Passover in exotic locales: It's kosher
 
4/11/03 - "It’s a spring cleaning like you’ve never heard of,” says Rabbi Chaim Fogelman of OK Kosher Certification.
 

By Maria Puente
USA TODAY

Traditionally, Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrated at home with family and a ritual meal. Now, growing numbers of Jews are establishing new traditions by having the Seder dinner at luxury resorts in exotic places in the USA and around the world. There are even kosher Passover cruises.

Why? For the same reason that more people are celebrating Thanksgiving in restaurants and hotels: They’re busy and don’t have the time to prepare – Passover cleaning preparations are famously taxing – and more outside-the-home options are available beyond those areas where Jews live.

“This has become a regular thing,” says Chumi Friedman, sales manager for The Jewish Press newspaper, which runs pages of ads for restaurants and hotels offering Seders, complete with officiating rabbis and traditional gefilte fish and matzo-ball soup.

Passover, an eight-day religious holiday commemorating the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, begins Wednesday at sundown. “Every crumb of leavened bread, cookies, cakes, has to be removed, there are separate dishes, some even have separate kosher kitchens – it’s a spring cleaning like you’ve never heard of,” says Rabbi Chaim Fogelman of OK Kosher Certification, the kosher certification organization.

But many Jews have said goodbye to all that and go out for their Seders, the ritual meals held the first two nights. Some do it for convenience; others do it because they don’t have family close by. Increasingly, many combine it with vacation.

Kosher Today, the trade publication covering the kosher-food industry, estimates that 33,000 hotel rooms have been booked in the USA and Europe for Passover this year – up from 25,000 five years ago, publisher Menachem Lubinsky says. “You see people going to extremely unique places – Alaska, Hawaii, around the world.”

Or Arizona. Thousands of Jews will celebrate Passover at luxury resorts such as the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, which has hosted Passover for four years and is expecting about 350 people.

The vacation package at the Fairmont was organized by Presidential Kosher Holidays, one of several kosher caterer/travel operators, which also sends Passover celebrants to Puerto Rico and Aruba. Presidential takes over the hotel, makes the kitchen kosher, brings in an officiating rabbi, chefs and kitchen staff, and ships in all the gourmet kosher-for-Passover food and wines.

“It’s basically a land-based cruise,” jokes co-owner Lynda Clare. “We set up a synagogue, we have children’s programs, and arrange sightseeing options for the non-religious times.”

Naturally, the dining-out Passover trend is strongest in areas with large Jewish populations. In New York, The Authoritative New York Kosher Dining Guide maintains an online list of restaurants open for Passover (diningkosher.com).

Near Los Angeles, Spago, the celebrity restaurant owned by Wolfgang Puck and Barbara Lazaroff, started hosting Seders in 1985 because Lazaroff missed her Jewish family traditions. Now, nearly 250 people turn up, and Spago donates the proceeds to Mazon, the Jewish feed-the-hungry group.

Sol Kirschenbaum, co-owner of the gourmet kosher restaurant Levana in New York, says he has offered Seders for 10 years. “When we first started, I never thought anyone would come,” he says. “Now every year it’s a sellout.”