What to pack for a very Jewish holiday

And just to clarify: no, that treif bottle of wine in your minibar won’t do for kiddush. If you‘re in Israel, that bottle won’t be treif just exorbitantly expensive, so either way a mini bottle of grape juice from Kosher Kingdom will not go amiss in the suitcase. Of course, you’ll then have to decide where to assemble the family for this nod to spirituality. (Sundown on other days on holiday tends to be more about spirits than spirituality – personally speaking.) Lighting Shabbat candles in the hotel room? It’s a risk. If the fire alarm goes    off there won’t be much shalom left in your Shabbat. The other option of course is the balcony – but wind can be a serious issue, as can privacy.

The privacy factor has serious knock-on effects for the most critical decision of all: volume. No one wants to whisper kiddush, like they’re hiding from the Gestapo.

But will you be bellowing it out like a proud Jew, blessing your glass of sweet grape juice, while the rest of the hotel guests are clinking their margaritas?

Will you bless your bread loud and proud, while everyone else is quietly dipping theirs in olive oil and balsamic? I’ll leave you and your family to squabble that one out.

Holiday reading list

Do you have the guts to read Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel around the pool? It’s a classic, although maybe not the kind that your new friends from Surrey might be reading. Or for those with more contemporary taste, The Genius of Israel by Dan Senor and Saul Singer? It could be a good way of ensuring you have plenty of space around your sun lounger – and let’s face it, that can seriously elevate your holiday experience. Unfortunately, you can also guarantee there’ll be one family across the pool who seem to be giving you a little winky, flirty smile – and gravitating towards you. I say unfortunately because they may well be the noisiest people in the resort. Other than a good holiday read, nowadays it’s all about the podcast. In fact, new research about the cultural tribes in Britain today found that the podcasts we listen to are part of our tribal identity. So if you hang on every word of Call Me Back, the utterly brilliant podcast by Dan Senor (author of said literary hit The Genius of Israel, and co-author of Start Up Nation) – you are definitely in my tribe. Senor is a sort of younger political David Attenborough character – watching and analysing the behaviours and habitats of the Middle Eastern species with both empathy and awe, giving unparalleled commentary on what’s really going on as unfathomable scenes are unfolding – all from his protected viewing point of New York City.

It’s possible that when you’re sitting by the pool you will attempt to switch off from the issues that have caused so much sorrow and grief over the past 20 months. That rules out the other podcasts on my regularly played list as well as most of my news and social media consumption. But I know that there was a time when there was nothing more compelling I needed to listen to, when working out or going for a drive, than some celebrity musing over what random items they would take with them in the hypothetical scenario that they were marooned on a desert island. How the world has changed.

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Tribal toiletries

If you are one of the few Jewish women with floppy hair you can flop-off right now and turn the page. For the rest of us, there is nothing more essential to remember to pack for holiday than hair products. There is a reason Hashem wants us to cover our hair – frizz is in our DNA. Of course Hashem has also given us GHDs – which is slightly mixed messaging on His part. GHDs are of course fabulous for most occasions, especially when one needs to create a simchah wave, but that perfect-hair look doesn’t always work on holiday.

You don’t want your locks to be so sleek that you wince every time one of your kids jumps in the pool and makes a splash; or when the temperature rises above 25 degrees to shvitz-and-frizz levels.

And you don’t want to have to make the effort-to-outcome hair drying calculation every time you want to take a dip either. (The Pyfrizzarus theorem states that 15 minutes of blow-drying effort deserves approximately one day of hair appreciation. So, if your hair takes 30 minutes to straighten, you deserve at least two days’ worth of sleek hair for your trouble.) On holiday there is also a certain appeal to an undone, natural look. A bit of a wave here and a curl there goes with the sun-kissed vibe. But fuzz… that’s where it can all go wrong. No one wants to look back at their holiday snaps and wonder why Brian May was wearing their clothes and posing with their family at dinner. So even if you forget the matches, ditch the books and leave your grape juice behind, my advice is to never scrimp on the Frizz Ease.