From Rocks to Rocks: Kosher Adventure Travel and a Trip to Antwerp 

from the latest on Caribbean cruises to kosher safaris pilgrimages to Jewish Eastern Europe and award-winning wines and international cuisine in sundrenched Tel Aviv sit back and enjoy the trip with the travel edition of the Jerusalem Post podcast good afternoon David good evening and good night well it is dark outside yes but it's winter so it's dark in the morning yeah well it depends where you are at well there's an interesting question what's the shortest or longest day that you've ever lived through my final exams it seems to Gone Forever let me rephrase it okay how far north or how far south have you been and was it at a time of year where there's like five hours of daylight or where it never gets dark I think we were in Helsinki once on Shabbat and I remember waiting waiting and waiting for Shabbat to go out and I think it was Sunday by the time Shabbat went out so I remember the first time I went to Helsinki which was in the last Millennium and a member of the community who was an Israeli who also had finished citizenship and he said what we do here is we do what the Jewish law says about if you're keeping Shabbat on the moon that you take it out at Jerusalem time and that way you're not staying up till silly o' I think it went out about 11:00 according to the rabet but it was still light right I can remember being in naric in Northern Norway in the 1980s actually on the same trip uh in 1983 and wandering around the most stunning fud in the Arctic Circle in August and I was there late late at night it got like Dusky for a couple of hours and that was it conversely what's the shortest day you remember it must a time that I was in Edinburgh or Glasgow for a weekend trying to remember is it shorter in London than where than up north the further you go away from the equator the longer the days are in the summer and the shorter the days are in the winter the closer you get to the Equator the more balance there is so if you're actually on the equator it should be 12 hours of day 12 hours of night every single day at least that's the theory maybe it's cuz kabad made Shabbat go out later and come in earlier just so people could celebrate 48 Hours of shabb oh my God torture anyway uh folks we are going to bring you on this episode a couple of interviews and it's important to say that in both cases these were recorded just prior to the outbreak of the war on October the 7th when Hamas invaded Israel they are still both very very relevant so Mark what have we we got coming up and I'm trying to work out do they have anything to do with the longest day in the world and the shortest day in the world oh why I mentioned that in the first place I really can't remember why one of them goes near the equator yeah so that's going to be the first interview with Perry Sugarman he's going to be telling us all about really exciting crazy places where you can travel kosher we're talking all sorts of Adventure holidays so that's coming up in a minute and then afterwards diamonds are you my not intended and not betrothed diamonds are forever or Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend which one are you I'm a rough diamond I think nowhere I can take it other than to say Amen to that we'll be heading off if you haven't already guessed to antp and we'll be busting a myth about who deals with diamonds in that Belgian City join us after the break this is Mark Gordon from the Jerusalem Post pod travel Edition find us on Facebook Instagram and Twitter at Mark davidp pod or mail us at Mark davidp pod [Music] gmail.com do you like to relax on a holiday David it's funny you should say that I'm not somebody who thinks that holidays are for relaxing I think holidays are for maximizing every second to see to take in to breathe to taste so no and do you like to sit and just fill your face with chocolates and yeah but that's an activity isn't it I me your jaws moving up and down so it is exercise cuz I'm filling my face with chocolates you've left in front of me you know what I was going to say something when I hit the record button and I figured I'd go easy on you I heard the sort of stickiness as you started speaking so as an antidote I think we should talk to somebody who is a little bit fitter than me and you that's pretty much everybody on the planet we spoke to a gentleman called Perry Sugarman who has a company called PJs challenges and he takes people out of their comfort zone on kosher Adventures around the world as I left school and developed I got into running that expanded and I was running distant so I did my first marathon when I was about 18 19 years old and it was about probably I'd say 10 years later and after completing numerous marathons I was then asked to start helping some of my friends with some of their physical coaching and I realized that I was quite knowledgeable quite good at it so I then took quite a lot of qualifications and my background actually is as a coach I ended up as a British Athletics running coach National standard cyc instructor I'm a certified Iron Man coach I'm a specialist in hit training and in fact when I first made alar I actually spent four years at Wingate Institute um the College of further education lecturing about hit training what is hit training high intensity interval training so it's a form of training that's been around for a long long time but but really started to get very popular in the what do we call it the nautis I put together a system which I launched in Israel with a partner of mine and we my partner I used to lecture at uh at Wingate uh in English the reason why that's important is off the back of that I was asked to lead a few international bike rides I absolutely loved it I then sat on it was a charity event I then sat on the board of the