Kashrus Kurrents, Spring 2023

Some of the top colleges in the U.S. boast a 10-25 percent Jewish
student population. In 2022, Jewish students were well-represented at all eight
Ivy League schools, with Columbia leading the way at 24%, followed by Brown
(19%), Cornell and UPenn (tied at17%), and Yale (13%).[1] The
continually increasing number of kosher and other Jewish amenities on the American
college campus mirror these statistics – and act as magnets to attract Jewish
students. For some, STAR-K’s presence on campus offers a first – and sometimes
only – taste of Yiddishkeit.

Rabbi Mayer
Kurcfeld, a STAR-K kashrus administrator, has been engineering and overseeing the
agency’s many certified on-campus facilities since 1999, custom-designing those
that were not pre-existing. I asked him to describe the kashruschallenges
of certifying the ever-evolving college campus dining platform.

KK: Which
U.S. colleges and universities are certified by STAR-K?

RMK: We currently certify kosher dining at American University, Cornell
University, Franklin & Marshall College, Ithaca College, Johns Hopkins
University, Muhlenberg College, […]