Sailing The Kosher Seas

Jewish News of Greater Phoneix
Jennifer Goldberg

Yehuda Shifman remembers the first cruise he ever took.

"I asked for kosher food," he recalls, "and I was served precooked TV dinners with plastic forks and knives, while I sat at the table with other people who were served like royalty.

"They asked me what I was eating, and I explained to them that it's kosher. They said, 'You came on a cruise to eat like that?' and I thought, 'They're right.'"

It wasn't long after that Shifman founded Kosherica Cruises, a company that gives customers gourmet kosher food, nightly entertainment, lectures and religious services on luxury cruise ships bound for destinations all over the world. Kosherica, now in its 10th year of existence, runs approximately 10 cruises each year and is one of many companies servicing the burgeoning kosher cruise market.

"More and more suppliers are getting involved, and we're finding more options for people," says Laurie van Esschoten, owner of Ontario Travel Bureau, an Ontario, Calif., travel agency specializing in kosher travel. "When we got started, there were maybe three or four cruises a year. Now there are many, many more programs out there."

Van Esschoten grew up in a kosher Conservative home in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, N.Y. She and her husband have owned the business for 11 years, and she chose to focus on kosher travel "to have something we could specialize in, and because it was something near and dear to my heart."

Most kosher cruises take place on a secular cruise company's regularly scheduled voyage. The kosher cruise operator will bring its own chef, mashgiach (kosher supervisor), plates, entertainment, rabbi and lecturers to complement the cruise line's numerous programs and amenities. Kosher cruise guests have the ability to choose between the Jewish activities and the secular activities.

Around the world

Kosher cruisers have a wide variety of voyages to choose from in all parts of the world. Close to home, Alaska cruises are popular with the kosher crowd, as are Caribbean destinations.

Esther Kustanowitz of New York City went to the Caribbean in January with JSingles Cruise. JSingles is the sister company of Kosherica and is run by Shifman's daughter Helit Edelstein.

Kustanowitz's itinerary included stops at San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. John's, Antigua; and Phillipsburg, St. Maarten. Her favorite port of call was St. John's, where she joined a catamaran excursion.

"We were on the boat with other people," she says, "and then we went to this private cove where I went swimming by myself. It was relaxing and quiet."

Cruises to Alaska and the Caribbean check in at around seven days long; the more exotic the destination, the longer the journey, with the longest ones running 12-14 days.

Kosher cruise destinations for the rest of 2006 include South America, Australia and New Zealand, cities on the Baltic Sea, Holland and Belgium, the Hudson River, and more.

All you can eat (and more)

Kosher food on board has come a long way since Shifman's TV dinner. While many cruise lines offer a kosher option for their regular passengers, kosher cruise guests are treated to gourmet meals freshly prepared each day.

"The meals were vast and varied, and the dinners were insane," says Kustanowitz. "The food was great, and there was so much of it. We didn't go hungry," she laughs.

The last Kosherica cruise to the Caribbean brought along Shalom Kadosh, executive chef of the Sheraton Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem, to oversee the meals.

"You eat five times a day," Shifman says. "You have 62 different items at breakfast, then lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and if you're hungry after all that, a midnight buffet." A sample dinner menu on a Kosherica cruise includes fruit or pirogies for an appetizer; two choices of soup and two of salads; hake in Mandarin sauce, chicken cordon bleu or grilled churrasco steak for an entrÇe; and a selection of desserts. Additional entrÇes, such as eggplant moussaka, chicken strips and hot dogs, are available for vegetarians, children or picky eaters.

While the food on a kosher cruise is going to be glatt kosher, not everyone who goes on the kosher cruise will have the same standards of kashrut. Some people may opt to enjoy the food provided by the cruise line.

"Nobody is going to sit there and watch you to see if you eat at the buffet up on the Lido deck," van Esschoten says. "That's your business." She points to one customer, a Reform Jew who took a kosher cruise with Orthodox members of his family, as an example of the diversity of the clientele.

Kustanowitz, who eats nonkosher dairy and fish, appreciated the freedom of the kosher meals.

"It was a tremendous load off my mind. It's obviously a lot more fun if I don't have to worry about how the food is made, and if there's meat in it. I could really relax about it," she says. However, "if I was hungry, I could have gone to the (non-kosher) dining hall to get some cereal or a piece of bread, although I never had to do that - there was so much food."

Keeping busy

If you're bored on a cruise, you're not trying hard enough - and that goes double for kosher cruisers, who have a full range of Jewish and secular activities to choose from.

On Kosherica cruises, there are live performances every night by singers and comedians, as well as an ever-changing range of classes and lectures. Past highlights have included ladies' dance classes, political lectures and a film premiere.

On Kustanowitz's singles cruise, the voyage opened with a round of speed dating. The dinner seating was changed every night to allow passengers to get to know more people.

Some kosher cruisers, however, treat the kosher cruise like any other vacation.

"Only the people who show up are going to get the benefit of the events," Kustanowitz says. "Sometimes people just want to be on vacation, and they go and do their own thing. The people who showed up to activities and wanted to meet other people met other people."

Many kosher cruises that book spaces on major cruise lines partner up with Celebrity Cruises, Holland-America and Costa Cruises, an Italian cruise line. These ships have a wide variety of activities, from spas, gyms, pools, casinos and shopping to art galleries, libraries and much more.

"Everything on the ship is open to everyone who walks on the ship. Our guests are exposed to all of that," Shifman says. "It can be hard sometimes to decide what to do."

The cost of kosher

"It's not inexpensive, but by booking early, people can get more than their money's worth," she adds.

Finances permitting, "there are a couple of amazing cruises coming up that I would love to go on, like to the Baltics and the Mediterranean," she says. "Those are all places I haven't been to, and the cruise structure makes it really easy. You just have to remember to be back on the boat on time."