Many are the components that make cruises so popular worldwide.
First, there is the ship itself – on major cruise lines, nothing less than a floating five-star hotel. Then there are the attractions onboard: swimming pools and saunas, arcades and water slides, pickleball and ping pong.
There is also the nightly entertainment – comedians, magicians, singers, and dancers. Many ships feature Broadway-style musicals, and there is karaoke galore. For the gambling set, there is a casino. For the drinking set, bars are seemingly around every corner.
Another big draw is that each day you dock somewhere new, affording the opportunity to see, explore, and experience new locales. There’s also the convenience of it all – everything is planned for you. You don’t need to rent a car or figure out where to go. You board the ship, your luggage is delivered to your room, and from that point on, there really isn’t much to worry about.
And then, of course – and for many, foremost – there is the food. Enormous quantities of food. All the time, in every corner. There’s the food that comes with the cruise – endless options throughout the day: hot dogs and hamburgers, tacos and enchiladas, fish and fowl, salads and pasta, and pastries and ice cream aplenty.
If that’s not enough or doesn’t satisfy your appetite, most cruises also have specialty restaurants where, for a price, you can order specialty meals: restaurants featuring Asian food, Mexican food, or just high-end steaks and potatoes.
Cruises, therefore, are perfect for almost everyone. Almost everyone.
But what do you do if you keep kosher? Ah, there’s the rub. You can enjoy all the amenities of the boat, partake in all the activities, and go on all the tours – but the eating part, which, let’s face it, is a big part of the experience, is lacking.
Sure, you can pre-order kosher airplane-style meals – if you arrange it weeks in advance and are lucky enough to be on a ship that can locate them. (I’ve been on a cruise where the food simply didn’t make it aboard.)
But then, as the guy at the table next to you sinks his teeth into a rack of lamb or duck terrine layered with apricot chutney, you’re left choking down reheated, plastic-tray braised beef with mashed potatoes.
The other option is to go real heavy on the salads and ask the waiter to double-wrap in foil some tilapia or salmon with a baked potato and asparagus for every meal. But how much tilapia and asparagus can one person eat?
Which means that for Jews scrupulous about kashrut observance, the culinary experience – a key element of the cruise, arguably the most important component – will be missing. Sure, you’ll have what to eat – there’s always an abundance of cucumbers and tomatoes – but there’s eating… and then there’s eating.
Eating good food, not airplane food or pre-frozen, tin-foiled fish
Two weeks ago, on a Golden Tours-organized kosher cruise aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s (NCL) Epic in the eastern Mediterranean, I ate. I mean, I really ate. Not airplane food, not tin-foiled fish, not endless vegetables and bananas, but real food. Good food. Fresh kosher, not frozen kosher.
Food prepared by a kosher chef in a separate kitchen kashered just for the trip, pastries baked in a kashered patisserie, and bread baked in a kosher oven in the ship’s bakery.
As someone who has cruised before – once eating the airplane meals and once eating so much double-wrapped tilapia and asparagus I can’t even look at them anymore – I can say it made the entire cruise experience different.
It’s one thing to cruise when you’re watching others dine on gourmet food; it’s another to cruise while you’re doing the same. This kosher cruise gave us that opportunity.
One night, for instance, as the ship sailed from Barcelona to Cannes, this was what I selected – and I emphasize selected, because there were options – for dinner:
As an appetizer, vegetable empanadas in wild mushroom sauce. For soup, cream of cauliflower. And for the main course: a veal chop with demi-glace. On the side: rice pilaf, green beans amandine, and sliced carrots. Dessert? A lovely crème brûlée.
And it was all served on real plates, with real cutlery – not paper dishes and plastic knives that snap when you try to cut a baked potato. No need to peel off layers of Saran Wrap and aluminum foil and then figure out where to put it as you do when you’re kosher cruising the other way.
In other words, you eat well, and you eat like a mensch.
And not just at dinner. Breakfast rivaled any five-star Israeli hotel spread in Jerusalem: an omelet station, herring in abundance, salads, cheeses, fruits, and an assortment of fresh-baked pastries and breads.
