Crusing with Covid: A Passover Tale *

After two years of sheltering in place for Passover, some Jews chose this year to lock up their homes rather than undergo the extensive and rigorous “housecleaning” required by the festival. Some checked into hotels especially designed to accommodate their holiday needs while others stayed in luxury resorts similarly repurposed. And some, evidently, chose to come aboard cruise liners for the entire eight-day holiday period.

But we felt a bit of trepidation when we were “called” for a cruise on the Celebrity Equinox, set to depart the first night of Passover. Our apprehension was not so much because of Covid, but because last time on another of Celebrity’s 17 ships, being asked to conduct the Passover Seder on that first evening—embarkation night—had turned into a nightmare.

Back then, an inexperienced Activities Director insisted on holding the Seder amidst the chaos of embarkation. But there had been no planning. The staff had made no preparations. The ritual foods were nowhere to be seen, not even matzah. I was required to stand in a corner of the massive dining room in my travel clothes (our suitcases had not yet been delivered to our stateroom) and hold forth on a booming microphone in the hearing of the entire dining assembly, whether passengers wanted to be at a Seder or not. And when it came time for the Seder meal, participants were directed to stand in the buffet line along with everybody else.

So, based on that inelegant adventure-in-chaos seven years ago, this time, well in advance of embarkation day, I emailed the Equinox Activities Director, a Welshman named Peter. I impressed upon Peter the need to meet and plan such an important event and, therefore, to please kindly schedule the Seder for the second night of Passover, rather than the first night which would, once again, coincide with embarkation night. Peter seemed only too willing to oblige.

So meet and plan we did, Peter and I, the Head Chef, and the Restaurant Manager. The result was just what a Seder should be; there was levity and learning, singing and sociability, and the food was superb. Forty-nine passengers hailing from four different countries fronted up and, judging from both their spoken and later, written, responses, a grand time was had by all.

But hang on; the story gets more interesting. A couple of times on this latest voyage I complimented Peter on how well he had managed the Seder. In passing, I mentioned that I had "had a bad Seder experience on another Celebrity voyage some time ago.” It was a cruise ship called the Celebrity Solstice on a voyage from Sydney to Honolulu where, as it happened, we were also involved in a rescue-at-sea, but that’s another story entirely and I didn’t share those extraneous details with Peter.

Well, on the last day of our cruise this time, Peter gave a talk about some of the more interesting experiences he has had as an Activities Director aboard various Celebrity ships. And then…wait for it…he says, “and one of them was an SOS rescue-at-sea aboard the Celebrity Solstice.” “Oh, No!” we whispered to each other as we sank down into our chairs. Could it be? Could Peter have been the Activities guy on that other ship? The one I complained about to his very self? I simply did not remember him.

The good news, of course, when we summoned up the courage to reveal the connection to him (“I thought I might have recognized you,” said Peter, but he did not, thank heavens, remember the event), the good news was how much we had all learned over the past seven years. We had a good laugh and shared a virtual hug as we assured him, once again, that he had done a great job with Passover this voyage.

If it is, indeed, a small world like everyone says, the world of sailing ships must be considerably smaller. And one thing we now believe is also certain: our friend Peter has yet another story to tell. And so, now, do we.

* FOOTNOTE:

On June 17, 2022, two months after the above incident, all clients received this message from our Agent at Compass Speakers Bureau:

“For 2023 we will be implementing one Seder dinner on the Passover voyages. The Seder dinner will be held on the first night of Passover unless it falls on embarkation. If the first Seder dinner falls on embarkation, it will be held on the second night of Passover.”

SOS Rescue-at-Sea

On embarkation day, once we’re unpacked, Patti puts on her a Psychologist hat and heads down to the Medical Center. There she introduces herself to the shipboard doctor and offers her services as needed. And she has been so summoned on occasion but never so urgently as on a voyage from Sydney to Hawaii in 2015.

