Point: Passover At Conn: How Hard is Keeping Kosher?

A man made of matzoh balls.

Ever since I was a little kid, Passover has been one of my favorite holidays.  It’s a celebration that goes hand-in-hand with spring and the improving weather outside, and it encourages us to take a break from our busy schedules and appreciate what we have in our lives.

Passover at Conn, however, is different from the Passover celebration of home.  At home, Mom or Dad always bakes up some sort of matzah farfel kugel concoction, and Maneschewitz macaroons of all different flavors abound.  Kosher food is easy to come by because the entire family is abstaining from eating chametz, or non-kosher for Passover foods (breads, pastas, cereal, most baked goods, etc.).  At Conn, things are not so easy: Mom and Dad aren’t here to feed us the kosher for Passover stuff they’re eating, and matzah by itself is pretty bland.

As I’m writing this, I’m nearing the end of my third Passover at Conn.  Over these three years, there’s one thing that’s always bothered me about the holiday here.  Believe it or not, I’m not going to talk about how dining services doesn’t accommodate the Jewish population during the period of Passover. In fact, I believe the opposite: dining services does a pretty good job at being accommodating for Passover.  What I have a hard time dealing with is the complaining about how Harris is so ignorant and unsupportive to the Jewish students keeping kosher for Passover.

Home for me is New Hampshire, a state that doesn’t have nearly as high a percentage of Jews as neighboring Massachusetts.  In public school, for many people I knew, I was their first Jewish friend.  I taught a lot of people the basics of Judaism, as many they were curious about a religion that they knew little about.  Sometimes during Passover, people would ask why I was eating those “big crackers” so much.  I didn’t mind being asked, because that was what I was used to.

Maybe the complaints stem from the fact that many Jews here at Conn have lived in places where Jewish traditions are well known, where schools have always done whatever they can to satisfy the dietary needs of their Jewish populations.  Maybe that’s why so many students here complain about the food situation here: because it isn’t as good as what home does for them.

Dining Services does their best for Passover with what they know about the holiday.  We are provided matzah, most of the time kosher for Passover food is labeled as such, there is matzah ball soup every day, and Harris has even gone as far as to buy individually wrapped kosher Passover nut cupcakes for us, which I’m assuming aren’t so cheap (kosher for Passover foods generally aren’t).  Having done it for a third year now, I can confidently say that keeping kosher for Passover at Conn is not a difficult thing to do if you try.

What I’ve found, though, is that many Jewish students here don’t try.  They blame Harris and Oasis and college life in general for making keeping kosher for Passover here too difficult a feat to even attempt.  Although I didn’t witness the food for myself, the other day I heard complaints about how Harris had been serving turkey and cheese matzah sandwiches, a combination of which (milk and meat) is forbidden in Kashrut, the kosher dietary laws.  To me, this situation wasn’t offensive, as some made it seem, but funny.  Here Harris was trying their best to be creative for the Jewish community here at Conn, and they made an honest mistake.  If we weren’t so concerned with political correctness and so quick to call others ignorant here, I think we could all share a good chuckle.

Here’s what I propose to those who believe that dining services has done a poor job accommodating the Jewish community at Passover: instead of spending the time complaining about how stupid Harris is for not knowing the specifics of your religion, take the time to explain to them what you have a problem with, and suggest ways in which they could make it better.  I’m sure if you stopped and took the time to talk to the staff, they would try their hardest to figure out a solution that works better for you.  I get the impression that they really want to make things easy for us, and I’d bet that any suggestions or advice from us would go a long way.

Passover is a holiday that involves festive eating, but it is also one that involves sacrifice.  There are reasons we don’t eat bread or pasta or cake.  For a week and a day, things aren’t going to taste as good or be as filling, but that’s kind of the point.  And it’s only for a week and a day, after all.  Make the most of the salad bar and the local food bar at Harris, and get creative with your matzah yourself; don’t expect Harris to do it for you. Enjoy those nut cupcakes, because for a baked good that’s Kosher for Passover, they’re pretty tasty.

In the end, when it comes to keeping kosher for Passover, dining services tries, which seems to be a lot more than can be said for some of the Jews on campus during Passover. •

Illustration by Jeremy Nakamura ’11