Campus Jewish groups provide a variety of Passover options

Campus Jewish groups provide a variety of Passover options

By: Ben Sales
Issue date: 4/12/06
Section: News

From a chocolate seder to discount macaroons, groups across Washington University are enabling the student body to observe Passover.

Passover, the Jewish holiday that starts tonight and marks the Jewish people's biblical exodus from slavery in Egypt, begins with two ritual feasts held on successive nights called seders, and continues for eight days. In addition, the holiday comes with strict dietary obligations, including the complete prohibition of leavened foods.

"We want students to celebrate in their own lives," said Rabbi Hershey Novack of Chabad on Campus. "There is something for everybody."

In addition to facilitating two seders, Chabad will be providing kosher for Passover food at cheap prices, attempting to alleviate the difficulties of finding suitable sustenance for the holiday.

"We want to provide some of the food for students to celebrate Passover throughout the week," said Novack. "We want to lower the perceived barrier that there is for observance on campus and to make it very easy for students to celebrate."

Novack added that Chabad's seders will aim to make a traditional and often complicated liturgy accessible both to newcomers and veterans of the ritual meal.

"We are creating a seder for students that have been to seders before and for students that have never been to a seder in their entire lives, where students can understand the seder in a deep and meaningful light," he said. "Folks who are unfamiliar will feel right at home."

[...]

Sophomore Asher Goldberg, who will be running Chabad's kosher for Passover food sale, seconds [St. Louis Hillel's Rabbi Avi Katz] Orlow's desire to make Passover observance possible for the student body.

"A lot of students might decide not to [observe] if there is no opportunity to purchase kosher food," said Goldberg. "They might find it inaccessible. It is not a moneymaker for Chabad, it is just a service that we decided we should provide for students to make it easier to observe Passover."

Novack added that the various services provided are part of an effort to make students feel more at home.

"Passover is a time for family," he said. "For those that stay [on campus], we want to make them feel like a part of our family."

Source: Student Life, April 12, 2006