Question:
We have a kosher restaurant here in Long Beach that is open on Saturday.
What do they have to do to make this work? Maybe if gentiles work on The Sabbat?
Answer:
Your question is not clear enough about how you intend, and I will write a answer in general:
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If the food is cooked as early before Saturday evening, and the restaurant is open to observant Jews by buying prepaid tickets, it is allowed. However, a gentile waiter should not be put up to serve the non Jewish people or ‘machalley Shabbat’ to the place and their desire to pay for their meal, and it is worth writing a sign in advance that the meals are intended only for those who ordered before Saturday evening.
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If you cook and pay in a restaurant on Shabbat and use the sand quantifier, a Jew must not do any business that makes money on shabat, and even if gentiles work there and the Jewish owners do not attend the restaurant at all on Shabbat, it is forbidden, since it is forbidden for a gentile to work on shabbat in the possession of the Jew when the work is for the benefit and enjoyment of the Jew, and the wages he earns are also shabbat wages that should not be enjoyed. And not only is the owners banned when the restaurant is open, but shoppers should refrain from dining there on a Saturday that passes through “lefnai ever low titen michshol”.
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And if the restaurant is in partnership with a non jewish person that is carried out according to Halacha and acceptable even in the gentile courts, and the bill will say that all the profits of Shabbat and Yom Tov will be credited solely to the benefit of the gentile, and the gentile has a partnership in all the tools, and in the ovens and so on, and the Jew will not enjoy the Sabbath wage at all, in this way some rabbi’s say it’s o.k. when there is a great loss of money provided that the Jew does not set foot in the place at all on Shabbat.
And as there are some details of Dinim in this matter, it is true that in your community the local rabbi – the authority rav that knows the place that operate in it that will surely guide you with good advice.
