Check It Out

Prepared for print by Faigy Peritzman

We’re taking an extended road trip and stopping at several cheap motels along the way. Since we are only sleeping at these places, may we all pile into one room, despite the fact that it’s meant for two people only?

You are renting the hotel room based on the rules and regulations of the facility. Whatever they allow is halachically permitted; whatever they don’t allow is considered geneivas daas, which is a forbidden form of theft, regardless of whether or not the victim is Jewish.

We recently attended a huge shabbaton in a beautiful hotel. I was disturbed to see, though, that the place the hotel set aside for lighting Shabbos candles was in the lobby. Shouldn’t I be able to see the candles during the seudah?

Certainly it is halachically preferable for the candles to be seen and enjoyed during the seudah. However, for safety reasons, it’s common practice at almost all kosher hotel programs to have the women light candles at one central location in the hotel, generally in the lobby.

Since this is halachically problematic, women are advised to shut off and then turn on a Shabbos lamp or a night light in their own room (or bathroom) l’sheim Shabbos, and then immediately go downstairs and light candles in the designated area with the brachah. This way, the brachah is being recited over both the electric lights and the traditional candles. (One who disregards the hotel rules and lights candles in his private room is considered a thief; the lighting will be invalid, and the blessing will be considered a brachah l’vatalah.)

My nephew’s aufruf was held at a frum hotel. On Friday night, when we picked up the bottle of grape juice, we saw that the plastic cap hadn’t been opened beforehand. If we don’t open plastic bottles on Shabbos, are we allowed to hand it to the waiter, who will most likely just open it himself?

It’s permitted for you to ask a non-Jew or a nonreligious waiter to open the grape juice bottle (provided, of course, that it’s mevushal), since there are many contemporary poskim who permit opening a plastic bottle cap on Shabbos. Even if you personally follow the more stringent opinion, it does not restrict you from asking someone else to do so for you, as long as there is a reliable and accepted lenient opinion that permits it.