Vacation Vicissitudes

This really does sound like the vacation from hell:

The Jewish tour group, Club Kosher, claims that a Dominican hotel agreed to accommodate 800 travelers, mostly families, and their dietary needs for a winter vacation in January 2004, but its accommodations were completely unorthodox. They filed suit last month in Manhattan federal court against the hotel's Spanish owners, Occidental Hotel Management, for more than $2 million.

Coinciding with winter break at Hebrew school, Club Kosher reserved a weeklong, all-inclusive vacation to Allegre Playa Grande.

Club Kosher co-owner Charles Rosenay said that the hotel agreed to allow the tour company's eight mashgiach - rabbis who supervise food preparation - two days to "kosher the kitchen" and prepare for the holiday package. Jewish law bars certain types of food, including pork or shellfish, and forbids the mixing of meat and dairy foods. It also requires that all kosher food and dishes be kept separate from non-kosher food.

The tour group brought all their own plates and food, said Rosenay. They were supposed to have exclusive access to the resort, he said.

But soon after they arrived, outside guests checked in.

"They paid their money. They wanted cheeseburgers and they wanted to drink booze," Rosenay said.

At one point, fed up with the staff's indifference to kosher rules, a mashgiach smashed a plate after he caught the staff using it for non-kosher food. Soon the entire security staff showed up with billy clubs in hand and one of them pulled a gun, Rosenay said.

Sounds like a disaster - especially when you take into account the huge number of Orthodox travelers who were expecting a week of worry-free kosher meals - according to the article, 800 families!

They kosher group is, of course, filing the obligatory lawsuit.