Freshman Meryl Fontek is more worried about what she will eat for dinner every night than making friends or finding her way to classes.
With no kitchen in her Thurston Hall room, Fontek, an Orthodox Jew who follows a strict kosher diet, said she was shocked to find that her meal choices at J Street were limited to a half-filled refrigerator with sandwiches and salads.
“My mom shouldn’t have to call me every day, worried about what I’ve eaten,” the New Jersey native said. She said she has eaten mainly fruit, yogurt and reheatable frozen meals from Whole Foods, though she cannot eat from the store's hot bar because it is cooked with other non-kosher food.
Without Nosh, the kosher deli at J Street that shuttered this summer, Fontek said she has not been able to find meals with separately prepared meat and dairy products at the dining hall or elsewhere on campus.
Forty to 50 students adhere to kosher meat and dairy guidelines, GW Hillel Rabbi Yoni Kaiser-Blueth said. But he said many more students follow other kosher eating practices and added that there is a “sense of frustration” within the Jewish community.
About 30 percent of undergraduates identify themselves as Jewish. The national Hillel organization ranked GW the fifth-most Jewish university in the country in 2012.
Orthodox upperclassmen have opened up their kitchens to freshmen like Fontek, who are unable to cook in their buildings.
Gabriel Felder, president of the Jewish Student Association, said he cooks for about five students – mainly freshmen – every week.
“They want to keep kosher as best as they can, but they don’t have a kitchen in their dorm. Preparing food, on the whole, is very difficult for them,” he said. “The Orthodox community is very close on campus. We’re always going to help each other out."
The closest kosher eatery to campus is Eli's Restaurant in Dupont Circle, he said – which would be impractical and expensive for students to frequent every night.
“For the freshman, it’s a big slap in the face. They never really got to experience kosher food on campus at all,” Felder said, adding that the group plans to host an education series to teach students how to cook kosher food in their own halls.
Kaiser-Blueth said Hillel, which is undergoing about $225,000 in renovations this year, is considering including an in-house kosher restaurant to expand options for students, following the shutdown of Nosh and outcry of complaints from the Orthodox community. The project is still moving through the city’s zoning process.
Hillel, which regularly caters meals and had a contract with Nosh last spring, would determine who runs the restaurant. Kaiser-Blueth said he wants to “source locally,” potentially leading to another Sodexo-run option.
“My hope is that the prepackaged food [in J Street] will be the short term solution,” Kaiser-Blueth said.
Ed Schonfeld, senior associate vice president of administration, said that since a kosher option arrived at J Street in 2008, it has had “a limited following.” He said Nosh's introduction last fall was in an effort to attract more students.
“Despite the changes, the popularity of the deli continued to further decline with even fewer people patronizing the deli,” Schonfeld said. “The University concluded that a better approach to meet this modest demand for kosher food at J Street was to make available prepackaged kosher options such as sandwiches and salads now in the ‘grab-and-go’ section of J Street."
Rabbi of GW Chabad Yudi Steiner said he has told the many students who have approached him about the lack of kosher food on campus “to make their voices heard.”
“My perspective is that there has to be a way to make it work. For a school like GW, we deserve to have a real kosher option,” he said, calling the fridge in J Street a “nice gesture” that does not suffice for kosher students who are looking for hot meals.
The Chabad puts on kosher dinners every Friday for Shabbat and other kosher events throughout the year, but Steiner said his organization can’t afford to expand its meal programs.
Sophomore William Jemal said he is angry about the lack of kosher food available for students, calling it a betrayal. He said he feels like the University has forgotten about its kosher-keeping population.
“It hurts. It’s just wrong,” Jemal said.
At his Orthodox Jewish high school, he said, GW marketed itself three years ago as a place where students could easily keep up their religious and kosher practices.
“How could GW have said, ‘Yes your son can do this,’ when we can’t,” Jemal said. “It’s mind-boggling.”
40-50 students follow the strict diet, out of over 25,000 undergrads and grads total? Seems like the university made the right decision in business terms, even though it sucks for those students.
While only 40-50 follow the strictest laws of Kosher, many more follow some level of kosher that is now disturbed by the closing
Honestly, the vast majority of the jewish students ive met at GW (and of course, there’s a lot) either don’t keep kosher regularly or only do it on certain jewsih holidays and observances.
The solution should be something that answers the students’ needs but at the same time doesn’t create a situation where the space in j st for example is essentially wasted
Even vegetarians have more options because we can’t eat the vegetarian food that is cooked not in a kosher way. The school representatives guaranteed my Jewish school that students here would be accommodated but that clearly is not happening.
A small kosher cafe could be possible but would it be dairy or meat? And then if it’s not meat where do we get protein and meat from? Daily cold cut sandwiches are not sustainable.