It was on that particular voyage that I had finally learned to understand the navigational chart and on this day, we had departed Tahiti and were headed northwest toward Hawaii across the vast Pacific Ocean. Our heading was +/- 355 degrees and it would take about two days to reach Hawaii. But when I awoke early the next morning, I turned on the navigation channel and noticed that our heading had changed drastically; instead of 355, we were now headed 220, in other words, we had turned around and were headed southwest!

It was early in the morning and in my imagination this had been the scenario: The captain had missed Hawaii by mistake and was headed toward his next stop, Vancouver, Canada. When he realized his mistake, he turned the ship around and was headed back to Hawaii at 220 degrees southwest. That’s what I imagined.

But at 8 am, the captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen: At 1 am this morning the US Coast Guard directed us back toward the Equator in the mid-Pacific. There a private yacht has run aground in uncharted waters and, although we were hundreds of miles away at the time, we were the nearest ship to the distressed sailboat. So we will do our best to rescue the mariners and head back to Hawaii once they are safely onboard.”

Because the east side of this uncharted island was so shallow, we had to anchor our huge ship well off the west side while those two unlucky mariners were forced to walk 7 miles barely above sea level across terribly abrasive sand and brush to get to us. Then they were told to shed some of their gear and swim out to the rescue zodiac in dark and dangerous waters. When they finally got aboard our mother ship the owner of the sailboat was devastated; his investment was now a total loss, and so was his dignity. So Patti rolled up her sleeves and went to work.

Believe it or not, despite this 12-hour delay our captain, at “full-steam-ahead,” was able to make it to Hawaii with a loss of only two hours. And we are happy to report that not only his partner but the sailboat owner himself, layered now in donated designer clothing, soothed by a warm shower, luxurious bed, delicious gourmet food, and comforted by Patti’s compassionate care, disembarked in Lahaina in a considerably better mood.

And we all had a great story to tell!

Back in the Saddle Again...

After the long co-vid drought, we climbed back in the saddle in late 2021 aboard Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas on a fourteen-day Hanukkah contract.

I must say, RCL does Hanukkah very, very well. For example, at one end of the 120 meter long Royal Promenade Deck the staff placed a giant Hanukkah Menorah under a huge “Happy Hanukkah” banner. Each night we conducted a well-publicized candle lighting ceremony attended by upwards of 30 passengers, followed by a raucous Dreydl Derby where jelly donuts and perfect latkes, garnished with applesauce and sour cream, were on offer. An attractive card announcing the holiday was placed on each dining room table the first night while brisket, latkes and applesauce were added to the evening’s dinner menu.

Looking forward, we’re scheduled to sail aboard a Celebrity ship for Passover and, all being well, to the Eastern Mediterranean for the fall High Holy Days. I’ll have to cut my softball season short for the chance to visit Israel again, but am confident it will be worth the sacrifice.

Let’s hope and pray this co-vid plague will soon be over.


The Truth Comes Out

True to our forecast, but more than a decade after the events described in Chapter 25 of The Rabbi Who Knew Too Much, the truth finally came out. Mossad’s retiring Director, who was at his post when the Dubai hit took place, spoke to the press about the need to reveal the truth before peace between Israel and Dubai (UAE) could be established.

Here’s the story:

“Deeply involved in the shaping of Israel’s 2020 normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, {the Director} said forging ties with the UAE had required ‘defusing the obstacle’ posed by Mossad’s assassination in a Dubai hotel room…of a senior Hamas figure, a Hamas arms importer also wanted by Israel for terrorism. ‘It was a mine we needed to defuse… It was on the table’ when the UAE negotiations got going. ‘We dealt with it. We removed the obstacle,’ he said.

‘There are operations that are exposed, to our sorrow,’ he said of incidents such as the Dubai hit. ‘When it’s exposed, it hurts, it’s unpleasant and it’s embarrassing.’”

2020: A SEA ODYSSEY

We had been planning to spend the first part of 2020 at home preparing for a nice cruise around South America, set to begin March 15. We were even planning to have some of our grandchildren and their parents join us on the final leg of the journey.

But a last-minute call in late December 2019 saw us scrambling to organize for an early January voyage across the Atlantic to West Africa and beyond.

