Every Friday at sundown, the telephone operators at Tel Aviv's sleekly modern Hotel Deborah close down the switchboard. Guests at writing desks in the lobby put away pens and snuff out cigarettes. Desk clerks lock up the cash register. For the Orthodox Jew, all servile work is forbidden on the Sabbath —and the rule is strictly observed at the Deborah, the world's largest strictly kosher hotel.
In Israel, even the big luxury hotels run kosher kitchens, but otherwise the halacha (Jewish law) is loosely observed. The Deborah, on the other hand, 1 run so religiously that one rival innkeeper calls it "a synagogue with bedrooms." Besides separate kitchens and dining rooms for meat and dairy dishes, there is a purifying bath, or mikveh, in which men immerse themselves before holidays and Sabbaths, and women after menstruation and childbirth. A staff rab bi conducts services at the hotel's own synagogue three times a day, and the chief work of hairdressers at the Debo rah's beauty salon is setting the wigs of Orthodox women who usually crop their hair and keep it covered after they marry, as a sign of modesty.
Even for Gentiles. Owned by four Austrian-born brothers named Knoll, the Deborah is named after their devoutly Orthodox mother, who was so shocked by the Sabbath violations at Tel Aviv's other hotels that she insisted on building a first-rate place where Jews could stay in good conscience. Most hotels for Orthodox Jews are little bet ter than boarding houses, but the Deborah would look impressive even in Miami Beach. Its 16 stories make it the tallest hotel in Israel, and the high quality of its food and service has even attracted Gentile guests, who are offered yarmulkes (skullcaps) to wear in the dining rooms. Finding money to build the Deborah was no problem; the millionaire Knoll brothers own a number of corporations in Venezuela, including a construction firm, a dental supply business, an export-import company and an office-furniture factory.
What took ingenuity was figuring out how to operate a modern hotel at a profit and still provide for the 613 commandments Orthodox Jews must ob serve at all times. An Orthodox Jew cannot so much as press a button on the Sabbath, so the elevators are preset to go up and down automatically all day long, stopping at every floor. Since Jews can operate stoves if they are turned on before the Sabbath, all food in the kitchens is cooked before Friday sundown and then left to simmer through the night. Tearing toilet tissue is also forbidden by halacha, so Friday afternoons maids put white baskets containing separate sheets of paper in all the bathrooms. Guests may not check in or out or pay their bills on the Sabbath. Lights in the lobby are turned on and off automatically by electric clocks, but any other light left on accidentally must burn through the night, since flicking switches is forbidden. Not until Satur ay sundown is the hotel's rigid observance of the law relaxed.