If you can bear with me through some background information, I would very much appreciate your opinion as to what to do in a situation that is soon to arise in my community:

At present, I am not an Orthodox Jew, so there is nothing about my dress that would suggest to others I am Jewish. I don't hide my Jewishness from friends, but it also does not tend to come up during casual conversations with acquaintances.

For several years one of my daughters has been friendly with a little girl whose family looks and sounds as though they hail from India. During this time, the parents have run a store in a different town, and their children would often have to amuse themselves in the store until one of the parents would be free. The girl and her sister are both extremely sweet, and I would often volunteer to take them with my own family when we would go to the playground, bike-riding, etcetera. The mother and I would occasionally talk. She was very friendly and very appreciative.

Then, one day, she phoned to ask if I could watch her children for that evening. I replied that I had relatives over and we would be having a Passover seder that evening. I said that if it was an emergency we would certainly take the children, but that my guess was she was not of our faith, and I would not want to expose her children to this tradition unless she felt comfortable with the idea. She simply said she would try to find other arrangements. I didn't think much of it.

But from that day on, she stopped returning my phone calls. Messages that were left were never answered. If I would encounter her in person and ask when our daughters could get together, she would say they were busy. She did not act hateful or cold, so I could not be SURE she was anti-Semetic, but a year has gone by now with no contact from her, so I'm guessing that might be the case.

Well, my daughter has other friends, so this would not have affected me further, except I just found out her family just purchased the general store in my tiny community. What you need to understand is that I live in an extremely rural neighborhood. Our general store closed several years ago, and we have had to make a big trip into the next big town every time we wanted something as simple as a container of milk or loaf of bread. The general store had a filling station, and for the past few years, we had to be SURE we had enough gas to last us 25 miles to the next filling station, or we'd be in trouble! Everyone was hoping someone would take over the general store, and now it has been purchased by these people.

I have since found out that the people are from Pakistan and are Muslim. They do not dress the part so may not be overly observant, but they may still harbor anti-Jewish sentiments that are even stronger than I feared. They may simply want to have nothing to do with me socially but may feel fine about selling me food and gas. On the other hand, when I read about what some Muslims do to some Jews, I don't know if they would find a way to poison my food! That would be bad for business, so I doubt if they would actually do it, but I have this nagging doubt.

Ideally I would like to frequent this store, make pleasant small talk, be a good customer, and so remind the owners that I am still the good person they once thought I was. Certainly it would be much more convenient for me to use this store than to continue to go well out of my way to another one. In addition, the general store tends to be a social meeting place for the neighbors, and I would hate to miss that. But the question is, DO I TAKE THE CHANCE? If so, how much of a chance? If I order a sandwich and they make it behind the counter, they COULD slip something in it. I could stick to buying prepackaged things, but I suppose if they're desperate to harm, they could quickly inject something in there, too. Can they do anything to gasoline or my car if they don't know in advance I'll be coming? I doubt it. I guess what I'm saying is, the chance of them wanting to do my family actual physical harm is probably quite small, but do I take that chance? Are there indicators you can think of that would give me a hint as to their intentions? Should I actually come right out and have a talk with them and ask how they feel about my being Jewish and get a sense of the degree of their hatred that way? Any suggestions/opinions would be appreciated. (Except the suggestion to move. We LOVE where we live, and the other people here - of mixed religions - have had no problems with our religion.)

Thank you!

My initial reaction is that you are being somewhat alarmist over this. It would never occur to me to think that someone in a store might want to poison the food I was buying.

I suspect that the reason for their behaviour lies in whatever it was you told them that Erev Pesach. Perhaps they got the wrong end of the stick and thought you were saying that you, as a jew, didn't want to have their children over on your Festival and that somehow you were being somewhat anti their religion.

The only way you're ever going to sort it out is to speak with them direct.

While I agree with Yisroel that the chances of them trying to harm you or your family are slim, I personally would not want to give my business to someone who has anti-jewish sentiments, that is IF you find out that she does have anti-jewish sentiment, and IF you have a choice.

Good luck!

I agree with Yisroel, speak to them in the spirit of kindness, and discover what you may.
Shalom!