charity and I got involved in the organization and I realized that I really loved organizing the events myself as well obviously with my colleagues who had had amazing experience then I was kind of asked by kind of groups of friends to kind of lead some trips so you know we did a hike in the neg desert one year and and then I actually went with a bunch of guys to to kilamanjaro and climb kilamanjaro it was really then that it really sparked something I realized that not wanting to sound bigheaded but I was particularly good at altitude and that's something which is physiological you can't train for it it's not about your age your Fitness level you you're just either good in altitud or not with the uh knowledge that I had of coaching my leader Instinct and caretaker looking after people Instinct really kicked in is there demand for adventure travel in the kosher world or are most people who are interested in kosher couch potatoes like us who'd rather either see Paris or sit and read a page of talmud well of course there's both and there's a market for both the reason why I got into specializing in trips that were kosing Shamar Shabbat is because I was asked to lead an event for a religious charity and obviously because they're a religious charity I had to put together the full kosher aspect I set up a whole system in order to offer to religious Jews a totally authentic a totally safe and a totally spectacular trip but still providing kosher food and a full Shabbat experience I realized that there was a really a need for someone to put together lots of different trips to cater for these Jews who wanted to do these kind of Adventure trips and yes of of course there are you a large part of our community that want to you know sit on a beach or be in a beautiful hotel with five star luxury kosher accommodation but there's also a very large percentage of people who want to do go out there and live life and do Adventures see the world see nature and I kind of felt like if I wasn't going to do it no one was going to do it I've built the business on providing all of our trips on a kosher shat basis I mean don't get me wrong we do have you know non-religious Jews come on our trip and there are certain aspects that they don't need and we have plenty of non-jewish clients as well either that come with Jewish groups believe it or not and absolutely love what we do and and the environment and we have you know we also have trips for for non-jews where we're you know we're not using the same facilities but we can provide for for anyone you provide kosher Adventures how does that work in the middle of nowhere we're really not in the middle of nowhere for most of our trips we are taking people to exceptional parts of the world be it Mountain climbs TRS or Wonders of Nature and it's all about how we set things up in advance it's really down to our due diligence and what we do in order to set up it takes us a long long time to select the right crew to work with it can take anything from six months to three years to select the crew that we think are going to be able to provide the service that we need for our clients who have you know quite a lot of special things that need to be done for them the important thing is is that we set up kosher facility is wherever we work so we invest heavily in uh equipment we're operating in 15 countries around the world on four continents so we're setting up kosher facilities in all of these places and these are are privately owned kosher facilities we're not talking about a kitchen that anyone can go and use we're talking about investing in equipment and you know sometimes two or three sets in one place because of logistics tell us about some of the adventures the Expeditions that you lead we can cater to the real Adventurer that wants a really tough Mountain climb and we can cater to the the kosher traveler who doesn't want any physical exertion whatsoever and just wants to see amazing things for a once in a-lifetime trip so that would be anything from climbing Mount Akon kaga or Mont Blanc or some technical mountains in the Himalayas which is quite tough some of which you know we would only take clients that had previous experience some of them are okay for beginners and then on the flip side you know right over the other end of the spectrum we're doing you know luxury safaris in Tanzania we're doing cruises of the galapagus: to be an amazing once in a-lifetime trip so that's really our Mark a trip only goes in our portfolio if it's a trip that you'll probably only do once in your life are any of those trips in Israel the only trip that we do in Israel which we do quite regularly is Yum Yum it's a very popular trip it's a nice short trip we do anything from a three-day to a 5 day it's one of those trips that us living in Israel or if you're living around the world but you're Jewish and you're a regular to Israel you know of yum but in actual fact I've been on the summit of Kil jaro and met Germans Scandinavians Australians none of who were Jewish who had heard of yum yam and were dying to come and do it yam leam is a lot of fun but it ain't a challenge it's a good introductory perhaps trip you said there are certain walks that beginners can't do but do you have a program for beginners so people aren't going to be scared to join in something yeah absolutely I mean look one of the things that I pride myself on on the company is that we have myself often my leaders who also work for me and take groups around if need be one thing that I'm very proud of is that we have personal contact with every single solitary client that we take so we have a registration procedure where clients have to give us a lot of their details and their medical history but we're in constant contact with these clients before they come on a trip so we understand what they're