Youngsters from the Hapoel Petach Tikvah youth soccer group
were forced by their counselors to eat treif food,
although kosher food was available.
On Shabbos parshas Ki Seitsei members of the Hapoel
Petach Tikvah soccer team stayed at the Sinia Hotel in
Romania. Part of the hotel had been kashered for
scores of chareidim who visit the hotel these weeks. When the
youngsters -- between the ages of 12 and 16 -- arrived, the
chareidim greeted them in a friendly manner. The youngsters
asked the chareidim about davening times and said
that they were happy to be able to spend Shabbos with a
religious group.
The youngsters asked the chareidi guests if the food which
was promised them was kosher. The chareidim responded that
only one wing of the hotel had been kashered for the
chareidi guests, and that the rest of the hotel was for non-
Jewish tourists and was treif. The youngsters were
shocked, and one of them said to his friend: "I told you that
the food is treif. They lied to us and to our parents
when they said that the food would be kosher."
The religious guests, headed by HaRav Shmuel Eliezer Stern,
the local rav, instructed the director of the Jewish
wing of the hotel, Yaakov Rosner, to prepare food for the
youngsters free of charge, saying, "Every one of the
religious guests would be willing to share his portion with
the youths in order to save them and their counselors from
eating treif."
HaRav Stern told Mr. Rosner to set tables for the youngsters
but the counselors refused to let the children to eat in the
kosher wing.
At the intervention of Mr. Rosner, arrangements were made
with the counselors for the youngsters to hear
kiddush. After ma'ariv, the religious guests
turned to the counselors and invited them to make
kiddush, but they refused.
One of the guests at the hotel told our reporter that when he
arrived in the shul on Shabbos night, he saw two
youngsters standing outside. They were wearing yarmulkes
in honor of Shabbos. Suddenly, one of the counselors
approached them, and demanded that they remove the
yarmulkes immediately.
"This reminded me of the periods of the Marannos. The
counselors forcibly tried to divest the youngsters of every
vestige of Yiddishkeit and to transform them into
total goyim," one of the guests in the hotel said.
"How is it possible that a group of Israeli youngsters goes
abroad and isn't set up from the point of view of kashrus,
as are all other tour groups?" he asked.
"The youngsters in the hotel were forced to eat treif
chicken, although both they and their parents had been told
that the accommodations would be kosher," the guests of the
hotel said upon their return home.
In response to Yated Ne'eman's question, Gidon Marcus,
one of the directors of the group, said that he was surprised
by the occurrence and would relate to it with utmost
seriousness.
Some of the hotel's guests who had witnessed the behavior of
the counselors turned to MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni, who said that
he would discuss the matter with the group directors and ask
the responsible authorities to reproach the counselors who
exhibited the severest kind of anti-religious coercion.
