Penn State Offers Kosher Food Option

By JTA September 7, 2017

(JTA) — Pennsylvania State University has begun providing a kosher food option for campus dining on a one-year trial basis.

Penn State Senior Aaron Goldberg of Philadelphia last year approached Lisa Wandel, director of residential dining, about the need for a kosher dining option, bringing 10 pages of requests from other students and ideas about how the provision of kosher food could be approached, the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reported. Goldberg said he had met Jewish students who would have liked to attend Penn State but chose other places because they could not get kosher prepared food on campus.

The dining space, called Pure, opened last month at the start of the new school year. It is part of a new campus dining hall that also provides Halal-certified meat for Muslim students, as well as a food allergen-free station.

The kosher food preparation is under the supervision of the Star-K organization of Baltimore, which will provide a mashgiach, or kashrut supervisor, for the kitchen.

“The University is committed to supporting cultural and religious diversity among its students, and we are very excited to be creating new spaces for students to come together to share meals, customs and ideas,” Penn State President Eric Barron said.

There are about 5,000 Jewish students, some 10 percent of the campus population, at Penn State.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO