passover
ABOVE: Rabbi Elimelech and Ruthie Goldberg with their grandchildren in Costa Rica last Passover.
RIGHT: Dean and Barbara Pichette spent last Passover in Costa Rica, where they attended an outdoor seder
— with howler monkeys.
Passover In Paradise
Some local folks forget the cleaning and cooking and go away for a kosher holiday.
JENNIFER LOVY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
N
ot far from where the waves crash against the
sandy shore of a pristine beach along the Pacific
Ocean, Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg and his wife,
Ruthie, will join 120 travelers from all over the world for
an al fresco Passover seder in Costa Rica.
This year marks the seventh or eighth time the
Goldbergs will be observing the holiday at the all-
inclusive four-star resort, made kosher for Passover and
strictly supervised during the holiday.
Open-air dining lends itself nicely to a beautiful
and unique setting for the seders. As an added bonus,
because this Central America country is close to the
equator, an early sunset means the festive meals will
start approximately two hours earlier than they will in
Michigan.
“It’s the most beautiful thing to sit down to a seder
and not be exhausted from all the preparations that go
into making a seder and getting ready for Passover,” says
Goldberg, who serves as the scholar-in-residence with
Costa Rica Kosher Adventures, the travel company orga-
nizing the holiday getaway. He also is founder and direc-
tor of Kids Kicking Cancer and rabbi emeritus of Young
Israel of Southfield.
Goldberg’s roles during Passover include leading daily
services and the seders ( for those who choose to par-
ticipate as a group as opposed to having a self-led one)
as well as lecturing. His talks, he says, are meant to be
inspiring, motivational seminars that include meditative
techniques and ways to achieve emotional freedom.
Scores of resorts and hotels around the world kosher
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April 6 • 2017
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their kitchens during Passover, allowing travelers the
freedom to escape the intense preparation of getting
their homes ready for Passover and, of course, preparing
eight days of Passover meals.
Miami, San Diego, Naples, Las Vegas and destinations
all over the East Coast are just a handful of domestic des-
tinations offering Passover travel packages. International
locations include Greece, Italy, Mexico, the Caribbean
and Israel, just to name a few.
On a national and international level, kosher travel
is big business. TotallyJewishTravel.com is the largest
Jewish travel website with 5,000 users a day, according to
the site’s co-founder and co-owner Raphi Bloom. There
are more than 130 kosher-for-Passover hotels around the
world currently advertising there.
“Pesach is busier [than kosher travel the rest of the
year] because often three generations go away, so you
have whole family groupings traveling together,” he says.
“Resorts compete with each other for the best speak-
ers, scholars-in-residence and entertainers, such as the
chief rabbi of the United Kingdom or comedian Elon
Gold. More and more new companies are starting to run
hotels for Pesach and many sold out in early March or are
close to being sold out now.”
A NEW TRADITION
Last year, for the first time, Barbara and Dean Pichette
found themselves without anyone in town for Passover.
Their children were unable to travel so instead of being
alone, the Southfield couple decided to spend the holiday
in Costa Rica.
“It was paradise,” Barbara Pichette says. “We had an
amazing seder outside where we could hear the ocean
and howler monkeys. How often do you have a seder
with howler monkeys?”
This year, the Pichettes will host their children and
grandchildren. “I’m becoming everyone’s personal Costa
Rica,” jokes Pichette, who will house at least five family
members for the duration of Passover.
David and Doris Schey’s children were also living out
of town and unable to spend the holiday together. Doris
happened to see an advertisement for Passover at a hotel
just outside of San Diego in Community Links, a local
advertising guide geared toward the Orthodox commu-
nity.
The ad caught their attention because the resort was
close to their daughter, so the Huntington Woods couple
booked what would be their first Passover getaway. The
following year, they went to a kosher hotel in northern
Italy. This year, they will spend Pesach at a kosher resort
in Connecticut.
“Our kids are grown, and it’s a lot, changing over your
home,” David Schey says. “There are wonderful speakers
and a lot of activities during the week. In California, they
even converted the locks to keys so we didn’t have to use
an electronic card. They really made it easy for us.”
Despite the ease of observing Passover away, Schey
says the second Passover ends, the hotels become like
Cinderella at midnight and are no longer kosher. •