Pesach on Campus

We are now several days into the celebration of Pesach in Bloomington, and I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised with they way things are going.

I am finding it fairly easy to keep up eating food that is kosher for Passover. I purchased the kosher for Passover meal plan at Hillel, and I was able to get my hands on some kosher food to keep in my dorm room. I did a massive cleaning of my room so that my food would remain kosher for Passover. Living on the Jewish Studies FIG floor has also made it easier for me to observe Passover. I always have at least one person who is heading over to Hillel to eat, and I had plenty of people to attend seders with.

The food is no problem, but the seders were not what I expected.

I guess that a large number of people who show up for the McNutt seder are only doing so because their parents want them to go. Being active in Hillel, I figured that I would recognize a good number of people at the seder. However, I definitely did not know a majority of the people that came to the seder. I even saw a girl who went to my high school, that I had no idea went to this school! Overall, I felt fairly uncomfortable with the seder at McNutt. It was impersonal, disorganized, and impossible to hear anything over all of the talking that was going on around the room. I went to Hillel for the second seder, and I felt much more comfortable. It was a smaller crowd, a smaller room, and a more traditional seder.

Nothing will ever replace the feeling that I get when I am at a family seder or a seder with family friends- there are deep-rooted traditions that run throughout my family, and Passover just doesn't feel the same without them.

As they say... next year in Jerusalem (or maybe Cherry Hill, NJ?)