The history of Pesach programs

How a week at a kosher hotel in the mountains became an industry of rented resorts on six continents, and what that history tells you about choosing one.

From the Catskills to the world

In brief

1919The Grossinger family buys the property in the Catskills that becomes Grossinger’s, a kosher resort.
Mid-centuryPesach at the big Catskills hotels becomes a fixture. Grossinger’s later counts more than 1,200 guests for the whole holiday each year.
1986Grossinger’s closes. Most of the great Catskills and Poconos hotels go the same way.
1988Sam and Arlene Lasko run their first program at the Bonaventure Resort in Florida, with 336 guests.
Early 1990sOperators move beyond New York and Miami Beach to Puerto Rico, Arizona, Aruba and further.
2009The financial crisis hits. JTA later reports that about half the operators went out of business.
2010Ten days at a leading Miami hotel start at about $5,000 per adult.
March 2020More than 170 programs are planned worldwide. Within weeks nearly all are cancelled.
2021–2022A few programs run at half capacity in 2021. In 2022 programs return and sell out.
2023A 480-room program in Atlantic City is cancelled by its hotel days before the seder.

The Catskills: where going away for Pesach began

Going away for Pesach is as old as the kosher hotel. For most of the twentieth century, for Jews in the American Northeast, that meant the Catskill Mountains of New York, and to a lesser extent the Poconos and Miami Beach.

The best known was Grossinger’s. The family began taking in boarders around 1913 and bought the property that became the hotel in 1919. At its height it had more than 35 buildings and a main dining room that seated 1,300. Elaine Grossinger Etess, of the founding family, recalled that more than 1,200 people spent the entire holiday there each year, with a rabbi, a cantor and a choir leading the seder.

Families came for eight or ten days, sat at the same tables year after year, and ate three kosher for Pesach meals a day. The hotel owned the kitchen and ran it as kosher all year, so there was no operator in between and nothing to convert.

Grossinger’s closed in 1986. Most of the other great hotels closed around the same time. One writer who grew up going there put it this way: “Passover has never been the same since Grossinger’s passed.”

From kosher hotels to kosher operators

What replaced the Catskills was a different business. The kosher hotel was gone, so a tour operator would rent an ordinary resort for the holiday, kasher its kitchen, bring in supervision, staff and entertainment, and hand it back afterwards. That is the model nearly every program uses today, and it is why supervision takes up so much of the conversation now: the hotel is not kosher for the other fifty-one weeks.

Several companies say they were there at the start. Leisure Time Tours describes itself as having “invented” kosher Passover programs and says it has been in business for more than 65 years. That is the company’s own claim, and we have not found an independent record that settles who was first.

Lasko is better documented in its own telling. Sam and Arlene Lasko ran their first Pesach program in 1988 at the Bonaventure Resort in Florida, with 336 guests. By 2010 Tablet magazine was calling the family’s Miami program, at hotels such as the Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc, “the Cadillac of Pesach programs”.

A word on “years in business”

Operators state their own history, and we show it as stated. Where a listing here says an operator has run programs for a certain number of years, that comes from the operator’s website.

The 1990s and 2000s: everywhere with a beach

For decades the Catskills and Miami Beach dominated. From the early 1990s, JTA reported, operators began taking programs to Puerto Rico, Arizona, Aruba and beyond. By 2012 the same report could list Venice, Costa Rica, Phuket, Sardinia, Marbella and the French Riviera.

Prices rose with the hotels. In 2010 ten days at the Fontainebleau started at $4,999 per adult, the Arizona Biltmore at about $5,186, and a resort in Orlando at $3,218. Programs added day camps, scholars in residence, concerts and comedians.

It was also a fragile business. After the 2008 financial crisis, JTA reported that about half the operators went out of business, and that one large operator went from seven programs in 2009 to two in 2012. Those that lasted relied on returning families: operators spoke of more than 70 percent of guests coming back each year.

2020: the year almost every program was cancelled

In early March 2020 more than 170 Pesach programs were planned around the world, over a dozen of them in Italy. The first cancellations came in Italy and Thailand. Within a few weeks nearly every program had been called off.

It showed how the money works. Operators pay hotels large deposits weeks ahead, and most of that is not refundable. One industry figure told JTA that an operator’s profit comes only from the last 10 to 15 percent of rooms sold. So when programs were cancelled, many operators could not simply return what guests had paid. Offers reported at the time ranged from 50 to 80 percent back in cash, or full credit toward the next year. Some disputes went to court.

Two things changed afterwards, according to later reporting: many more families began buying travel insurance, and operators began writing formal cancellation and refund terms.

In 2021 a small number of programs ran, at half capacity at most. By 2022 programs were back across the United States, Europe, Mexico, Morocco, Dubai and Israel, and many sold out.

When a program fails

Outright failures are rare, and they are the reason this site puts so much weight on track record. In March 2023, Jewish Insider reported that a ten-day program booked into about 480 rooms at an Atlantic City hotel was cancelled by the hotel in the week before the seder, after payment for the rooms did not arrive. The operator said a wire transfer had been diverted by fraud. The hotel said the contract had been breached. Guests were left to find somewhere else to spend Pesach. The same report mentioned earlier cases in Orlando in 2019 and 2021.

The pattern in these cases is the same: the guests paid the operator, and the operator had not finished paying the hotel. That is why we suggest asking whether the hotel contract is signed, and how your deposit is protected.

How to protect your deposit

Today

This site currently lists 167 programs in 33 countries for Pesach 2027. They include whole-hotel takeovers, villa programs with catering brought to the door, safaris and private resorts. The countries with the most are the United States (37), Israel (34), Greece (15).

The oldest question is still the most useful one: who is running this, and how long have they been doing it? These are the longest-running operators on this site, by the number of years each one states.

Every operator

Sources

Everything on this page comes from these. Follow them for the full discussion.

“Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel”, Wikipedia. Founding, size and closing dates
“Grossinger’s Passover”, Watershed Post (2010). Elaine Grossinger Etess on more than 1,200 Passover guests a year
Miriam Arond, “Missing Passovers at Grossinger’s”, New York Jewish Week / JTA (2016)
Ben Harris, “At Passover, let my people go south”, JTA (2012). The spread beyond the Catskills and Miami Beach; the 2009 downturn
Jennifer Garfinkel, “Exodus”, Tablet (2010). Prices and programs in 2010
Lasko Getaways, “It started with Sam & Arlene”. The operator’s own account of its first program in 1988
Leisure Time Tours, company description. The operator’s own claim to have “invented” kosher Passover programs
New York Jewish Week staff, report on Passover programs and the coronavirus, JTA (March 5, 2020). More than 170 programs planned for 2020
Shira Hanau, “At Hotels or at Home, Passover Plans are Thrown into Chaos”, JTA (March 17, 2020)
“What unwinding the Passover hotel industry looks like”, Jewish Insider (April 2020)
Rachel Kops, “Passover Programming and Kosher Travel Bounce Back from Pandemic”, Jmore
“The chaos roiling a luxury Passover getaway in Atlantic City”, Jewish Insider (March 2023)