Dear Sonya Stevens,
Over the course of the day countless alums have reached out to you to express their anger and frustration concerning your choice to schedule mountain day on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. in an attempt to mitigate this anger your administration then put out a statement explaining this decision. However I have to say that the statement put out by the school, far from helping to alleviate the problems caused by this decision, actually left me, a Jewish alum, feeling that much more devalued and disenfranchised. This statement referred to how Mountain Day was held after there had already been two days of Rosh Hashanah programming, as though to say, two days was enough for you. However the holiday stretches from sundown Sunday to sundown Tuesday so anything less than that is not enough and while we're on the subject of that programming I may point out that, as a former chair of the JSU board, I can personally vouch for the fact that the programming in question is not provided by the school but rather entirely put together and run through the efforts of the Jewish student union and Jewish student body. It is infuriating to me to see Mount Holyoke attempting to justify its neglect of its Jewish students by saying that they have already done enough for them by providing them with two days of programming, when in reality all they have provided them with is the ability to provide their own programming.
I also want to take this moment to point out the importance of Rosh Hashanah specifically. Rosh Hashanah is, along with Yom Kippur which will occur next week, half of a pair of holidays that are the most important on the Jewish calendar, so much so that they are collectively known as the High Holy Days. They are the Jewish new year and also a sacred time to reflect on, process, and come to terms with the events of the preceding year, a set of days on which to celebrate all the good things that happened in the past year while also to mourn all of the bad things and especially deaths that have occurred in the preceding year. This year that is particularly important since this past year included two synagogue shootings, one of which, the tree of life shooting, colloquially known as the Shabbat massacre, was the largest massacre of Jews on American soil since the country's founding. Incidentally the anniversary of that shooting is now only three weeks away. This is not a time for Mount Holyoke to compromise on its support of the Jewish community anymore than it is a time for the administration to ask students body to choose whether they will first be Jews or Mount Holyoke students. In the administration’s statement on the subject we alums were told that you are trying to focus on the current student body, perhaps as a way of subtly attempting to silence alumni voices as irrelevant. So if you want to focus on the current student body than I will do so as well by reminding you that currently enrolled at Mount Holyoke are multiple students who are a part of the Jewish communities in which these shootings took place. What message are you sending to those students today? Can you honestly claim to be putting their needs first? What about the other members of the Jewish student body who have had to deal with other acts of discrimination and anti-Semitism within their own communities, can you truly claim that your actions today will leave them feeling a wanted and welcomed part of this institution?
All of what I have mentioned so far are merely symptoms, symptoms of something much more basic which is that you would never have even considered holding mountain day or similar tradition on Christmas or on Easter. Nor is this the first time that something like this has occurred even within Mount Holyoke's recent history. In 2016 the senior ball was held on the same night as Passover’s second Seder, again asking Jewish students to choose between this long awaited senior year tradition and their life as a Mount Holyoke student, and observing Judaism's other most important holiday. I repeat myself, none of these events would ever be scheduled on Christmas or Easter. I understand that the administration reached out to MHC's Jewish chaplain in order to obtain her go ahead before placing mountain day on a day when observant members of the Jewish student body would be in synagogue. You knew to ask. You knew that today was Rosh Hashanah, and, if you did not know the importance of Rosh Hashanah you could certainly have learned it in a two minute Google search or by speaking to anyone who has taken one of Mount Holyoke’s Intro Judaism classes. It is true that the Jewish chaplain consented to your proposal and so many people were and are blaming her for this, but to me the fact that you knew enough to ask the question in the first place means that the blame still lies with you. Again this is not an isolated incident, neither is the Jewish student body the only religious group on campus to be repeatedly asked to choose between their role as members of that student body and the practice of their own religion. Again this speaks to a much more basic systemic problem that Mount Holyoke continues to have as an institution that constantly claims to strive for and even preaches commitment to diversity equity and inclusion, from a Christian pulpit.
On behalf of many of Mount Holyoke's Jewish population, alums and current students alike, I ask that you take this time to think about how you prioritize the well-being and experiences of Jewish and other minority religion students, that you offer them a more complete apology, and that you refrain from making such choices going forward.
Best
SJ Bernstein ’18