Religious Freedom 101

For the first 17 years of my life, I lived in a four story brownstone at in New York City. My dad owned the building and my family lived on the bottom two floors, renting out the top two floors as two separate one bedroom apartments. Tenants came and went, some developed warm relationships with my family, and others kept to themselves. At one point, we had a very interesting situation. One of our tenants was an Ultra-Orthodox Jew. Her religion required her to do, and not do, certain things, some of which required my dad to modify the way he managed the building. For my dad, this was not a problem. He was more than happy to accommodate her, even to the point of letting some of her friends come through our apartment to get to hers, because to ring her doorbell on Shabbat, the Jewish holy day, was verboten. Want to put a mezuzah on the front door of the apartment? No big deal. She, in return, did not in the least seem offended when my dad, as usual, put the biggest Christmas Tree he could in the front window of our apartment, which she could plainly see as she walked up the steps to get into the building. There was a tacit deal between our tennant and my dad. Our tennant, and her friends, had a right to worship God as they pleased, and my dad and the rest of his family had the right to worship as they pleased. Each party could be open about its faith, though we did not discus it. That, my friends, is religious freedom and plurality in action. That is what this country is all about.