good at and what they're not so good at and obviously with my professional background we have on our website we have a a training schedule that is a kind of generic one which helps for most of our beginner trips but a lot of our trips that sound like they're actually for experienced trekers or hikers or climbers are actually absolutely fine for beginners so for instance you know kilar is our Blue Ribbon Advent it's the trip that we do most of it's very very common for us to have clients who have never even slept in a tent never mind been on a trk a hike or a mountain climb before with the right training so long as you're a little bit physical to start off with then there's no problem in training enough for a lot of the adventures that we put on have you been up Everest going up Everest I presume you're talking about from base camp higher Everest Base Camp Trek is again one of our very popular Trek so we've done that multiple multiple times and it's absolutely stunning I have a theory about climbing Mount Everest I always tell my clients Mount Everest I believe is the same as making Alia and I think with both of those things unless you have a burning desire in your heart that you cannot live unless you do them you're not going to be successful at them there's a higher chance of failure I had that with alah I don't personally have that with Everest climbing mountains is my living that's a different scale I'm very aware of my position and what I do you know my local guides are always the number one on our trips the local guides have all the knowledge we only use local guides we don't bring guides from other parts of the world we like to try and support the local economy and we use local Crews local guides I'm also very aware that climbing eest is something that's a little bit above station it's a little bit different to what I do so and you know some of these things is a busman holiday for me so you know if I'm climbing uh and trekking all year long then to go off and do something on my own I don't really have the time Never Say Never maybe one day who knows what's the website for PJs challenges so very simple the website is PJs challenges.com Perry Sugarman thank you so much indeed for sharing your experiences and uh joining us on the podcast it's a pleasure thanks for having [Music] me and now the latest news with the Jerusalem Post podcast travel Edition as forecast on this podcast numerous International Airlines turned to Tel Aviv in January at the time of recording several additional National Carriers and lowcost airlines are planning to resume their services the German carrier Luan are led the way along with group members Austrian and swiss air passenger numbers are on the up at borian International Airport as many as 25,000 people pass through the airport each day while this is significantly down on pre-war levels the statistics show that more and more people are traveling post October 7th 2023 celebrity Israeli Chef alal Shani opened his first coer restaurant in New York New York the mey menu offers curiously named dishes such as okra bathing in red tomatoes lamb steak soaked in grapes and a dear memory of a Jericho potato just 2 months ago Michelin awarded a star to another of shanes New York restaurants Shon the Drew's minority ity of Israel is fiercely loyal to the country and everything blue and white it's young men serving the Israel Defense Forces shoulder-to-shoulder with their Jewish counterparts the ongoing war with Hamas has proved it's not only the Drew's young men who are doing their bit for the country the soldiers moms are also stepping up to the plate quite literally restaurant and War Widow Bas mahino has koshered her nor Cafe so she can serve observant Jewish soldiers and evacuees and if you want to pay basma a visit her eery is in julus you're listening to the Jerusalem Post podcast travel Edition find us on Facebook Instagram and Twitter at Mark davidp pod or mailers at Mark davidp pod gmail.com [Music] are you still thinking about potatoes in Jericho I am so utterly confused first of all I'm guessing that the menu which I'm sure is incredibly tasty but I'm Reckoning that that menu was translated into English by a non-native English speaker you do realize if we ever end up in New York we're never going to get an invite but it might be worth going to find out what a Jericho potato is I'm wondering if if it actually means a Jerusalem Ary choke that would be a really rough translation we should have Googled it talking of rough ah ah you're into TV shows is this was this a Netflix thing are you saying I'm a couch potato oh Deary me was Ru diamonds Netflix yes it was on Netflix there was a series called rough diamonds it was filmed in antp and it tells the story of the ultra Orthodox Community there and their Diamond Trading antp is a fascinating city which we're going to hear all about in a minute from tour guide AR aptica but I guess the starting point has to be to what extent if at all the show rough diamonds it's an accurate portrayal of life in the ultra Orthodox community and in the diamond industry in the [Music] city the series was filed in entrop with local actors um it was filmed on locations in entrop in the Jewish area in synagogues in entr people from the Jewish Community assisted in you know getting the yish accents right etc etc getting the Customs right of course it's just an area in the city uh that you're seeing antrop has 540,000 inhabitants and of those about 20,000 are Jewish within the Jewish Community the majority is Rel and Ultra Orthodox so that part is correct in the diamond business today the majority of diamond Traders are from Indian background but there are still quite a lot of diamond Traders with a Jewish background so the series gives let's say a correct image of that particular aspect of ENT but there is a