For many, trying local food is an intrinsic part of travelling the world. But what if you’re strictly kosher? Once, it meant being limited to specific hotels or destinations with strong Jewish communities for their kosher restaurants and shops — or worse, lugging all your food with you and living off tinned tuna and crackers.
These days, an increasing number of kosher tours cover almost every corner of the world: you could discover the Galapagos Islands, Rwanda or Uzbekistan, all while knowing that someone else is taking care of the practicalities.
But what really goes in to planning a kosher tour? Zvi Lapian, of Zvi Lapian Tours, has been running tours around the world for over a decade, with fans including former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks — and, for Zvi, it doesn’t start with the food.
“When choosing destinations, I look for places that have a combination of different features: geographical wonders, historical sites, unique plants and animals, natural beauty, and sometimes places with interesting Jewish community history,” he explains. “It’s about what there is to see, not what there is to eat!
“My clientele wants something new: not a destination with kosher restaurants and Chabad houses where they can travel independently. They want to see different countries and experience different cultures.”
And, for today’s brand of adventurous and luxurious kosher tours, that means having your own band of experts on hand to sort the logistics, including chef and full-time mashgiach (kashrut supervisor), so no destination is off-limits. The trickiest part can be persuading local hotels that the dramatic tales they’ve heard aren’t true.
“They think that we have to blow-torch their ovens and may cause damage, when in fact we can work very effectively without radical koshering operations,” says Zvi, who says the toughest challenge at the planning stage can be persuading hotels to open up their kitchens.
“We are often dealing with chefs who don’t want to share their space, concerns over liability for health and safety, and ignorance about kosher food preparation. They are nervous about what they think we might do to their equipment.”
And it’s often these special preparations — paying hotels for the use of the kitchens, for hire of a private dining room and another for services, for corkage, and also for waiting and kitchen staff — which push up the cost of kosher tours.
With local expert partners, such as high-end tour operators, helping to plan the itinerary and organise the travel, the next step is sourcing the food.
It’s not only kashrut that dictates the menu with many travellers asking for vegan and coeliac-friendly diets — not to mention one woman who specified that she wouldn’t eat fish if it looked like fish, but would if she couldn’t tell.
Kosher ingredients, meat and chicken are ordered in from the nearest Jewish community, while the mashgiach and chef hit the local supermarkets for fresh produce and any other ingredients with kosher certification that they can find. The exception on Zvi’s tours are trips to Lapland, which are catered by Hermolis.
And as a back-up? Zvi’s suitcases aren’t all filled with clothes… “Sometimes I do get nervous that there won’t be enough food,” he says. “I often fly out with extra suitcases of packaged food from Israel or London to supplement what is available locally. In fact, I tend to over-cater, so we have never gone hungry!”
With the tour planned and the food sorted, there are preparations for Shabbat to organise, too. “I bring a mini Sefer Torah with us and I won’t travel unless we have a minyan of men for services, particularly since we often have travellers who want to say Kaddish,” says Zvi, ensuring they’re self-sufficient on Shabbat.
For some destinations, such as Lima in Peru or Beijing in China, spending Shabbat in the city with the Jewish community is a bonus of joining a kosher tour.
With so much planning involved, it’s not surprising that popular destinations get repeated regularly — some yearly or every other year, while Pesach trips to Israel are often booked by the same families every year.
If you think some of the world’s wildest destinations would still be off-limits, you’d be wrong. How about keeping kosher with the penguins? Why not, says Zvi.
“The places on my personal wish-list include Antarctica, Tanzania and the Serengeti, and South Korea and Taiwan. I’m willing to run tours to these places, but it remains to be seen whether people are adventurous enough to join me!”
Tempting kosher tours for 2020
Bespoke Kosher Travel
If you don’t fancy the idea of a group tour but want to venture somewhere more unusual, Bespoke Kosher Travel organises trips to over 40 locations including Cuba and Dubai, as well as Costa Rica, Vietnam and bucket list experiences like gorilla trekking in Rwanda.
“We handle the whole holiday for the client from start to end, taking care of every detail — transfers, guides, hotels, tickets, all the way down to restaurant bookings,” says owner Ben Robbins. “Of course, the unique thing about us is we can work to organise kosher meals in throughout the whole holiday.”
ALP Tours
You can travel in the steps of traders and explorers over the centuries as you follow part of the exotic Silk Road through Central Asia on a kosher tour to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan with ALP Tours.
Discover the Jewish community in Tashkent, as well as visiting Samarkand’s Jewish quarter and welcoming Shabbat in Bukhara, tracing the long history of Uzbekistan and its fascinating culture along the way, plus several days in Kazakhstan, in and around its capital.
The tour runs from May 4 to May 17, and you can book the Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan sections alone. Email alptours@hotmail.co.uk or call 07957233551
Deluxe Kosher Tours
With destinations including South America, Asia, India and Europe, you could see cherry blossom in Japan or travel the Silk Road as part of the Deluxe Kosher Tours trips.
For 2020, spend two weeks exploring some of the highlights of China, including a chance to discover China’s Jewish roots, from Beijing’s historic glories to Shabbat with the city’s Jewish community, as well as Shanghai, Guangzhou (formerly Canton), ancient Foshan and Hong Kong.
The tour runs from April 29 to May 14.
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