Jewish Students Get Tuna, Matzos In 3-Year Fight for Kosher Food

After a three year battle with Harvard over Kosher foods during Passover, Jewish students have won a limited victory of fish and matzo bagged lunches.

About 100 Harvard students can't eat University food for the eight days of Passover because of religious dietary restrictions. Since 1967, representatives of these students have continually asked Harvard to reimburse them for missed meals. This year, Harvard will provide kosher alternatives to the regular menu for one or more meals a day.

The substitutes are an acceptable but less than ideal solution to the problem because-even kosher food becomes impure when it touches non-kosher plates or utensils, according to David Harbater '74. "It would be much easier to give us rebates," Harbater said.

Money for Panthers

The Jewish students complain that the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) has repeatedly ignored their requests for meal rebates. The day after CHUL buried a two-year old rebate plea by the Jewish students in a sub-committee, 550 students collecting money for the Black Panther Fund petitioned CHUL to reimburse them for skipped meals. CHUL passed a rebate plan in a special meeting four days later.

A sub-committee of CHUL recommended last Fall that the University reimburse the kosher-eating students for Sabbath and holiday meals or subsidize meals at Hillel House. CHUL has taken no action on the proposal. "We don't subsidize meals at the Ritz . . . or at Elsie's, so why should we subsidize meals at Hillel?" Charles G. Hurlburt, director of the Food Services Department, said.

Radcliffe subsidizes up to 80 cents for lunch and $1.30 for dinner at Hillel, about half the cost of meals-but Harvard doesn't. About 60-80 Cliffies usually eat at Hillel House during Passover but only about 12 Harvard students.

'Canned Tuna'

"More Harvard students would eat here, but they can't afford it," Ruth Haster, Hillel regional secretary, said. A student would spend $34 if he bought two meals a day at Hillel for six days. "In the past, we ate a lot of canned tuna in our rooms," Hillel Kieval '73, one of the students trying to get rebates, said last week.

CHUL recently rejected the meal plan proposed last December which would have allowed students to buy limited meal contracts. "The House chairmen said the students didn't want it," W. C. Burris Young '55, assistant dean of Freshmen and chairman of the CHUL Committee on Food said.

This year the students are working with the Office for Minority Affairs instead of CHUL. "We didn't have too much luck with CHUL," Kieval said.