Question:
B S D In terms of your tag gentile-on-shabbos how can we know he is a gentile?
An example might be: “A gentile employee of a hotel heats water for coffee on Shabbos, can a Jew use the hot water on Shabbos?”
Suppose such a situation occurs. Maybe he only looks like a gentile. Maybe he is a non-observant Jew and told them he is a gentile because they don’t hire Jews.
OR Maybe his mother is Jewish and his father is non-Jewish and he doesn’t know halakha and thinks he is not a Jew.
Etc.
Etc.
Answer:
We can assume that a person that says that he is a gentile, that it is true because most people in the country are gentiles, and we can go according to the “roiv” ( majority).
Best wishes
Additional reading:
- Asking a non-jew to ask another to do melacha on Shabbos
- non-jew transporting something on shabbos
- “I’m sure your package will come on Saturday afternoon.”
- Benefiting from a picture that a gentile took on Shabbos
- Shabbat blech and non Jewish helper
- Makeup on Shabbos applied by gentile
- Hand metal detector on shabbos