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COURTESY OF SRULI KLEIN
VOICE OF THE NEW JEWISH GENERATION
LEFT: A luxury home available for rental. RIGHT: A sukkah Klein’s Rentals put up
Meet Sruli Klein For thousands of Jewish customers, his service helps provide full kosher travel experience. ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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ince he was just 14 years old, Sruli (Michael) Klein has made it a mission to help people. The CEO and founder of Klein’s Rentals, a resource that assists Jewish families in creating a full kosher vacation experience, launched his first business in high school — a landscaping company. Before he was 15 and Sruli Klein able to legally drive, Klein, now 26, hired two full-time employees. Later, he started a property A collage of Klein’s Rentals’ most popular items.
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restoration company to help people recover from disaster damage. That idea of giving back has always been at the forefront of Klein’s business ventures. When he noticed a gap in services that help the Jewish community have a full kosher vacation — a not always-easy endeavor — he realized there was an opportunity to create a business that specifically catered to this underserved need. “Throughout COVID, I noticed everybody was in lockdown and eager to travel
again,” Klein recalls of how the Oak Parkheadquartered business was born. “But even before that, I noticed when growing up with my family and going on vacation, and being a kosher Orthodox Jew, having a kosher vacation was very limiting.” TAKING AWAY THE STRESS FROM VACATION PLANNING Klein explains that it’s often difficult for Jews who keep kosher to find kosher food outside of big cities and especially in areas without sizable Jewish populations. “Even separate from food, there are things like being able to rent kosher cooking items or kosher plates — simple stuff like that can be a hassle on vacation,” he says. Klein’s Rentals aims to take away the stress of securing everything necessary for a full kosher vacation experience, from freezers to barbecues to even basketball hoops and baby cribs.
