To Fast or Not to Fast for a Religious Holiday? An HR and Personal Question

Like many Jews, I will begin a fasting period at sunset tomorrow through sunset on Wednesday. We fast to repent; and we fast to draw closer to the experiences of people who suffer in order that we may repair the world.

HR Question: But first, my thoughts turn to Muslims who observe Ramadan. Muslims are not permitted to eat or drink or allow anything to pass their lips from sunrise to sunset. This past year, with Ramadan falling in late spring (lasting about a month), Muslims in the northern hemisphere had to go 17 hours without food or drink. For many, this meant enduring hardships while working.

Must an employer accommodate an employee’s religious request related to fasting—for example, by giving time off? The short answer is “no.” The EEOC’s Guidance on Religious Discrimination is over 43,000 words and has dozens of examples, but not one is on fasting. (It’s worth perusing, here https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/religion.html#_Toc203359529).

So, here is case (from 2015): a meatpacking company in Colorado employed several hundred Muslims. During Ramadan, they requested brief time to pray every day, and to adjust the break time to meet the religious requirement of praying as the sun was setting. The employer eventually imposed discipline for employees who left the production line to pray. A court ruled this was not religious discrimination: The employer had a business justification (in a meatpacking plant, it is essential to move carcasses rapidly and continuously to prevent contamination).

An employer cannot flatly refuse to consider an accommodation—but the law favors employers if they offer a de minimis (minimal) accommodation. Here, the employer offered break time at 7:30 for Ramadan, but not a rotating accommodation period. (The case, EEOC v. JBS USA, Inc., is here, https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20150720805).

Personal Question: Many employers—including mine— allow employees to take religious holidays. Unlike my Muslim brethren at the meatpacking plant, I face a different conflict: Like them, my faith requires fasting; but my conflict relates to my father’s injunction: “I fasted for you, and your family, and the children of your children, in Auschwitz and Bunzlau.” My Dad was not one for reverse psychology—he was as transparent as glass.

I believe my Dad never made peace with G-d for not interceding to prevent the Holocaust. If I am right, can I blame him for that? No, but my Dad’s apparent unwillingness to forgive G-d strangely conflicts with the Jewish Day of Atonement. If my father could not forgive G-d, why should G-d forgive my father’s children and grandchildren?

The answer (for me) is that my father’s anger was forgivable, and he was therefore exempt from fasting.

But I have known nothing but goodness and blessings, so the duty to fast applies to me.