Due to the difficulty of following the strict rules needed to prepare kosher food for Passover, Dartmouth Dining Services has decided to close the kosher dining facility in The Pavilion throughout the week-long Jewish holiday.
While The Pavilion will continue to provide halal meals during the next week, the three kosher kitchens closed yesterday and will remain closed until dinner on Sunday, April 7, since Passover ends Thursday evening and The Pavilion is closed on Fridays and Saturdays.
The difficulty of serving food that is kosher for Passover is that each kitchen being used must be kashered, or made kosher, specifically for Passover -- a process that would involve purchasing new utensils and cookware, kosher kitchen manager Robert Lester said.
Lester said that a salt shaker that had been used before Passover would have to be thrown away and a new one opened for Passover, and so on with the entire kitchen.
Most facilities that serve kosher-for-Passover food maintain a separate kitchen specifically for that purpose, he added.
Lester emphasized the importance of making absolutely sure that the kitchen complies in every way with Jewish law.
"We don't want to 'oops,'" Lester said. "We want to do it right. ... It's all or nothing."
Another reason The Pavilion will close for Passover is that its maschgiach -- the rabbinical representative responsible for certifying the food as kosher -- is away from Dartmouth to observe the holiday.
Students who wish to keep a kosher diet during Passover will be able to turn to the Roth Center for Jewish Life for tonight's second, less widely observed Seder dinner and during the remainder of Passover for pre-packaged kosher-for-Passover meals.
Kosher meals will be available at Food Court. While these will not be kosher for Passover, they will include matzos that are.
Sarah Finck '02, a past president of Hillel, said she understood that in its first year of operation, it would be difficult for The Pavilion to provide kosher for Passover meals, but she expressed hope for that possibility in the future.
"It would definitely be a great thing to have," she said.
The Pavilion, the long-anticipated dining facility for students who follow kosher, halal, sakahara and vegetarian diets, opened last fall. While it has not yet drawn large numbers of students, DDS employee Anna-Marie Hammond suggested that The Pavilion "will get busy once people realize it's for everyone" and not just Jewish or Muslim students.
