Miami U Increases Kosher Dining Options for Jewish Students
OXFORD, Ohio — Campuses talk a lot about inclusion. Most of it happens in memos. Real inclusion showed up in Oxford this fall as a kosher bagel kiosk offering fresh bagels and salads students can buy with their dining swipes.
Students were quick to try it. “I have used the new bagel kiosk, and it’s pretty good,” said Miami student Alli Becker. “I prefer to take mine back to my dorm and heat it up. I like the wide variety of toppings they have to go on the bagels, such as the multiple different cream cheeses and the egg/tuna salad.”
The kiosk is the newest step in a slow, steady expansion. Since 2019, you can almost picture the kosher section in Miami’s markets filling up more of the shelf each year—first a few familiar hechshered staples, then more grab-and-go items, then reliable Passover stock—and this fall, a bagel you can grab between classes. “I’ve been working with Rabbi Yossi Greenberg at Chabad to provide more grab-and-go food for our kosher community,” said dining lead Geno Svec. “While we’ve always carried kosher items, we’ve recently expanded our offerings to better meet the community’s needs.” Translation: students used it, so Dining stocked more.
Senior Caleb Krainman sees the shift as a bridge to what’s next. “Right now, we’re able to get packaged kosher meats at some campus stores,” he said. “Having an actual kosher section in a dining hall would be a huge improvement for students who keep kosher or want to learn more about kosher food.”
Community is the other story here. Becker describes a semester where people keep showing up for one another. “All of our Jewish organizations have been very active so far, and you see a lot of the same people attending programming from different organizations… there’s a community everywhere you go.” On Friday nights, that looks like “Shabbat hopping”—students catching more than one gathering in an evening, and maybe even a few l’chaims.
The university’s posture matters. Dean of Students BaShaun Smith calls Jewish life “vibrant and engaging,” with students challenged academically and supported by Miami alongside partners like Chabad, Hillel and Olami. He points to simple tools the university uses to lower the friction of observance: a public religious-holiday calendar and a template students can send to professors about services and holy days. These are not slogans. They signal that a student’s faith belongs in the ordinary flow of campus life.
Unity here doesn’t look like a stage or a slogan. It looks like everyday tools that work: a label where you need it, a kiosk that takes your swipe, a calendar that lines up with your life. That’s the picture at Miami right now—a bagel that doesn’t ask you to explain yourself, a market shelf that doesn’t give your Jewish mother anxiety, and a dean who hands you the words so you can keep both your grades and your holidays. Inclusion, not as a press release, but as the everyday made possible.
