certain religion, it does become a community thing. Why would anyone move to Hampstead not expecting that Jewish holidays would have an effect on the fabric of life there? Why would you not want to be considerate to your neighbours?
Sam Robinson 08:40 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Hampstead also disallows noise on Sunday… every week.
You can’t even mow your lawn with a power mower.
…but you can work on Saturday
It’s been this way forever.
Franck 08:52 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Sorry Kate, not everything revolves around you. Why would I specifically talk to you? I don’t even know you! If I were to talk to you specifically, I would mention it like I’m doing right now…. and unfortunately, wether you agree or not, religion is something that goes on between peoples’ ears. If it didn’t, we would all agree about it. Just like everyone agrees that they will die someday.
Kate 08:58 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Franck, on this blog, everything does revolve around me. You posted your comment right after mine, and this is my blog, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume you were addressing your comments to me.
Religion is not only something that occurs inside people, it is clearly also something that occurs in communities. Nobody in the initial story about Hampstead is suggesting anyone change their beliefs, only their external behaviour on a few days of the year.
jeather 09:00 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are not new holidays. They are old holidays, and have exactly zero chance of ever becoming statutory. There are a number of areas in Montreal which, for instance, have different parking laws during this period too. (Hampstead is one of them.)
It’s easy to say that Christian holidays should be grandfathered in because of whatever reasons you have, and no other holidays should get any accomodations, but all that does is continue to heavily privilege Christianity over any other religion, and if you want to keep Christmas and Easter as special, you are fooling yourself if you think this is any sort of secular decision. (There are good logistical reasons to do it, but it’s still not secular.)
Michel 12:07 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
I still don’t understand why January 2 is a statutory holiday, but that’s entirely different.
Marc 12:20 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
@ Michel: Jan 2. is a Commonwealth Bank holiday.
And laws disallowing noise on Sundays are also wrong. Why Sunday specifically? Oh, wait, that’s church day. In Hampstead’s case you’d think they’d disallow noise on Saturday, and not Sunday.
Franck 12:41 on 2011/09/30 Permalink
Kate, even if this is your blog, I would’ve thought that general comments would still be welcome. Nowhere in my initial comment did I allude specifically to what you had just said.
I will do so here however because imposing a behavior on others with a law and penalyzing the people who don’t abide by it isn’t exactly what I would call “suggesting”, as you do in your last comment. If that’s the case, then we could argue, for example, that the Saudis are merely “suggesting” that women don’t drive. Personally, I call that “imposing”, and that’s my point. If Hampstead was merely suggesting, there wouldn’t be a problem. What’s next? Once you start down that road, where does it stop?
Finally, why does it seem like such a big surprise for so many here that a country that’s been settled mostly by Christians would have Christian holidays? I suspect there are Buddhist holidays in Buddhist countries, Muslim holidays in Muslim countries and Jewish holidays in Jewish countries, and they’ll do whatever they want with them. But if people are fined or penalyzed for any kind of normal and acceptable behavior on holidays in THIS country, then in my book, it’s unacceptable.
Robert J 11:40 on 2011/10/02 Permalink
Whatever your standpoint on the rôle of religions in a secular state, cities like Hamptead, Westmount and TMR frequently act in bad faith of the city of Montreal and the province of Quebec. Good examples include Westmount’s Light and Power company, and attempts made by TMR to construct gates separating it from adjacent Montreal neighborhoods. As long as this lack of cooperation continues it will provoke all sorts of prejudice from both sides. The phenomenon of wealthy enclaves closing themselves off from larger municipalities is not unique to Canada or Quebec. Think of the walled communities they built in uptown Manhattan in the post-war period (à la TMR). Jane Jacobs wrote about these as being problematic for healthy urban development as early as the late 1940s.
@jeather When I mentioned that it is reasonable to grandfather Christian holidays I was talking in a legal sense, not stricltly in defense of secularism. In law, it is more justifiable to keep and old, obsolete law because people have become accustomed to it (ie if you take away a holiday that 80% of the population observes on principle because it is Christian). It is less justifiable to create and enshrine a new law that defies the same principle, whether it be Christian, Jewish or what have you. On principle, I agree that old Christian laws are no more justifiable than new Jewish ones, but in practice its not always the case. Anyway, as I stated above, this law contributes to the isolating of a wealthy enclave in central Montreal (non-Jewish residents will feel that much less welcome– if we passed laws that made Jewish people feel unwelcome in say Rosemont-Petite Patrie it would be on front page news from New York to Israel). In this sense it is against the common good.
And to be clear, I don’t really think Christmas or Easter should be a statutory holiday. Those who wish to have it off should have to ask their employer like for summer vacations. But it’ll take a while to change those old laws.