{"id":8644,"date":"2011-05-02T22:44:36","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T02:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/?p=8644"},"modified":"2011-05-02T22:46:38","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T02:46:38","slug":"point-passover-at-conn-how-hard-is-keeping-kosher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/2011\/05\/02\/point-passover-at-conn-how-hard-is-keeping-kosher\/","title":{"rendered":"Point: Passover At Conn: How Hard is Keeping Kosher?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_8658\" style=\"width: 298px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8658\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8658\" title=\"matzoh_man\" src=\"http:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/matzoh_man.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"288\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/matzoh_man.jpg 288w, https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/matzoh_man-237x290.jpg 237w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 288px) 100vw, 288px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-8658\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A man made of matzoh balls.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Ever since I was a little kid, Passover has been one of my favorite holidays.\u00a0 It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Passover at Conn, however, is different from the Passover celebration of home.\u00a0 At home, Mom or Dad always bakes up some sort of matzah farfel kugel concoction, and Maneschewitz macaroons of all different flavors abound.\u00a0 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.).\u00a0 At Conn, things are not so easy: Mom and Dad aren\u2019t here to feed us the kosher for Passover stuff they\u2019re eating, and matzah by itself is pretty bland.<\/p>\n<p>As I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019m nearing the end of my third Passover at Conn.\u00a0 Over these three years, there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s always bothered me about the holiday here.\u00a0 Believe it or not, I\u2019m not going to talk about how dining services doesn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>Home for me is New Hampshire, a state that doesn\u2019t have nearly as high a percentage of Jews as neighboring Massachusetts.\u00a0 In public school, for many people I knew, I was their first Jewish friend.\u00a0 I taught a lot of people the basics of Judaism, as many they were curious about a religion that they knew little about.\u00a0 Sometimes during Passover, people would ask why I was eating those \u201cbig crackers\u201d so much.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t mind being asked, because that was what I was used to.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why so many students here complain about the food situation here: because it isn\u2019t as good as what home does for them.<\/p>\n<p>Dining Services does their best for Passover with what they know about the holiday.\u00a0 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\u2019m assuming aren\u2019t so cheap (kosher for Passover foods generally aren\u2019t).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019ve found, though, is that many Jewish students here don\u2019t try.\u00a0 They blame Harris and Oasis and college life in general for making keeping kosher for Passover here too difficult a feat to even attempt.\u00a0 Although I didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 To me, this situation wasn\u2019t offensive, as some made it seem, but funny.\u00a0 Here Harris was trying their best to be creative for the Jewish community here at Conn, and they made an honest mistake.\u00a0 If we weren\u2019t so concerned with political correctness and so quick to call others ignorant here, I think we could all share a good chuckle.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s 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.\u00a0 I\u2019m 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.\u00a0 I get the impression that they really want to make things easy for us, and I\u2019d bet that any suggestions or advice from us would go a long way.<\/p>\n<p>Passover is a holiday that involves festive eating, but it is also one that involves sacrifice.\u00a0 There are reasons we don\u2019t eat bread or pasta or cake.\u00a0 For a week and a day, things aren\u2019t going to taste as good or be as filling, but that\u2019s kind of the point.\u00a0 And it\u2019s only for a week and a day, after all.\u00a0 Make the most of the salad bar and the local food bar at Harris, and get creative with your matzah yourself; don\u2019t expect Harris to do it for you. Enjoy those nut cupcakes, because for a baked good that\u2019s Kosher for Passover, they\u2019re pretty tasty.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u2022<\/p>\n<p><em>Illustration by Jeremy Nakamura &#8217;11<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"tmnf_excerpt\"><p>Ever since I was a little kid, Passover has been one of my favorite holidays.\u00a0 It\u2019s 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 &hellip;<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8677,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8644\/revisions\/8677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecollegevoice.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}