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Hillel celebrates holiday with sweet twist

By Gaveliers, The Gavel Media Team, on March 25, 2010 10:48 PM

By Sue Byun, Assoc. News Editor -

Thursday night the Boston College Hillel Association hosted a Chocolate Seder for a pre-Passover celebration, looking back to history for spiritual nourishment as well as embracing the enjoyable things in life such as sharing good food with friends.

The Hillel of BC serves the social, cultural, and religious needs of the small but active group of Jewish students. A part of the Hillel Council of New England, the group also aims to inform the rest of BC what it means to be Jewish.

“Everyone love chocolate,” said Leon Ratz, A&S ’11 and co-president of BC Hillel. “So in this way we bring a several thousand-year old Jewish tradition to BC students through something fun and accessible.”

The Chocolate Seder was a spinoff of the actual Passover Seder, which is full of symbolic rituals from the Jews’ exodus out of Egypt. There were about 25 attendees from all class levels as well as outside of Hillel, and they broke chocolate matzah together, washed their hands with chocolate syrup, and raised glasses of chocolate milk in praise.

An important part of the ritual is the Chocolate Seder plate consisting of six symbols that captured the essence of the Passover story: dark chocolate to represent the bitterness the Hebrew peoples’ enslavement, an egg-shaped chocolate to represent rebirth and nature’s cycles, among other meaningful sweet treats.

Following the haggadah book of Passover prayers and stories, Elissa Klein, the director of Jewish life at BC led the group through the Chocolate Seder rituals with light-hearted humor.

Former Hillel president Gulienne Rollins, A&S ’08, came back to join the festivities. “It’s a less intimidating way to show non-Jewish students what the actual Passover Seder is like, which is much longer and heavier,” she said.

A palpable feeling of joy, community, and good humor pervaded the event, and the setup was festive, with white linen covered tables, fondue, games, music, and sweet treats strewn about.

“We like to give free food – it’s very much in the Jewish tradition,” Ratz said.

“Being Jewish at a Catholic school brings lots of opportunity for interfaith programming, which gives us a chance to bring everyone together,” Ratz said. “I think it was a terrific success. Everyone had a great time.”