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1614-10 Various Miami Beach mh GOING KOSHER 07/12/1987 THE MIAMI HERALD Copyright (c) 1987, The Miami Herald DATE: Sunday, July 12, 1987 EDITION: FINAL SECTION: NEIGHBORS MB PAGE: 10 LENGTH: 118 lines ILLUSTRATION: color photo: Russell Martoccio (KOSHER) ; Ralph Glixman (JEW*) , Eric Jacobs (KOSHER) , Asher Z. Zwebner (KOOSHER) , Alex Gemedy (JEW*) SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: STEPHEN SMITH Herald Staff Writer MEMO: COVER STORY GOING KOSHER When Rabbi Ralph Glixman goes to the Fontainebleau Hilton, he leaves the blowtorch at home. "Instead of blowtorches, they just went and bought brand new, " Glixman said, "and brand new doesn't need to be blowtorched, Thank God. " Thank God, indeed. And thank the Fontainebleau's owners too, rabbi. They're the ones who spent $2 million to make the new kosher kitchen that in one day can serve as many as 10,000 meals in cavernous ballrooms, some with 19 times as much space as the typical house. There are blue and white Kosher plates, there are cream pitchers emblazoned with the word kosher, there are shimmering kosher freezers and dishwashers. But there is no holy war being waged among the concrete of Collins Avenue, no sense of a neophyte Goliath, the Fontainebleau, trying to slay the Davids down the street, the old-time kosher hotels. That's because, say the people who run the hotels, we're not comparing latkas to latkas. We're comparing latkas to blintzes. The Fontainebleau angles for the big conventions and big spenders, while the old-line kosher hotels rely on guests who stay longer and come back year after year. "I know my guests," said Artie Unger, whose family owns the Royal Palm Hotel, 1545 Collins Ave. "When she doesn't look right, I say, 'What's wrong, Sadie?' "They're not going to be able to do that at the Fontainebleau." But the Fontainebleau can do this: serve thousands of convention and banquet guests certified kosher meals from separate meat and dairy kitchens overseen by a Mashgiach and his assistants. Rabbi Glixman does the overseeing at the Fontainebleau, making sure nobody breaches the kitchens, opened six weeks ago and used only for kosher cooking. In theory, that means he assures the dietary laws prescribed in the Torah are followed, that meat and milk never mix, that food from an animal with a cloven hoof never enters. In practice, that means he assures the steel grates separating the kitchens from the rest of the hotel are locked every night, that the right kind of detergent is used on the dishes, that a towel used in another part of the hotel isn't used in the kosher kitchens. "If someone were to break that lock, that means I have to re-kosher this kitchen, " Glixman said. "Fine, that's OK. That just means I have to come in with the blowtorches, the boiling water." Make no mistake -- this is no exercise in religious dogmatism. This is old-fashioned secular marketing. The Fontainebleau saw a potential market and decided to go after it. It is a market of at least 550,000, stretching from Dade through Broward and Palm Beach counties. The Jewish population in Dade started skidding downward in mid-1970s and while that continued into the 1980s, it slowed, said Ira Sheskin, an associate professor of geography at the University of Miami. About 250,000 Jews live in Dade, and while the Jewish population plummeted by 23,000 on South Beach from 1981-85 it grew by 12,000 in Northeast Dade. And in the counties to the north, the Jewish population is growing exponentially. The smaller, older kosher hotels lining Collins could handle bar mitzvahs for 100, maybe a wedding reception for 200. But forget the convention with 2,000 people who want a kosher breakfast, lunch and dinner. "This is Miami, Miami Beach," said Herb Rodriguez, the Fontainebleau's catering director. "It's that population that's keeping us. We don't depend on Northerners coming here to throw parties." Nor do the people at the Raleigh Hotel. Asher Z. Zwebner bought the hotel, 1777 Collins Ave., a year and a half ago, a place in decline and looking for a new identity after being sold on the courthouse steps. The new identity was an old Beach identity, but one that could still sell space in the 126-room hotel. "There are a lot of young couples from North Miami Beach, where they don't have a beach, and they stay here for a couple of weeks, " said Zwebner, sitting in an office overwhelmed with papers and brochures. A calendar on the wall from a funeral home reads, "Tradition. It's what makes us Jews." The phone buzzes. He pauses. The conversation alternates between Yiddish and English, ending up with the cry, "Have a good Shabbas." He goes on, talking about the guests who have discovered the Raleigh: "We have people coming here from Coral Springs, nice big homes. I'm talking about nice, professional Jewish people. They were under the impression, you walk out the door on Miami Beach, you get mugged right away, you get murdered, you get raped. It isn't so." Zwebner said he has spent $1 million on the hotel, coating the lobby and dining room in you-can't-miss-it mauve. He has started programs for the old and the young. He has gone after a market Jewish and Latin, giving both three kosher meals a day. There is more to be done, he said, more to learn. That much Eric Jacobs has learned in the 15 years since he bought the hotel at 2469 Collins Ave., renamed it the Tarleton and made it kosher. His is still a strictly kosher facility, one that unlike the Raleigh hasn't strayed much into the European or South American markets. "If you take the kosher crowd and you take the European crowd and you mix them with the South American crowd, well . . . ," Jacobs said. "How do I tell the guy from the UK who was born on cigarettes that he can't have his butt because it's Shabbas?" So he keeps going after the same market that has made him a living for the past 15 years, even as Dade's tourism leaders strike out more and more for the European and Latin American traveler. Jacobs stays confident. So, too, Zwebner and Unger. Their confidence grows even with the opening of the Fontainebleau's kosher kitchens. Not even Doral on the Ocean feels threatened. Doral has no kosher kitchen and no plans to build one, a spokesman said. "I think if we were to put in one it would saturate the market," said Jeff Abbaticchio, public relations director of Dorals of Florida. "Anything that happens on the Beach in a positive manner is good for all of us. I think Miami Beach realized if we don't all band together and help each other out, we're all going to sink."