For Immediate Release:
September 10, 2001

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – The opening of Mount Holyoke College’s new kosher/halal dining hall, a place where observant Jews and observant Muslims can break bread together, will be celebrated on Thursday, Sept. 13.

Representatives of the Muslim and Jewish communities will gather in Abbey Interfaith Sanctuary for a 5:30 PM ceremony, after which they will proceed to the newly renovated dining room of Wilder Hall to share in blessings, prayers, and a meal.

The kosher/halal dining hall, one of a handful of its kind on American college campuses, was approved by the Mount Holyoke College Board of Trustees in March and largely funded through a $250,000 donation by an anonymous alumna. It serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week and is open to all students.

Joining Ayvazian to speak at the Sept. 13 event will be Beverly Daniel Tatum, dean of the College; Efraim Eisen, the College’s Jewish chaplain; Sister Shamshad Sheikh, the College’s Muslim chaplain; Imam Wasam Abdul Baki of the Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts; Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg of the Jewish Community of Amherst; Rana Al-Jammal, a representative of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Massachusetts; and Lawrence Fine, chair of Jewish studies at the College.

The new dining hall is more than simply a place where the dietary laws of Islam and Judaism are observed. It is the latest manifestation of the College’s commitment to religious pluralism, the same commitment that led to the 1999 creation of the Abbey Interfaith Sanctuary, used regularly by eight faith groups, and the popular interfaith luncheon series at Eliot House, home of the College’s Office of Spiritual and Religious Life.

"I view the opening of a kosher/halal dining hall as an affirmation of the importance of the religious pluralism on the campus and the many ways religious and spiritual traditions inform the tenor of life at the College," Ayvazian says.

Plans for the kosher/halal dining hall grew out of discussions that Tatum entered into with a group of students in the spring of 2000. Although a kosher/halal kitchen had been established in Eliot House in 1989, that modest facility had become strained by the demands brought about by its popularity. Jewish and Muslim students asked Tatum if the College could respond to the need.

Although the dietary laws of Judaism and Islam overlap to some degree, such as on the prohibition on pork products, they are not identical. The Qur’an prohibits the consumption of alcohol, for instance, but does not echo the Torah’s proscription of the mixing of meat and dairy foods.

The two faiths differ, in fact, on exactly how an animal must be slaughtered to make its meat fit to eat. Buying kosher and halal meat from separate suppliers, to be kept in separate refrigerators, prepared in separate cookware, and served on separate plates, was one complication too many in an already complex plan.

But the students found a compromise. Through their adviser, Sheikh, the Muslim students agreed that they could eat kosher meat if halal meat were not readily available, because both Jews and Muslims are al kitab, or "companions of the book."

Tatum calls the outcome "quite remarkable…. It’s a testament to the interfaith dialogue that has taken place at Mount Holyoke that we have been able to get around this problem."

Mount Holyoke College is one of the nation's finest liberal arts colleges. Rigorous academics, an internationally diverse student body, and integration of cutting-edge technologies through all aspects of the curriculum create an environment that prepares women to become leaders in an increasingly complex world.

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For further background on the kosher/halal dining hall, please see the following stories from the College Street Journal: Something New On the Menu, at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/052501/kosher.shtml

and Details, Details: The Making of a Kosher/Halal Dining Facility, at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/090701/dining.shtml