This summer has been a very special one for my wife, Dena, and me as it has been the first summer ever in which all of our kids were away for a full month. This phenomenon had never happened to us before, and Dena and I committed to each other to spend more time together and take advantage of the somewhat slower summer season for the paper and community calendar by being more active and biking as much as we could—or as much as I could, as I am not in as great shape as she.
We biked 30 miles along the Jersey Shore (I don’t really know how I made it, in truth), from Seven Presidents Beach to Point Pleasant and back, biked along the Hudson through Jersey City and Hoboken, and biked over the GWB down to the Freedom Tower and back again, and took many walks together.
But the true highlight of our summer was definitely our long-planned and long-anticipated luxury Kosherica Kosher Cruise to Bermuda. The ship departed from Manhattan’s West Side, just north of the Intrepid; no flight required!
Kosherica, a veteran Jewish Link advertiser and the leading global kosher cruise operator by far, is known far and wide for its sterling luxury cruises to Alaska, the Baltics, the Mediterranean, the Greek Isles, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, its Jewish music/chazanut/cantorial cruises, their luxury Pesach programs and much more. After salivating at their print ads in my paper for years and noting that Kosherica would be running a kosher cruise leaving from Manhattan to Bermuda this summer after many years of not offering a New York-based cruise, I decided that this would be our opportunity.
I reached out to the superb team I work with at Kosherica, Helit Edelstein and Aliza Klein, and they were happy to arrange for my wife and me to be on the first New York-to-Bermuda cruise in years. They warned me in advance that after going on this cruise I would never look at traveling kosher the same. Boy, were they right!
For our first-ever cruise we were booked to go on the 11th-largest cruise ship in the world, the Norwegian Escape, and we were blown away—as most novice cruise-goers are—by the size of the ship. Even more impressive than the ship’s size was the nonstop entertainment and programs ranging from Broadway-style shows every night, comedy performances, bowling, a large ropes course with zipline, mini-golf, full-court basketball, waterslides, karaoke, dance classes, shopping and more.
We looked forward every day to the announcements from the cruise director detailing the daily highlights. It was actually quite difficult for us to choose what to do and not to do. We also enjoyed walks on the upper-level decks overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and viewing, in awe, the endless blue ocean views.
In addition to arranging for regular minyanim for the 100+ kosher-keeping guests and excellent lectures by former OU president and community leader Steve Savitsky, Kosherica took over a large and elegant dining room on the ship and served meal after meal of tasty and diverse kosher cuisine. The breakfast and lunch buffets consisted of an array of breads, assorted cheeses, grilled tomatoes, shakshuka, hash browns, fish, salads, various fruits and a solid assortment of desserts. There was literally no way I, nor any human being, could stick to a serious diet with the food so plentiful and attractive and such a major part of the trip and experience.
Dinners were full-blown, multi-course affairs with excellent main courses ranging from skirt steak, short ribs, ribeyes, duck and many other delectable and mouthwatering chicken, fish and vegetarian options. Our wonderful Kosherica cruise director, Avrumi Flam, joked that the average Kosherica guest gains between 3-8 pounds on a cruise. He was definitely right in my case, even with a few trips to the ship’s large gym and running on the treadmill.
Our fellow Kosherica cruise guests came from literally every corner of the New York/New Jersey Orthodox Jewish community, with guests hailing from Boro Park, Flatbush, Manhattan, the Five Towns, Great Neck, Queens, etc., along with a very healthy representation from our own readership areas in northern New Jersey, including our own Jewish Link columnist Norbert Strauss with his wife Dorothy, and a good number of others from the greater Teaneck and Englewood communities.
While some guests preferred to keep to themselves, we greatly enjoyed the social aspect of the cruise, and by the end of the week we had made a number of new Kosherica friends with whom we spent a lot of time at our meals and evenings on the ship, on the sundeck and on shore excursions like kayaking.
The Shabbat experience on the cruise was an interesting one, with Kosherica providing magnetic strips to prevent the electronic doors from closing. It certainly felt a bit strange to be on a busy and lively cruise and keeping Shabbat at the same time, but we all managed. One quasi-halachic item that came up was with our clocks and timekeeping, as after some discussion with the program staff and the mashgiach, the Kosherica team decided to have our group set our clocks back to New York time from Bermuda time a full day earlier than the rest of the cruise—just as Shabbat began—in order to allow for Shabbat to end by 9:30 and not 10:30 p.m.
Last but not least, a special and warm shout-out to Dr. Soly and Ilanit Rabanipour of Great Neck, leaders and builders in their community, and with whom we bonded initially over the fact that both our teen children have significant special needs.
To find out more about Kosherica’s upcoming 2018 and 2019 cruises, winter vacation and Pesach programs, visit Kosherica.com or call 877-SAIL-KOSHER or email [email protected]. Don’t forget to tell them that Moshe Kinderlehrer sent you!
By Moshe Kinderlehrer
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