Sao Paolo Declares Jewish Holidays — Ramadan, Too
The Brazilian city of Sao Paulo – which has more than 11 million people – declared Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Ramadan as official holidays.
Jewish and Muslim municipal workers may take two days off during the Jewish High Holidays and Ramadan, respectively. The city has approximately 147,000 employees.
The inclusion of these dates in the municipal list of holidays will be the first time that the municipality recognizes a non-Christian holiday in that manner, according to a statement by the municipality.
Mayor Gilberto Kassab, whose father was born in Lebanon, approved the change. Kassab belongs to Brazil’s Social Democratic Party.
Floriano Pesaro, a Jewish member of the city council, praised the decision. “It has been very difficult to perform one’s tasks on Yom Kippur, when Jews are actually forbidden to work in any way or fashion,” he reportedly said.
Pesaro said he had lobbied for recognition of Yom Kippur last year.
Some 110,000 Jews live in Brazil, and more than half of them in Sao Paolo, according to estimates by the city’s Jewish community.
In 2009, Brazilian Jewish teenagers protested what they called their “exclusion” from a national exam for high school graduates set to take place on Shabbat. A Brazilian court said that providing Jews with an alternative date would “undermine equality.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