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The call was to serve aboard the posh Seabourn Sojourn, a small, exclusive, all-inclusive 450-passenger craft where the liquor flows freely, all suites have sea views, and the passenger/crew ratio is nearly 1:1. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse.

So we boarded in Fort Lauderdale on January 3 and disembarked 40 days later in Capetown, a city I had longed to visit after hearing glowing reports—well-deserved, as it turned out—from our South African friends. The Sojourn was then scheduled to continue its around-the-world voyage with another rabbi onboard. Our plan was to fly home to prepare for the South American trip on a Holland America ship. But, as it turned out, neither the Sojourn’s full itinerary nor our second voyage would be completed in 2020.

In the end, the Sojourn floundered in the Indian Ocean looking for a port in the pandemic storm. Eventually, the State Department was called in to negotiate an emergency landing in Perth so passengers could be bussed directly to the airport for flights home, cutting their 116-day itinerary in half. And, ultimately, our anticipated second voyage was cancelled altogether.

We have been so blessed this past decade to have visited all seven continents and sailed upon all the oceans save the Arctic. How much more fortunate could we possibly be? Yet we look forward to the day when a vaccine will be approved and the cruise industry, however transformed, will be back in business. In the meantime, the watchword for all of us is, “Stay Safe.”

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Antarctic Wonderland

This year we missed what turned out to be a terrible Wisconsin winter to spend 80 days—January to March—aboard the MS Prinsendam. Beginning and ending in Fort Lauderdale, this was to be the final Grand Voyage of the Prinsendam and the grandest of voyages it was! We sailed through the Panama Canal, visited a number of ports along both coasts of South America, went 900 miles up the latte-colored Amazon River and dropped anchor at the world’s southernmost city, Ushuaia. From Ushuaia we headed south past treacherous Cape Horn and then, finding calmer waters, spent an entire week in the bays and inlets of the Antarctic Peninsula. On our final day within the boundaries of the seventh continent we actually set foot upon Antarctic land in the pristine village of Grytviken, where we walked among Emperor penguins and elephant seals, yielding to them the right-of-way at all times, and laid a stone upon the grave of heroic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Antarctica was unexpectedly jaw-droppingly out-of-this-worldly beautiful.

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When we returned to the ship at the end of our last day in Antarctica I ran across Bert and Marit, regular attendees at our shipboard Sabbath gatherings and active members of their home Temple in Amsterdam. I mentioned to them that I was planning to speak about the Jewish view of heaven the following Friday night.

“Well then, Rabbi,” Bert quipped with a twinkle in his eye, “I’m not sure you’ll see us at services this time. After this splendid week in Antarctica, we’ve already been to heaven!”

Shark Encounter

Friday, April 13, 2018

What do you do when you're driving along in one of our National Parks and you see a line of cars parked along the side of the road? You stop your car to see what they're looking at, right?

So today I'm walking along the shore in Fakarava (an atoll about 145 miles NE of Tahiti) and I see a group of people standing near the water. Right in front of them an occasional dorsal fin surfaces, then disappears into the shallow water. I immediately say to myself, "dolphins," but as I draw nearer the people are whispering, "sharks."

Sure enough, a local man has lured a family of 5 reef sharks toward the shore, feeding them cut-up bits of some nameless (to me at least) white fish. He is standing knee deep in the water and petting the sharks as they feed and thrash about him. "They won't bite," he tells me in French and they are clearly not terribly hungry as, by now at least, he has to coax them to eat. I wade in next to him and ask, "Moi aussie?" indicating my desire to pet them. He says, "Sure," in English.

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What a thrill. This is evidently not the first time he has done this so I ask him, in French, "For the tourists?" But he indicates, "No." I am aware that only an occasional cruise ship comes to these shores so I believe him, and besides, he doesn't ask for money for this marvelous display. He does it for himself--a sort of shark whisperer. 

The big one he has named, Marcello, but the four smaller ones are nameless. Marcello is about a foot wide at the mouth and about 5 feet long. His color is greenish-brown. His back feels like medium sandpaper but the fins are smooth.

I petted one of the smaller ones as well before this lovely group of satiated sharks drifted away.

