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Obituaries

Obituary: Simon Kalman

Maven of Kosher food distribution for airline travellers

March 14, 2019 09:42
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2 min read

Simon Kalman, who has died of cancer aged 62, combined a passion for airline timetables with a concern for quality kosher food that helped extend the boundaries of Jewish travel. He challenged tiresome bureaucracy and championed campaigns to improve community safety and convenience near his home and synagogue, Munk’s in Golders Green.

The first son of Rachele and the late Raymond and Kalman, Simon was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s and Queen Elizabeth’s. He helped design equipment and procedures enabling quality kosher food to be served on international aircraft. Simon led the first trail-blazing tour to China in the 1980s that offered freshly-prepared kosher food with Lady Amelie Jakobovits as the celebrity guest. When Jewish billionaires wanted truckloads of matzot shipped into the former Soviet Union, they called Simon, as did the IDF when they needed someone discreet and reliable to organise their senior officers’ tours of European battlegrounds.

He was on first name terms with caretakers, customs officers, border guards and many of the diplomatic protection group officers guarding London’s most sensitive installations. Somehow, his tour groups always managed to get rare tickets for the midnight ceremony at the Tower of London. He was one of the few non-officials permitted into Downing Street on Christmas Day, bringing his annual delivery of cream cakes for the officers on duty.

He was still a schoolboy when he started organising garden fetes, sponsored walks and Guinness charity world record attempts. He was 16 when he dreamed up the idea of a charity It’s a Knockout competition for synagogue children’s services that became regular fixtures at Hendon’s Copthall Stadium.