When I was attending the school, there was a Kosher meal plan that had a price-premium attached to it but gave students access to a cafeteria that was in the Hillel center. I ate there twice and it was really good. I wonder what happened to it?
Honestly this is only even coming up as an issue because GW has such a huge jewish population. I agree that a solution has to be found to accommodate the students’ needs, but it really doesn’t make sense to keep the kosher deli open in J st if the following is minimal. Every year so many people complain about where the money goes (which is still a major question), but this was one move to get rid of a poor business and replace it with something not only profitable but that the entire student body is more likely to enjoy.
I would suggest a small kosher cafe like GDub Java might be the best way to go
I eat kosher, and have trouble finding meat options on campus.
But it seems that the biggest problem is that Nosh was NOT a good business.
If Nosh was better run, it would have worked. It had a poor business model that for a STEEP price provided very small amounts of meat per sandwich.
Students hoping to eat kosher expect the meat to be slightly marked up, but they also expect regular sized portions that don’t still leave you hungry.
The best option would be a business opening its doors in the general vicinity of campus, or for Hillel to open its doors with a kosher kitchen!
I ate Kosher once at GW but her parents didn’t approve of me because I was a Gentile.
I think we clearly need an all bacon restaurant on campus….
…because Jews don’t eat bacon. Get it, everyone?
I think the best solution would be for these students to have permission to live off-campus so that they can just rent apartments that have kitchens.
Also, this will probably sound offensive, but I don’t think GW should have to bend over backwards to accommodation a group of students who choose to have such an unusual eating style.
It’s important to remember that they voluntarily picked this lifestyle, and they can eat anything at any time if they feel like it (as long as they aren’t allergic). This is the lifestyle they selected. They can eat anywhere if they want to.
The rules of a kosher lifestyle are rigidly inflexible. These students shouldn’t be surprised that a big institution won’t bend over backwards to accommodate their superstitions.
Ryan,
Most religious people would not call an aspect of their religion voluntary; if you believe that you are sinning each time you take a bite of pork – and you are responsible for repenting for your sins lest God punish you -
it is not a voluntary lifestyle.
Telling someone an observant Jew that kosher is optional, or a religious Muslim that Halal is optional, is no different than telling a law-abiding citizen that its okay to murder or steal.
(Note, until a 2008, I think it was, the university actually had a freshmen dorm with individual kitchens, where students with dietary restrictions were largely housed. This was a great thing for the religious Jews (and I presume Muslim) freshmen: the students had a kitchen they could control, and still had a dorm experience.)
I think we have very different definitions of voluntary. They have made a conscious choice to be Jewish, and they’ve made a conscious choice to be Kosher. We all have the power to choose our our religion, our belief systems and our values, and I’m not judging anyone’s. But let’s not pretend that these students from the moment they were born were damned to some sort of system in which they had no free will over their religion, diets and lives. They believe this is important to them, and they want to abide by it, and bully to them for that. I think from the fact that many people convert religions, or leave religions, there is pretty ample evidence that you’re not bound to your religion. You can choose it or not choose it.
Also, not to be too not-picky, but there is a big flaw in your analogy: a murderer will go to jail in most situations. There is a concrete record of that. You can walk into a prison and see the murders on death row with your own eyes. Anyone who has sight can literally see this.
There isn’t any evidence at all that anyone will suffer any consequences from God or someone else as a result of eating non-Kosher foods. The only consequence will likely be the mental turmoil that someone who abides by this belief system is likely to inflict upon herself.
I really don’t get why they don’t just let these students live off-campus though, as it seems like it would be the simplest solution for everyone.
i’m not at all religious but I think most people who are religious, of any religion, would find your presumption that religion is a choice to be completely flawed
Even if one Jew kept kosher, It would be problematic to force him to purchase a meal plan that he can’t eat from.
Oy vey, I want to keep Kosher, yes? But I say your food is too expensive. Don’t they know we want a good bargain? I go eat at Hillel in the past but no more, they won’t serve Kosher food. And my mother, she always calls me. “Bubby, are you eating well? Are you meeting a nice Jewish girl?” But no I do not want to lie to my mother. Pork, I will not eat. But sometimes I eat everyday food. Will not tell her though.
The toaster is supposedly unsafe.
But two fridges and two microwaves on top of each other do not overload the circuits in a Thurston room? How are those even plugged in? Not safely, I’d guess.
At Yale, the dining hall at Hillel is one of the most popular eating spaces, frequented by both Jews and non-Jews because it is so nice and the food is so good. Surely GW, a much larger school, can manage to have a great dining space that will attract kosher-keeping Jews, non-kosher Jews, non-Jews, anyone at all.
Granted, there ARE dining halls at Yale, so Hillel is an option at a school where students expect to eat meals sitting at a table with others, not one of many fast-food sources for a grab&go no-dining-hall school like GW.
See also the “How can you get hot kosher food on campus?” Mi Yodeya post.