Post History

*Anecdotally, if people know you're a Baal Koreh, they will often let you - or ask you to - Layn your Aliyah. Many years ago I used to help a Sephardi Minyan (I am 100% Ashkenazi) with anything from one Aliyah to the whole Parasha, planned in advance each week, until they eventually had enough people of their own who could Layn. Years later I would still occasionally go to the Minyan even though I wasn't Layning. One time I was there for Pinchas and they called me up for Chamishi. The Baal Koreh handed me the Yad - he knew beyond any reasonable doubt that I could Layn it without preparation as that Aliyah is the same as weekday Rosh Chodesh.*

As I understand it, for many things like the aforementioned working in a non-Kosher restaurant but also things like how you do things in a hospital, it is quite different inside vs. outside Israel.

Outside Israel, there is a reasonable assumption that the vast majority of customers in a non-Kosher restaurant will not be Jewish, and so a random customer on any given day will not be Jewish. That in turn would generally mean that with certain exceptions, there would be relatively little problem working in a non-Kosher restaurant. (There are still a number of issues, separate from the question of whether a random customer might be Jewish.) On the other hand, inside Israel, working in a non-Kosher restaurant (unless, perhaps, it catered *specifically* to non-Jews) has a real concern that any random customer, in fact the *majority* of customers, is likely to be Jewish.

Similarly, the vast majority of doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc. in a hospital outside of Israel will be non-Jewish. That has significant ramifications for what you can do - or more importantly, what you can ask someone else to do - for a sick person on Shabbos. For a person who is in a life-threatening situation this is not an issue. But for someone who is sick in a lesser way there are things that a non-Jew can on Shabbos directly request of a non-Jew but that the Jew can't do themselves (or ask of another Jew). If you have reasonable suspicion that a particular person is Jewish then the situation changes. However, in Israel, most of the staff is generally presumed to be Jewish and these issues have to be handled much more carefully.