Since the days of the fictional Love Boat, Jews who keep kosher have taken to the seas. The kosher cruise has become a mainstay of Jewish vacationers, a seafaring symbol of a wandering Diaspora with a special passion for the perfect resort experience.
Even with the recent spike in global anti-Semitism, the kosher cruise seemed a safe respite, a reliable escape. That, at least, is what some 140 vacationers believed as they booked tickets on the Costa Toscana for a weeklong tour.
They were wrong. Days before the voyage was to begin, tour operator Yossi Zablocki received a curt message: The ship’s crew refuses to cooperate with the provision of kosher food for the Jewish passengers at any point in the trip. Nothing a frantic Zablocki could suggest would alter their stance. “We simply will not do this,” he was told.
By this point, Zablocki had already purchased $22,000 of kosher product, ready to be loaded on the ship in Marseille, where it was docked for a day before it arrived in Barcelona. He also had the kosher certifiers, or mashgichim, cleared, medically checked and ticketed to accompany the trip and perform the ritual supervision that kosher cooking requires. And the kitchen was confirmed to have the necessary ovens, utensils and equipment.
None of these steps were new for Zablocki. A 15-year veteran of the hospitality industry who has run over 40 high-end kosher cruises, he knew the routine cold. Indeed, there wasn’t much to know, especially on the ship’s end: A standard cruise kitchen is already well-equipped to follow the simple steps that make it kosher, even if only for a portion of its clientele. That is, perhaps, why he never faced any resistance from any crew before.
The ship and its crew are operated by Costa Cruises, which is owned by Carnival Cruise Line. Zablocki had for years dealt with its US representative, who arranged the deals without a hitch. In the past year, however, Costa USA is apparently operating in large part from the company’s Brazil office, not a place especially known for kosher travel. That is the office that delivered the message on behalf of the ship’s staff, just days before the voyage, in terms so extreme that Zablocki and his customers were left speechless.
Not only would the crew refuse to dedicate any kosher sections of the kitchen, it said, but they also insisted that no kosher utensils or food with a kosher certification will be available on the ship. “The use of kosher china, pots, frying pans, etc. will not be allowed.” Anything kosher was in effect to be treated as forbidden on the ship. And no rabbi shall enter.
It was in part the extremity of such demands that suggested to Zablocki and a few of his customers that something more than an administrative dispute may lie behind the refusal.
“Nothing like this has ever happened,” he said, “and there was no credible reason that could even serve as a pretense for the crew’s outright – and sudden – refusal to accommodate us.”
At some point in the back-and-forth, a Costa employee claimed the refusal could be tied to a condition, heretofore unstated, that a kosher group should have at least 50 cabins to justify special accommodations. But Zablocki made clear he had over 140 guests booked on the cruise and, in the same conversation, offered to purchase still more to meet whatever quota they had. How many would it take, he asked? At this point they shifted; the answer was nothing, no amount. In short, there would be no way to accommodate a kosher cruise, under any conditions.
A colleague of Zablocki asked him if the cruise company’s conduct was related, in some way, to the fact that the customers were Jewish. Accommodating a kosher cruise would, of course, require allowing traditional Jewish guests to share space and vessels with the rest of the passengers, mixing with the general clientele and staff.
“Normally, I’d dismiss such speculation as a crazy conspiracy,” Zablocki said afterwards. “But at this point, I honestly don’t know. The absolute, categorical refusal to allow a kosher cruise – or any kosher items – is unprecedented and defies any logical explanation.” Zablocki’s speculations and suspicions at the time would soon harden into an unshakable conclusion: This was pure anti-Semitism on the part of Costa Cruises Brazil/USA. A series of steps on the company’s part gradually convinced him of that.
First, the company sent a letter two days before the Cruise to all of Destinations613 passengers, encouraging them to cancel their cruise, informing them their dietary restrictions would not be accommodated and they could not bring their own food, either. But Zablocki and his group refused to cancel their cruise and began to board the ship anyhow, only to find that Costa Brazil had placed a new obstacle: Some of the reserved rooms had simply disappeared. Unthinkably, Costa had begun to cancel the Jewish groups guests’ rooms, without any notice or explanation. One guest, a grandfather whose family had already boarded the ship, and had paid in full for his cabin, was told by the ship’s staff that his reservation had been cancelled by Costa Brazil just a few days earlier and that the ship could not accommodate him. “If you don’t want to fly back to the U.S. tonight, perhaps you should leave your family, sleep in Barcelona, fly tomorrow to Ibiza, and try to board the ship again in Ibiza,” he was told.
Another customer had a similar story of a room disappearing despite an email from Costa showing an over payment by Zablocki of over $4000 for the cruise. “We cannot explain this and we have never seen this before,” said the ship’s personnel.
But, Zablocki recalled, the worst was yet to come. After his refusal to cancel the cruise, he returned home a week later and wrote to Costa USA/Brazil because he was not able to complete his rooming for his next cruise, which he had booked (with a deposit) some nine months earlier. He had his first 20 cabins sold so far, 40 people waiting for their cabin numbers, and he was facing anxious inquiries from them. Zablocki then asked why he could not room his guests as he had in the past. And that was when he received the notification from Costa USA/Brazil that confirmed his worst suspicions about the company and its motives: With no further explanation, they wrote: “We regret to inform you that we will no longer be able to continue our business relationship with your company... With that being said, we have cancelled all future bookings.”
Zablocki had no doubt as to the motivation behind this decision. “Perhaps Costa moving its single American kosher customer from the U.S. to Brazil, where anti-Semitism is running rampant, was not the wisest decision on Costa’s part,” he said.
Indeed, reflecting on the history of the hospitality business, Zablocki noted: “I thought the days of ‘No Jews and dogs allowed’ were over.
I don’t think they realize what they have walked into. I will keep fighting until the world understands what they have done. The Jewish People have faced enough discrimination.”
Costa officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
By Jeff Helmreich
