+972 Magazine has got its hands on the official hotel rating of Jewishness devised by Israel’s Chief Rabbi Jonah Metzger [Heb]. The new rating will help religious customers choose hotels with a more Jewish environment.
1 Star of David – “Gentile” hotels. Serve traif. Don’t even touch with a lulav.
2 Stars of David – “Distant Jewish roots” hotels. Kosher, but the kitchen may employ Arabs. Not recommended.
3 Stars of David – “Secular Jewish” hotels. Kosher. No Arabs in kitchen – but they do clean the pools. Let’s face it, you get what you pay for.
4 Stars of David – “Observant Jewish” hotels. Shabbat candle lighting in the lobby, no Arabs – yet women still walk around freely. Good only if there’s no other option in the area.
5 Stars of David – The special Jackie Mason “Too Jewish” rating. Complete separation between men and impure beings of lesser status. No gentiles allowed under any circumstances. Free God-fi in all rooms.
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Fips
Imagine international reactions if there was a similar competition of german hotels for “arian” rating… a strictly “no go”!
Looks like some kind of terrible history repetes…
Hats off to your brave journalism here!
Ze'ev Back
If you do not wish to have your Friday night hotel dinner accompanied by drumming of the “forks & spoons” orchestra, loud Jewish ceremonies which would not enable any conversation around your table – I highly recommend Amrican Colony in Jerusalem and Scots in Tiberias. These hotels have o (zero) Jewish stars of David, and you are not paying for the presidential suite taken over by the kosher superviser and his 12 children during the weekend.
Danny
“1 Star of David – “Gentile” hotels. Serve traif. Don’t even touch with a lulav.”
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I only stay in these. Like Ze’ev, I prefer my hotels to be crazy-free.
sh
“The new rating will help religious customers choose hotels with a more Jewish environment.”
Well, since I’m not in the habit of staying in Israeli hotels, what follows is based on simple observation of ultra-orthodox/haredi hospitals like Shaarei Tsedek or Laniado, old age homes (hard to see why hotels would be different) and the odd eatery or two:
1. Arabs work in their kitchens.
2. The ultra-orthodox and Haredim do not recognize the authority of the Chief Rabbinate.
.
In a nutshell, “Religious customers” are likely to put kashrut before “a Jewish environment”…. what is a Jewish environment anyway?
max
@SH – I guess you know that Ami wrote a parody (that can’t be understood by those who don’t read Hebrew), so what’s the sense of your comment?
sh
Yeah Max, that often happens between him and me.
Ami Kaufman
@sh – what???? but i thought you always get my jokes!!!
Piotr Berman
Good jokes are often only a pale reflection of real life. What may seem as “too Jewish” to a secular joke writer barely scratches the surface of the multifaceted needs of devout Jewish traveler. I cut-paste from a guest house web site:
Within the Jewish world, such [travel] planning is taken for granted. Observant Jews must make sure that they will have access to kosher food and regular prayer quorums. For Shabbat, there are many restrictions on activities that mandate that one has access to electrical appliances that don’t need to be manually turned on and off, and that meals and synagogues are close by so that travel is not necessary.
Haredi, Ultra-Orthodox Jews are often even more restricted, and for this reason, in Tzfat, many hotels and guest houses are emerging which cater specifically to the Haredi population. Haredim, members of the Haredi community, don’t watch TV or listen to the radio, and therefore don’t want access to these instruments in their rooms. Their kashruth requirements are even more specific than the general kosher-keeping Jewish public, and they need to insure that their particular foods will be available. Many Haredim shy away from Internet use, and would not appreciate Internet access in their rooms, or even within the general area where they are staying. In general, Haredim feel most comfortable in an environment which not only answers their travel needs, but also meshes with their lifestyle.
A Haredi Guest House in Tzfat
The Rottenberg Guest House is such an accommodation.
——-
From little that I know, properly appointing a full kashrut kitchenette with Shabbat amenities is not trivial at all. The issue of Arab labor is also very tricky: a devout Jew CANNOT use products of Jewish labor on the Shabbat.
Mitchell Cohen
Well, I have stayed in hotels in Israel, mostly in the Prima Kings Hotel in Jerusalem, next to the Great Synagogue (our place isn’t big enough for my parents to stay over when they visit from overseas so we spend Shabbat with them in the hotel) and the hotel is about as Glatt Kosher as they come (save for the Mea Shearim loonies) and I can assure you that Arabs work in the kitchen and serve us on Shabbat. In fact, there are a couple that already know my parents and I by name.
@Danny, isn’t a free market wonderful? You can stay in a hotel that suits your needs and my family and I can stay in one that suits OUR needs.
Piotr Berman
As I suspected and Michael confirmed, Ami’s jokes are not a source of learning about Jewish habits or even forms of possible Jewish racism.
The needs of frum and ehrlich are not clear to Jews who are frei. Apparently, they CAN use internet, otherwise you would not have frum discussions and web ads for the frum. Perhaps they use rabbinically approved filters. And they have interesting topics, like how frum girls can use Dance Dance Revolution parlors, if they can. It is best if you have a proper machine at home, but it can be crowded there. Solution two is that a groups of girls goes together, get parlor rented for the duration and nobody can look at them while they dance. I imagine the staff member covering the window with a large poster “Until 11 am, DDR reserved for frum girls only”.
The on-line discussions use many Yiddish and Hebrew words so even jokes may be hard to follow. Like what bracha should be spoken when you go to a frum nudist beach? I had to google a lot to get that joke.
sh
Ami, dear Ami I’m sorry for being thick and raining on your parade
And I look forward to reading a bit of fun in this section about humanitarian souls who bolt in high dudgeon never to return should an Israeli flag cross their field of vision at a demonstration and anti-normalizationists who regularly consult activist gurus to check that they haven’t, Barghouti forfend, unwittingly tainted themselves with the dreaded normalization, a condition for which there is no known cure.