One of the June 6 recommendations of Harvard University’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism was that you are what you offer your student body to eat.
“The university must ensure a welcoming environment for religiously observant Jewish students, faculty and staff,” the task force said. It said that hot kosher lunches “should be made available by the start of next term at Hillel or at least one of the River Houses and, due to its distance from the Yard, the Radcliffe Quad.”
“Hot kosher dinners, which are currently available at Hillel, should also be available at the Quad,” it added, advising further that “in all dining facilities, pork products should be clearly marked.”
Some two months later, kosher options at Harvard have expanded—a change about which the Harvard Hillel stated it is “so excited.”
In addition to daily kosher lunch and dinner at Hillel “in a traditional all-you-care-to-eat dining hall experience,” Harvard diners can now find kosher food at the school’s Annenberg Hall and Pforzheimer House, per the university website.
“Dedicated stations at Annenberg Dining Hall and Pforzheimer House Dining Hall will offer hot entrees and sides Sunday to Friday, and cold selections on Saturdays,” it states. “These menu items will be prepared at HUDS’ kosher production kitchen with mashgiach oversight, and then offered for self-service (without mashgiach oversight) with compostable wares.” (HUDS is the Harvard University Dining Services, and a mashgiach provides kosher supervision of food preparation.)
There will also be a “continental breakfast and an array of staple items in Kosher Corners at every undergraduate dining hall,” and some sites will have “daily kosher sandwiches,” per the Harvard site.
The new kosher options are a “big win,” and there are “ongoing conversations” about kosher certification with the university, Jacob Miller, a Harvard senior and former president of the Harvard Hillel, told the Harvard Crimson, a student paper.
Miller, editorial chair at the Crimson, told the paper that prior kosher lunch options were “inadequate,” and the new offerings will “directly increase the quality of life for people who keep kosher or keep kosher-style.”