lot more to ENT than just the Jewish area and the Diamond District has the show brought any more tourists into the area not that I'm aware of what I do notice is that people have watched the show because it was very popular on Netflix and I see that mainly people from englishspeaking countries like the United States regularly mention that they saw that show not that much people from surrounding countries as far as I picked up but I don't think that it had a big impact on the amount of tourists we get in an time to talk about the Jewish story of the city as we've already said today there is a strong Jewish element to the town but where did it all begin it actually began relatively late because in the Middle Ages Jews were chased out of Western Europe and in the 16 Century we had the religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants the Catholics won and in the next two centuries Catholicism was the only religion that was allowed to be practiced here in the southern Netherlands in what we today called Belgium but when did Jews start to arrival after the French Revolution we had religious freedom and then when Belgium became independent in 1830 they wrote religious freedom into the Constitution at the same time there were millions of Jews living in Eastern Europe started to feel uncomfortable there were discriminated against um were subject of prgrams and they begin to flee towards the United States in order to reach the United States they need to reach port cities in western Europe and antp is a major port city in Western Europe so sometimes I ask people on my tour whether they saw the musical or the movie A Fiddler on the Roof if they are from a Jewish background or and and certainly from an American Jewish background they usually say yes and then I tell them you know if you want to talk about the Jewish story in anth it basically starts where a filler on the roof ends because it ends with them getting on a train and saying we are going to America and then you get the end credits but that train doesn't go all the way to Grand Central terminal at some point you need to get on a ship and a shipping line that went from an to New York was called the Red Star Line and hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants and other immigrants to the red star line between 1870 and 1930 and the majority of them made it to the United States I mean there are more than one million Jews in New York and 20,000 in ANP some of them stayed behind maybe because they liked it here maybe because they didn't manage to get into United States maybe it was too expensive they didn't get a Visa etc etc all kinds of reasons that made a small percentage of those immigrants stay in ENT and together we choose that arrived in the same time period from the Netherlands from France Germany Etc they begin to form a community back uh in the 19th century you mentioned the Jews make up about 20,000 people people out of half a million people that means there's obviously a lot more to do in antp than the Jewish quarter what else is there to see in antp for tourists we have a very beautiful historic center with a beautiful Gothic Cathedral and the entire area around there is very vibrant there are a lot of historic buildings to see uh we have nice museums the Museum of Fine Arts the Ruben's House Museum unfortunately is closed at the moment for renovations but you can find paintings by the famous pain Rubin who was from entr in several museums in entr the area um around the Old Port is also very beautiful it also has a a nice museum called the red Starline Museum which tells a story that I refer to about the migration and the interior design of the Redstone line Museum was done by the same interior Architects that did the Ellis Island Museum in New York so basically you you see like the the other side of the story the Central Station of anthrop according to there are some websites that make rankings of the most beautiful Railway stations in the world some of those websites put us on the first place those are excellent websites uh there are other ones that put us on like the fifth or the sixth place those are fake news websites I mean it's a magnificent station and I regularly get American visitors who say oh this is even nicer than Grand Central Terminal even get the occasional Israeli who tells me that it's even nicer than a loar of station so um so there are quite a the South area is also beautiful the zurborg area we have some nice Parks so there there's definitely quite a lot to visit inw so there's a lot to see how long do people need in order to see it if you want to see all the things that I've mentioned you would need a weekend if you want to see all of that stay at least two nights um and then you can cover all those things I mentioned as regular listeners to this podcast will know Mark is an alcoholic and I just get drunk very easily they will also know that Belgium is the epicenter of fine beers what role if any does antp play in the beer story of Belgium you have dozens if not hundreds of local breweries and some of them are located in antrop I don't think that the beers that are brewing in anro are known worldwide like for instance Stella or Nea that that we have very good beers in entropy the beer that is mostly associated with anop is called coring or as we call it in our local dialect a Bola which refers to the ball-shaped glass of uh that it's served in and today the former Brewery where it was Brun today like a beer experience Center that you can visit and get the entire story of beer we have some other breweries there is even a a Jewish Brewer in an I don't think you can visit this Brewery but you can order the sees Brewing online even if you're staying for like three weeks you'll be able to drink a different beer every evening and even more of those so there