Many moons ago, when I worked at the Bonkers Bagels store in Har Nof, some of my younger co-workers were blasting rock music from behind the counter. A ba'al habas asked us to please shut it off stating, and it's something that has stayed with me, that a hechsher on an establishment goes beyond the kashrus of the food. It goes to the environment of the store as well, and the envirronment w/ the rock music was not fitting to have a hechsher.

Over the past 10 years or so, the concept of going away for Pesach (all yom tovim at this point, actually) has exploded in popularity for numerous reasons. While I, personally, would not go, I understand others that do. My questions are as follows:

1) If the whole hotel isn't taken over, the non-jewish atmosphere remains. Can that have a hechsher?

2) Where is the chinuch better - at home or a hotel?

I bring this up now b/c of this, from a post on Life In Israel:

The frum newspapers are always full of advertisements for frum vacation packages, also known as "chufshat mehadrin". They go all sorts of places, from taking over hotels in Eilat, Tiberias, Safed, and even locations outside of the country such as in Turkey, Italy, Switzerland and other places. They advertise that they "kasher" the hotel and make it mehadrin for the duration of the vacation package.

That all might be coming to an end.

The Rabbinic Committee for Vacation Atmosphere (what don't they have a rabbinic committee for??) has decided to put an end to such vacation packages billing themselves as mehadrin. They have gone to Rav Wosner and presented before him the facts of a vacation package billing itself as mehadrin claiming to have created a mehadrin vacation for women in Eilat. They have shown Rav Wosner that there is nothign mehadrin about the vacation except perhaps the food.

The hotel is not taken over completely by the group, but there are other guests there as well, in there immodest attire. In addition, there are televisions in the rooms. Along with other problems such as people's behavior in the area and being outside where the atmosphere is far from mehadrin.

Based on their testimony, Rav Wosner has decided to publish a letter saying that these packages should not be considered mehadrin and people should avoid them.


I've always wondered what took the rabbonim so long to not speak about going away to hotels as a problem and I've always wondered why hechsher organizations provide hechsherim to these packages.

Do you think it's a problem?