Competitions and Holidays

[Ian W.]

Originally Posted by Levin571

The other religious conflict is National itself:
Championship: Atlanta, Georgia April 21, 2005

This falls on the first two days of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The first two days are the most important where jews are supposed to go to synagogue and have a seder at night which is essentially a meal involving a lot of different religious aspects. Also during this time one cannot eat food with yeast in it like any bread products, and i wouldn't assume the Georgia Dome to have all the proper kinds of food that we can eat.

Just to be picky, many Jews don't go to Synagogue on Passover unless their congregation holds a gigantic Seder for the entire congregation (which I have seen some reform synagogues do before), instead, they have a big family gathering, similar to Thanksgiving, minus the bread of course ;-). This is what my family does, as well as pretty much everyone I know who is Jewish.

Now, since it's my first year away from home for Passover, and there's pretty much no way I could make it to the Seder at my grandparent's house, it doesn't affect me much, especially since it'd be hard enough up at school alone to not eat bread (doable, but not exactly something I'd look forward to). Of course, I'm not thrilled with FIRST's pick of dates, but to be honest, for Championships at least, the amount of Jews going will most likely not be a significant portion of the crowd, and it's unfortunate, but FIRST has to pick the best date for everyone, and sometimes it's a horrible date for others.

To the people who are affected (which, I suppose includes me), all I can say is that this year you either have to bring your own matzoh/matzah (we could make it something cool, BYOM!), or just pretend you're extremely reform for a year. Yeah, it sucks, but short of paying FIRST enough money to reschedule, I don't think you're going to be able to change it.

The only thing I can think of is if you're not a team that "needs" to go to Atlanta (competition winners/chairmans/etc), just don't go this year, because you'll move up (down?) a tier and you'll definitely be able to go next year.


Ohhh, one more cool idea. We can have a "FIRST Seder", if someone seriously tried to organize one, it could have interesting results. If I go to Atlanta this year, and there was a FIRST Seder, I'd definitely make it a point to go. Someone should send FIRST a letter about organizing that, and possibly setting up a special area for "Kosher for Passover" food.