This particular tour lasted seven days, beginning in Rome, and stopping in Naples, Barcelona, Cannes, and Livorno (Pisa) before returning to Rome. Each day – except Shabbat, which was a day at sea – there were land excursions that were included, along with the flight, in the Golden Tour cruise package.
That meant packing a lunch. A sandwich table was set up to prepare sandwiches to take along.
On Shabbat, of course, lunch was served.
SHABBAT OBSERVANCE is also a lot easier if you are part of a kosher tour.
First, a room on the ship was turned into a synagogue, and Golden Tours supplied a Torah and prayer books. There was a minyan three times daily, not just on Shabbat. But since the passengers were there more for the cruise than for the davening (praying), the daily prayers were said with relative alacrity.
On Shabbat, with all the time in the world, the pace was more relaxed, though not slow to the point of irritation.
On Shabbat morning, after Shacharit and the Torah reading but before Mussaf, there was a break for kiddush and breakfast. Golden Tours knows its clientele.
Second, a Shabbat elevator was designated during specific hours and staffed by an NCL employee who knew to push all the buttons when someone from the group entered. Third, magnets were distributed that prevent staterooms from locking, so keycards weren’t necessary on Shabbat (valuables were stowed in the room safe).
And finally, Golden Tours paid two NCL staffers to stand by with fire extinguishers in the dining room where Shabbat candles were lit. This is no trivial matter, since cruise ships are hypersensitive about open flames onboard. Security was called on my unsuspecting wife on our first cruise when she innocently asked at the desk where she could light Shabbat candles. Her candles were confiscated, and she was sternly warned: “No fire on the ship.”
All of the above, plus the even more festive meals for Shabbat with traditional Shabbat food – Golden Tours owner Yehoshua Weidhorn quipped that the ship’s captain always asks for some cholent – created a Shabbat atmosphere onboard, even as the other passengers were swimming, drinking, gambling, and otherwise engaged in regular cruise-line revelry.
The kosher vibe was set even before the first meal was served or the Shabbat candles were lit, on the way from the Rome airport to the port at Civitavecchia. We arrived in Rome as the papal conclave convened in the Vatican to appoint the new pope.
“We’ll talk about what is going on with the pope,” said our tour guide Zeev Levenberg. “But first, Tefilat Haderech,” the traveler’s prayer.
Yehuda Leib Gordon, one of the leaders of the Haskala (the Enlightenment movement), once advised: “Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home.” A tour like this makes it possible – supremely possible – to be a Jew at home and a Jew on a cruise ship.
But it’s not cheap. A Golden Tours kosher cruise, according to Weidhorn, costs about an additional $100 per day per passenger. Why so much? Because all the food has to be specially ordered and shipped, because all the utensils need to be bought and stored, and because salaries need to be paid to the kosher chef and the mashgichim (kosher supervisors).
Our group of 80 had four mashgichim, and someone needs to pay for their rooms on board.
The logistics are mind-boggling. Some of us have difficulty figuring out how much to cook for 10 Shabbat guests. Here, you need to plan for 80 people for an entire week.
And with the passengers paying top dollar, you can’t afford to run out. It’s not like it’s possible to pop into a kosher butcher in Naples or Pisa and buy a few dozen spare steaks.
Shalom Brot, one of the mashgichim and head of logistics for Golden Tours’ kosher cruises, said that eight years of experience – plus nearly 15 years in the catering business in Israel – gives him a good idea of how much to order.
The rule of thumb? Six hundred grams of beef or fowl per person per day – which is a lot. Why so much? Because if people don’t like the beef, they might want the chicken – or both.
Each meal also includes fish for the pescatarians and a veggie option for the vegetarians.
This is the eighth year Golden Tours – which has been in the cruise booking business in Israel for two decades– is running kosher cruises. They have five more planned to various destinations for the remainder of 2025.
These cruises are not necessarily easy on the wallet. But for the kosher traveler, it’s the difference between coming along for the ride and actually being a full part of it.
The writer and his wife were guests of Golden Tours on the Norwegian Epic.