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Boulder Now Has a Kosher Eatery in the City
The student dining area in the CU’s new Center for Community opened officially Tuesday, August 17th, 2010, and included in the dozen or so separate dining options is a kosher offering called, appropriately enough, “Kosher.” This dining option, the brainchild of Rabbi Yisroel Wilhelm of Chabad of CU, has been several years in the making.
The Kosher station boasts its own kitchen and its own full-time chef, Eddie Shapiro, who is also a mashgiach (kosher supervisor). In addition, Rabbi Wilhelm also supervises and can delegate students to supervise as appropriate. “Kosher” is open Monday through Friday lunch, and depending on how successful it proves, may expand to Sunday as well. “Kosher” offers a menu of meat, vegetarian and vegan items, with no dairy. This makes “Kosher” attractive to Moslem and Hindu students as well as vegetarian and vegan students. The menus are marked so that diners know which dishes are which. “Kosher” also offers its own paper cups, serves on paper plates, and offers compostable utensils.
Rabbi Wilhelm is rightfully very excited about what “Kosher” means in the context of CU becoming a magnet school for observant Jews. Already, two students are starting CU in the fall specifically because of the availability of kosher food on campus. In addition, the dining area at the Center for Community (known as “C4C”) is open to the public, and as it is a prix fixe “all you can eat” arrangement from any of the stations, it is a great deal as well. The university should be commended for deciding to scrap the idea of an “upcharge” just for getting food from “Kosher”, even though operation of “Kosher” is clearly more expensive on average than the other offerings at the center.
BJN attended the soft opening of the Center last Friday, where we were able to interview Rabbi Wilhelm about the whole process (conducted by Linda and Mark Loewenstein, the latter a law professor at the Wolf Law School), students who came to try out the food, Dr. Michael Stutzer, a professor in the Leeds School of Business, Rabbi Goldfeder, and Prof. Carlos Zarur. Enjoy the video interviews and photo slide show below.
Photos:
Interviews:
Rabbi Wilhelm, Linda and Mark Loewenstein
Students
Professor Michael Stutzer
Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder
Professor Carlos Zarur
Lehitchadesh!
There is plenty of evidence that in ancient times smoke was integral to the kashrut itself. Releasing the smoke to heaven was recognizing the holy spirit in all creatures, thus the "burnt offering" requirement upon butchering an animal. The animal offering its life so we may live, where we are playing the role of Supreme Being from the animal's point of view. As killers, we would assume the role of the dying animal to share in its death at our hands. A very shamanic earth-centric practice that we have lost touch with. In fact, I think there was a scene in the movie "Avatar" with a similar ritual.
In any case, kosher meat is definitely better tasting! More like "real" meat, for those who don't know the difference. In fact, I have a Glatt Kosher chicken schnitzel in my refrigerator, I think I will go eat it right now!