In my class in medical school, there was this religious Jewish guy named David who always wore a yarmulke (skullcap). During the first two years of medical school, I never saw him without it.
Then sometime in the middle of third year, I ran into David and I noticed he wasn't wearing it. Someone later told me that he stopped wearing it during the clinical rotations.
It always sort of bothered me that David stopped wearing his yarmulke. I don't know if he felt like people were treating him differently because of it or he was being discriminated against. I know that David was going for a very competitive specialty, so his evaluations were really important to him.
On the other hand, there was a Muslim girl in my class who wore a scarf around her head and she kept right on wearing that during her clinical rotations.
One of my 4th year vet students is a fairly religious Jewish woman. She keeps kosher so she can't eat anything she hasn't made herself or bought from a kosher restaurant, and has to make special arrangements to have her call nights be anything other than Friday and Saturday, and absolutely cannot work on Saturdays or stay late Fridays. Many of our other students look at this as a laziness thing, because "she gets all her weekends off," and it makes them mad. I, and most of her instructors, see how hard she works, how she picks up extra call hours during the week to make up for not doing weekend call, and how much effort she puts into learning despite her time limitations.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me sad that David stopped wearing his kippah because he was worried about his evals. I know this woman cares just as much (she wants a specialty too) but she is not letting that get in the way of her faith.
While I truly support many things, I think that when it comes to the working world, she's going to find places not that accommodating. I am thinking of one Jewish doctor who now has to do all the Saturday morning set ups because of a problem colleague (and I'll leave it at that). If she tries to get a job, has any one known of a place that accommodates that?
DeleteThis post and the comment are the nicest things I've read in a long time. Thank you, Fizzy! My husband is in medical school and we are ultra Orthodox - he wears the full garb of white shirt, black pants, fringes, beard, skullcap. He is very firm in his beliefs, while at the same time displaying respect toward others. So far he has had only positive interactions, where people were impressed at his level of commitment to his faith and his incredible work ethic, so one doesn't get in the way of the other. He has also had many people tell him that they knew very little about Jews before he came along, and how he has dispelled many misconceptions that they had. It is sad that David took off his skullcap, but I do understand it; it's hard to stand out. I wish that everyone was as tolerant and respectful as you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Anon. I just wanted to tell you how much I liked this comment.
DeleteAs a patient, I don't care as long as you fully clothed, bring your brain, knowledge, experience, and a working computer with UpToDate, we'll get along. You can be blind in one eye or can't type, I'll type for you. We can deal. Its the egos and rotten attitudes and those docs who wont' get along I can't handle.
DeleteI will say this, I've shocked a number of docs because I work in an "international" type of atmosphere and I know enough to speak on their terms, some in bits and phrases of their language. Like I said, have a good attitude, common sense, and explorer a computer: people can get over the rest.
You say you don't know why he removed his kippah. Maybe he changed his mind about the relevance or importance of the kippah to his life. Maybe he changed his entire level of observance. Maybe he had a bad experience with it falling off and contaminating a sterile field (happened to someone I know!) and was mortified and didn't want to risk it happening again. I mean, it could have been any reason, right? Not necessarily that someone discriminated against him or that he felt he stood out in a bad way. That said, if it IS that he felt that way - and he chose to handle it by compromising his beliefs - that's on him. There are other ways he could have handled it. I would not sit still for that for five seconds.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it is a fact in this country that while expressing religious observance as a Muslim, Catholic, Mennonite, Hindu, etc. is viewed as admirable, being an Orthodox Jew is often not viewed the same way. I don't really know why this is, other than, as not-PC as it may be to say, many people simply have a very deep-seated bitterness towards/contempt for Jews. I have never heard anyone make a single comment to any of my Muslim friends and co-students about their hijabs, but people seem to think it is ok to antagonize (sometimes very passive-aggressively) religious Jews.
ReplyDeleteI saw the same thing in one of my Jewish colleagues. I, being a Muslim woman wear Hijab and kept wearing it throughout my clinical rotations. I did get comments, sometimes passive aggressively, about my scarf, but if that was going to stop me, I'd have taken it off a long time ago, way before Med School.
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