No Room for Minority Religions?

by Olga Kulinets and Alexander Wilson

No Orthodox Jew has ever attended Dartmouth. It is extremely difficult to practice any religion at the College, but the difficulty is significantly less for Christians than for other religious groups. Even among Christians there are difficulties as a number of sects, notably members of either the Greek or Russian Orthodox Churches, are not represented in the Hanover community.

For observant Jews, practicing their religion is not only difficult, it is almost impossible. Jesse Cook-Dubin '01, former president of the Hillel Jewish Students Association, knows two students who transferred away from Dartmouth because they found it difficult to practice Judaism at the College. He can think of only one observant student who remained all four years.

The obstacles to religious practice are immense. Dartmouth enjoys the services of a single rabbi. There is no rabbi, or religious services, for Conservative or Orthodox Jewish students. In fact, there are no Jewish services at all during the week—only Reform services on the Sabbath, led by student volunteers.

Religious laws about the proximity of unmarried men and women, an issue that produced a civil suit against Yale University, are difficult to follow, especially at services where they are most important.

The College's most notable failure in religious accommodation is its lack of kosher dining facilities. Dartmouth remains the only school in the Ivy League that does not feature a kosher dining hall. Jews and Muslims who observe kosher dietary laws find no acceptable options among those provided by Dartmouth Dining Services (DDS).

“Many Muslims become vegetarian or just eat regular food,” said Ali Rashid '01, president of Al-Nur, Dartmouth's Muslim student organization.

Dartmouth's Roth Center for Jewish Life contains a kosher kitchen, but no kosher food stores exist in Hanover. Students can only find kosher food at the Roth Center on Friday nights, at weekly Hillel dinners, and on special occasions.

The College requires even observant Muslims and Jews to pay DDS for a full meal plan, though they cannot eat the provided food.

“We were trying to get some temporary solutions—the college has promised us a facility in some future renovation of dining years down the road—but so far with little luck,” says Rashid.

Both Al-Nur and Hillel have been working with the administration on a kosher dining facility, but they have achieved little more than vague promises to date.

Meanwhile, Food Court and the Collis Center provide some kosher sandwiches. The sandwiches are not always available, and exist in only two varieties: turkey and pastrami. The prospect of having them at every meal for four years is unappealing to many prospective religious students.

This year, DDS started to provide frozen kosher meals. The TV dinners, already unappetizing to many, are useless to students who are strictly kosher because the “kosher” microwave set aside to heat them is open to all diners and unsupervised. Students often use the microwave to cook non-kosher food, rendering it non-kosher.

To be sure, most Jewish students who attend Dartmouth are members of the Reform movement or are not observant. There remains little demand for even basic accommodation for practicing Judaism at the College. Still, some argue that a College committed to “diversity” should be open and accepting of all students, including religious Jews and Muslims.

Traditionally religious students of Jewish faith do not have a place at the College.

“People do not necessarily observe in traditional ways or ways you could find anywhere but at Dartmouth,” Cook-Dubin said.

Hillel employs original modes of observance that transcend particular religious traditions. On the Jewish harvest festival of Succoth, for example, Hillel went out to the Organic Farm to have an interfaith celebration with Native Americans at Dartmouth (NAD)—in lieu of a traditional celebration.

“That made things a lot better,” explained Cook-Dubin. “It took everyone out of their comfort zone, but that cut down barriers and enabled us to see the common values underneath personal observance.”

A religious education is also difficult to obtain at the College. The Departments of Religion and Jewish Studies offer courses that address general and specific topics, but always from a secular academic, and never religious, perspective.

For Jews there is also the problem of holiday observance. Classes remain in session during the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Dartmouth makes a political point of closing on Martin Luther King Day and remaining in session over Columbus Day. That the College would hold classes on Yom Kippur sends a curious message.

There are also many holidays in the Jewish calendar that pass largely unnoticed, without a community celebration or an acknowledgment of the holiday.

Unlike Jewish students, Muslim students on campus hold daily prayers. Rollins Chapel opens at 4:30 AM for Al-Nur's dawn prayer. The Chapel is also reserved Fridays from 1:00-3:00 PM for the Sabbath.

“The College has been extremely generous to the Muslims on campus,” says Rashid. The Tucker Foundation allocates $600 a year to Al-Nur for various events.

The construction of the Roth Center for Jewish Life, completed last year, was a step toward a climate welcoming to religious Jews. Still, the Roth Center sanctuary is lacking in one salient aspect.

The sanctuary is constructed facing South. In the Jewish tradition, congregants must face East (toward Jerusalem, site of the Second Temple) during prayer. Some more observant turn away from the leader during religious services, and face the doorway.

The Roth Center sanctuary's faulty construction is emblematic of Dartmouth's accommodation for Jews: the College is accepting of Jews, but not of Judaism. Prospective Jewish students continue to exclude Dartmouth from their college choices because of the difficulties in practicing Judaism at the College.

Newfound personal freedom among college students provides the opportunity to explore matters of faith and to decide on one's own beliefs and observance.

“If you practice religion in college it's more of a personal choice,” says Nancy McLaughlin, a member of the pastoral council of Aquinas House, the College's Catholic student organization.

Still, the College makes some choices more difficult than others, and seriously inhibits the expression of religious faith.

Glaring deficiencies, most distinctly in kosher dining, continue to require a remedy. If nothing else, the fact that it remains impracticable for observant Jews and Muslims to consider attendance at Dartmouth should be a cause of concern to an administration ostensibly committed to diversity.

The College, however, appears to be doing nothing new to change the situation. Given the funds soon to be poured into the Student Life Initiative, one can only hope that the College will ease the practice of religion for all students.