By Rabbi Joel Alter, Director of Admissions, The Rabbinical School and H. L. Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music, JTS
Call Them By Their Names
When I’m at a hotel over Shabbat, I have a set Friday afternoon ritual. I present myself to the restaurant’s maître d’ and explain that I’d like to preorder and prepay my Saturday breakfast as my religious practice bars me from spending money on the Jewish Sabbath. Despite consternation over working around normal procedure, my request is invariably treated with no-questions-asked respect once I characterize my need as “religious.” While the maître d’ might not know Yom Tov from Yuletide, “religious” is a category that—in certain contexts anyway—gets categorical deference. The particulars of religious practice are not subject to question, except inasmuch as Americans want to know how to respectfully accommodate one another’s religion. In the religiously diverse United States, everyone’s religion occupies a generic space called holy, making it easy to practice according to our tradition.
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