Wow.

Who Knew?

Like hundreds of thousands of cruise passengers each year, we spent the better part of one day in Aruba back in April 2014 while our ship was in port. We had just been to Curacao and had visited its famous sand-floor synagogue, so we jumped to the (false) conclusion that Aruba, a tiny, essentially sun-sand-and-surf destination with a population of only 100,000, wouldn't be home to much of a Jewish community, let alone a synagogue. But this past autumn, when we were planning our winter sojourn, how wonderfully amazed we were to discover that not only did Aruba have a synagogue, but a full-time resident Rabbi as well! That surprising discovery sealed the deal for us; this is where we'd "winter" and, lo and behold, this is where we are!

Aruba has an extensive Jewish history, dating from the 18th century. In 1962 the community got together to build a fine, modern Temple near downtown Oranjestad.  The Rabbi is Argentinian Daniel Kripper and as we've been happy to discover, he's quite a scholar. The good Rabbi and his wife, Flora, have hosted us for Shabbat dinner and taken us to their favorite beach on more than one occasion. Synagogue members who live nearby have graciously driven us to services each and every Friday night. The services have been delightful with spirited singing that resounds off the sanctuary walls. The volunteer Hazzan is a police inspector with a booming voice and a hug-friendly personality. The Temple president, former Director of the Aruba National Park Service, even took us around the entire island on tour.

We'll be back home for a brief fortnight (two weeks) and then it's another cruise aboard the MS. Maasdam for Passover in the South Pacific. We'll be at sea for my 70th birthday so I'm sure the Indonesian wait staff will sing happy birthday to me in their native tongue. Then it's back home for the start of yet another senior softball season.  Life is Good.

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Bon Dia from Downtown Oranjestad, Aruba

Way Out in Left Field

So my senior softball teammate, Brian, tells me that a friend of his is coming to softball practice today. The friend lives nearby and wants to check us out, see how we play, see if he fits in, see if he might be interested/able to join us.

The guy shows up and introduces himself as Paul.  It's clear he has "baseball chops"--plays well at first base and can hit the ball well.

After his turn at bat, he comes out and stands near me.  He says, "I hear you're a Rabbi."  I say, "Yes, but how did you know?"  He says, "Brian told me.  I'm a Member of the Tribe as well."

I say, "What's your last name?"  He says, "Stiegler."  I say, "I knew a Stiegler family in Minnesota."  He says, "I grew up in Minnesota."

I say, "Ione (pronounced, i-own)."  He says something rude, the equivalent of, "You're putting me on."  So I say, again, "Ione."  He makes his rude comment again. Thinking that he might be thinking I'm saying something in a foreign language (after all, Ione is a rare first name), I say, "No.  Ione Stiegler is the name of a woman who lived near us in Minneapolis."

He says, "Ione Stiegler is my mother."

Ione is in her 90's now and was a good friend of my late mother, Ann. We lived at 1611 Upton Avenue North.  They lived at 1607, right next door!

I gave him a big hug.  Turns out he lives in Middleton, almost "right next door" to us now!

 

Crossing the Atlantic 22 April 2017

Aloha Everyone,

We just finished our last study session aboard the MS Amsterdam as we sail from Portugal's Madeira Islands toward Fort Lauderdale at the conclusion of our fabulous 111-day Grand World Voyage.  Today's session was entitled, "16 Sabbaths at Sea:  Questions and Answers."  At the final Friday night service I told everyone to bring a pen and paper to this session so we could play a version of one of their favorite games, trivia, very popular aboard cruise ships (along with bridge).  So, at this morning's class I asked a series of short-answer questions based on my 12 and Patti's 3 Friday night presentations, which included sermons, lectures, discussions and also, a delightful mid-Passover children's story about how the dolphins helped our ancestors cross the Red Sea (a personal elaboration on Rabbi Marc Gellman's original).  We had a good turnout for the story that particular Sabbath as it came on the heels of our joyful seder, attended by 162 standing-room-only passengers (and a few crew members as well), so I figured everyone would remember the story and, sure enough, they all answered that question correctly.

