Faculty-student Shabbat

Friday, April 30, 2004, 7:00–8:15 P.M.

Foreground, from left: Christie Pride '06, Leonid Shinchuk '98, William Markis '07, Erin Craig '05, Leah Ben-Ami '06, Michael Chirlin, Ari Shapiro '01. Sitting at rear, from left: Dan Pyster '06, Lauren Hill '04, Sander Glaser (exchange student, BC Law), Sasha Westerman '06, Adeane Bregman (BC librarian), Prof. Rachel Spector '72, MS '74 (Capstone). Standing, from left: Prof. Alan Marcus (finance), Prof. Dan Kirschner (biology), Gillian Rogell, Kim Fass '06, Sam Joseph '06, Prof. Robert Gross (mathematics), David Schimmel, Manny Spector (BC squash instructor)

the occasion
Once a semester, members of the Jewish students' association, Hillel, follow their Friday evening service with a communal dinner in an all-purpose room adjoining the interfaith chapel at 66 Commonwealth Avenue. The gathering includes current and retired faculty, undergraduates and law students, alumni, staff, and friends.

Sophomore Sasha Westerman, who leads the evening's service, removes the satin embroidered napkin covering the challah and speaks a blessing. After the meal, while Hillel members stack folding tables against the wall, faculty advisor Dan Kirschner, a BC biology professor, takes up the violin he played during the service and improvises a tune from Fiddler on the Roof.

ambience
Wood beams and brown tile floor, tables in a "w" configuration, two identical wall hangings of a country path, exercise bikes in the corner

menu
Kosher buffet: challah, pasta salad with olives, green beans with portobello mushrooms, beef with peapods over lettuce, non-dairy cookies and brownies, grape juice in Dixie cups

references
The Jewish chaplain at Tufts, George W. Bush, the Jewish community of Alicante, Spain

overheard
"Shabbat shalom." • "A seder's not a seder unless you have somebody over who has no place to go for seder."

Text by Nicole Estvanik. Photos by Gary Wayne Gilbert

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