(follow-up to the previous message!)
Harvard, home to a gazillion different communities that take pride in their difference. School too, does a terrific job in encouraging this.
Religious excuses are accommodated. One has the right to request a special derogation because it’s Eid El Fitr or Rosh Hashanah. I requested my exam time to be change so that it wouldn’t be too close to Iftar time duting Ramadan (time at which one starts to feel hungry and slightly dehydrated) and I was granted my request immediately.
And people are free to expose their religion. A good friend of ours, of Sikh faith, wears her turban daily to class. I’ve met a number of veiled girls around. Chaim wears his kippa. After the first day, we don’t notice anymore. I caught myself saying “Supreet? Oh, she’s the girl with the Harvard sweatshirt over there” (you can guess how confusing this can be… at Harvard!) and omitted that she was wearing a turban. I think that’s really cool.
Ramadan here is pretty well celebrated: the first day, I had iftar on the undergrad campus, where the Islamic Society of Harvard holds a fast-breaking meal/ceremony every day of the month. A hail to Pakistani food, by the way.
Yesterday, I had Iftar at KSG (that’s my school); the invitation was general, there was a fantastic turnover from all kinds of people.
Today was probably the most enjoyable experience: a Friday prayer at Harvard. When I heard that the school allowed people to borrow a large room every Friday to hold the prayer, my googly eyes made my interlocutor laugh his head off.
Hey, imagine people have a Friday prayer in Boutmy! :) (I know, very restrictive joke! - Boutmy is a hall at Sciences-Po Paris. Makes more sense now? :).
And we had it all - a sermon, given by a student from the
Doesn’t that make you cherish who you are, and in the same time make you grateful that all people are not the same? It would have been so boring!!!
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