In this final study session today we reviewed each of the 15 presentations in order, gave handouts to those who boarded mid-voyage or missed a service or two, and tied up a couple of loose ends.  Toward the end of today's class I said, "There are only two copies of my book left in the gift shop and I really don't have room in my suitcase to take them home. They'd make wonderful gifts for your children and grandchildren and I will personally inscribe each copy."  And guess what?!  Right after class they sold out and one person who didn't get to the gift shop on time promised they would order it online!

I went around the ship telling everyone that "the book has a little bit of sex and some violence in it, so they've placed it in the gift shop next to the liquor and the cigarettes," which is true. That line seems to always get a laugh.

This voyage has been a real successful experience for us and everyone, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, have said they will give us great reviews and would we want to come back next year?  All we have said is that we like next year's Grand World Voyage itinerary (sold out even before we concluded this year's) very much so we'll see what the future might bring.  It's been good to get back in the Rabbi saddle once again but as the voyage progressed the demands on our time increased so it reminded me of why I was so eager to retire as early as possible!

We will be back home in four days and hope to see you on land!

Shalom,

RD and Company

 

 

An Incredible New Year's Greeting

Alas and alack, just as we were beginning to settle in for a cold Upper Midwest winter, our agent unexpectedly greeted us with a late December call. "We are offering you a World Cruise" she said, "and we need an answer soonest."  Can you imagine our excitement? It's the dream of a lifetime!

Since that moment it's been a whirlwind of visa applications, clothes pressing, suitcase packing, bill paying, and making all kinds of other arrangements for--whenever I write this I can't believe it's coming true--all being well, a 111-day 'round the world voyage!

We'll be north of the Equator the entire time although the ship will virtually touch that imaginary line when we depart Singapore about midway through the voyage. We'll be pulling into ports we've never seen and a few we've already visited, but we know each stop will bring new perspectives and maybe a new adventure or two.

Please do stay tuned for the next report.

"THE RABBI WHO KNEW TOO MUCH" goes on tour

Lo and behold, I've begun a book tour!  If you'd like to attend any of these events, please contact me and I can give you directions.  Thanks, RD.

Here's the schedule:

October 3, 2015:  Middleton Library, Wisconsin

November 1, 2015: Temple Beth El, Madison

November 20, 2015: Aspen Jewish Congregation, Aspen, Colorado

January 27, 2016:  Auckland, New Zealand

January 30, 2016: Wellington, New Zealand

February 9, 2016:  Melbourne, Australia

February 12, 13, 2016:  Sydney, Australia

March 11, 2016:  Honolulu, Hawaii

April 11, 2016:  L'chayim Group, Madison, Wisconsin

October 18, 2018: Oseh Shalom Book Club, Bluffton, South Carolina

October 22, 2018: Capitol Lakes Residence, Madison, Wisconsin

 

October Post by our dear friend, Marie Galletta, in Adelaide, South Australia

Rabbi David Kopstein’s Book

Orders are now being taken for copies of Rabbi David Kopstein’s book entitled “The Rabbi Who Knew Too Much” which is to be published in early November in the USA. I can’t wait!

So Hurry, Hurry, Hurry! and put your orders in now! Each book will be personally inscribed by the author and we are negotiating a special price for a bulk shipping.

Rabbi David’s book is based on actual events and touches upon the issues of ethnicity vs. patriotism, socialism vs. capitalism, the demise of the kibbutz, our relationship with Israel, whether “to keep silent when we should have spoken out,” and other interesting topics.

Beaver’s Pond Press warn that most folks who read a rabbi's book expect to learn something they don't presently know. But be careful with this one! You may wind up like The Rabbi Who Knew Too Much.

On the back cover of the book are comments by Barry Morrow (Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Rain Man). “Actually, you can judge a book by its cover, particularly one with a title as whimsical and intriguing as The Rabbi Who Knew Too Much. While you’re at it, take a look inside. Jonathan Kadison has a remarkable tale to tell.”

{Marie is editor of the monthly Beit Shalom Magazine which goes to about 250 households in Adelaide}