is no lack of beer in entor David you finish the interview I'm on my way to being as we are the Jerusalem Post obviously a lot of our listeners readers are interested in the kosher offerings wherever they may want to visit presumably given the population there are options for kosher food in antp for sure the most famous kosher restaurant is probably Hof which you can take away food or you can eat there and also a lot of non-jewish people go there because they also you know give tasting platters or you can try all kinds of different Jewish foods like latas filter fish etc etc another icon is Benny fala which is a Falafel Restaurant which was started by a Yemen Jew already back in the 60s or 70s he's not working there anymore the falafel place still exists there is a kosher Italian restaurant there is a kosher Asian restaurant so there are half a dozen good Gooser places where you can eat and they're all located in the Jewish area and then there are also Jewish Israeli style restaurants that are not always koser but that a lot of time have a lot of vegetarian and vegan options is there a kosher hotel at all or some sort of kosher accommodation that people could find in the large hotels which are located in the Jewish area usually you have an option to get a kosal breakfast and to get a room with a a physical key that you can use on Shabbat that have an entrance without an automatic door so that you can enter on shabat and there are also a few smaller koser guest houses Ari how did people find out more details about walking in antp you can find our tours on our website walking in antp be uh we offer tours in Dutch English uh French and German if you want to book a private tour you can do that in any language you want our schedule tours uh we have highlights of ANP tour in English and in German and in Dutch of course we have a tour of the Jewish area but that one the scheduled one at the moment is only in Dutch but we are thinking about maybe adding an English option next year as well h UPA from walking in antp tours thank you very much for coming on the podcast thank [Music] you antp fact file antp has a small International Airport with flights planned from Tel Aviv Brussels Airport is a further 25 Mi away you can fly with Brussels Airlines from JFK Tel Aviv London Paris United Airlines from Chicago O'Hare Newark Washington Dallas Delta from JFK and ba Air Canada Turkish Emirates and Lanza also serve the airport antp airport is 3 mi from the center buses 51 52 and 53 will take you to antp Burham and Central Railway Station taxes are also available from Brussels Airport it's a 4minute drive or an hour by train and to antp city center antp has a large number of highquality hotels including the sapphire house and botanic sanctury as well as Hilton Radison and IHG hotels the Ator Hotel Hampton and Astrid serve Coast your breakfast $100 will buy you €91 as of January 2024 in antp the summers are comfortable and partly cloudy and the winters is a long very cold windy and mostly cloudy over the course of the year the temperature typically varies from 1 to 23 C or 34 to 74 F talking of diamonds ANP is a city of culinary gems including more than 20 Michelin starred restaurants top vegetarian and vegan restaurants include Spritz heart and lento recommended coaster restaurants include Blue Lagoon 18 Hof and the vegan Benny Falafel our thanks go to today's guests Perry and Arie we hope that you found something whether it's Adventures Somewhere Out There beyond the normal places that kosher food is available or if you're looking for somewhere stunningly beautiful and a European city break then to antp so thanks to both both of you one point Perry after the interview said that we should go and do one of his challenges and maybe go up Kilim manaro and I I told myself at the end of September last year when we spoke to him I would get fit I'm still telling myself at some point I'll get fit but maybe it won't be next year it is something that's very very exciting I you know back on the antp thing I haven't been to antp and I just know from other places that I've been to in Belgium I know lots of visitors go to Bru but also so gent is stunningly beautiful and and I'd love at some point to get to antp just because I as you know I'm passionate about European cities art culture Heritage do you think they can put a finicula up killy mangara and I'll meet you at the top oh my goly gosh it's time for us to ask you to help us no we're not asking for financial contributions it's not a bad idea list there are loads of podcasts out there that have patreons and whatever but that's not what we're asking what we'd like you to do is to subscribe is to share this podcast with your friends tell them about it tell them how amazing it is how funny Mark is it's just something that's important especially if you're interested in kosher Jewish Israeli travel or anything related to that if you've won the lottery please send a check to Mark and David's travels our email is the back of that Mark davidp pod gmail.com and our social media at mark David pod do drop us a line joking aside we'd love to hear from you criticisms comments suggestions for places you'd like to hear about it's not easy at the moment talking about travel we have to spare a thought for the hostages that are still in Gaza the people that are fighting who can't travel at the moment we hope that this will all be over soon and people can return to traveling as normal we recorded this ending of the Pod just shy of two weeks weeks before the Pod is meant to go out so I guess our prayer from our studio in mod in in Israel is that by the time that you hear this our prayers and thoughts for the release of those hostages have come to fruition that they're already home with us and on that note we'll see you in a couple of weeks take care [Music]