Destination Pesach:
There Will be Food
MATT SILVER | JE STAFF
Editor’s note: Th is article was written prior to the spate
of coronavirus-related travel cancellations, which have
included Passover-related trips.

P Sometimes dessert stations come with fruit sculptures. The buff et at
the Aidmans’ hotel included hot and cold foods, omelet stations, juice
bars and caramelized banana waffl es. “Much fancier than anything I would
have served at home,” Ayala Aidman said.

Courtesy of Ayala Aidman
16 MARCH 26, 2020
MAZEL TOV!
assover can be an ordeal. Th e mandate to scrub
every corner of the house clean of chametz can
feel like the 11th plague, the one that’s persisted
unmercifully into modernity — and that’s not even taking
the seders themselves into account.

For some, the burden can feel so great that fl ies and
pestilence begin to seem like a vacation by comparison.

Vacation ... now there’s an idea.

What if I told you about a place where all the cooking
and cleaning and top-to-bottom koshering of everything
would be taken care of for you? No fl ies, no pestilence, no
contemplating the irony of celebrating deliverance while
in thrall to a diff erent, domestic oppressor.

All that’s required is casting the convention of the
dining room seder aside in favor of a destination Pesach.

Combining Passover with a vacation isn’t a new
concept, but the concept, in the spirit of American free
enterprise, has gone grander — the food, the amenities,
the excursions, the entertainment and, of course, the
price tag.

But while the fi ve-star options attract the most press —
and for those who indulge in them the most Jew-on-Jew
scorn — the reality is that Passover resorts are not just for
the rich. Like virtually every other segment of the service
sector, destination Passovers present to the consumer a
system of tiered luxury.

If living your best Pesach means not only eating
gourmet kosher cuisine prepared by celebrity chefs but
also sharing an aft er-seder drink and intellectual sparring
session with Alan Dershowitz, then Kosherica’s program-
ming might be for you.

Even the most pared-down of Kosherica’s off erings
for Passover 2020, at the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve,
a fi ve-star resort on Coco Beach in Puerto Rico, includes
constantly available kosher barbecue and Chinese food
and as much golf as any one human could dream of
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



UNDER
CONSTRUCTION. OVERJOYED.

Construction on Rydal Waters is on
schedule, with cottages slated to open
in 2020 and 2021. An expansion of the
renowned Rydal Park Life Plan Community
in Abington, Rydal Waters will offer
elegant, maintenance-free cottages, with
the promise of future care, if ever needed.

Our beautiful model cottage will be ready
for tours in April!
From left: Yoni and Shoshanna Aidman. The Aidmans spent
Passover 2017 at a hotel in Lancaster as part of a program
operated by the Jewish Heritage Center of New York and
Greenwald Caterers of Lakewood, New Jersey.

Call 215-814-0355 to schedule your tour,
or visit ExploreRydalWaters.org for our schedule
of upcoming information sessions.

Courtesy Ayala Aidman
playing, on not one but two championship golf courses designed
by PGA legend Tom Kite.

Th e only thing better would be to see the look on the Pharoahs’
faces. Th is, by the way, is Kosherica’s Passover package that, according
to its marketing materials, dispenses of all the unnecessary fl uff .

If you opt for the fl uff , expect all of the above, plus a full roster of
rabbis and public intellectuals with whom to ponder the unknow-
able and a week’s slate of entertainers including but not limited
to: magicians, musicians, comedians and hypnotists, as well as the
once-famous, the almost-famous and the Instagram-famous.

“I remember there was a terrible comedian that we walked out
of,” said Jamie Barron, whose family spent Passover 2018 in Palm
Springs, California, with Kosherica. “Which was awkward because
it was in a room with lights on and there wasn’t a huge crowd….

It was rough.”
Okay, so the entertainment on these things might be a little
hit-or-miss; anyone who’s been on a cruise, no matter how opulent,
knows this to be a hazard of vacationing.

Entertainment notwithstanding, Barron said that the
experience was a big hit with her family and that it provided a
much-needed reprieve, especially for her mother.

Barron’s mother, Jackie, Passover-proofs their suburban
Chicago home in an ultra-fastidious manner that’s in keeping with
Sales Office: 1515 The Fairway,
Rydal, PA 19046
ExploreRydalWaters.org See Destination, Page 18
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM MAZEL TOV!
MARCH 26, 2020
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