Over this past Hanukkah season, some of my Pi Phi sisters and I had an interesting opportunity to help one of my sisters, Becca, and her family. What we had to do was pretty simple; help prepare a dinner from scratch for several hundred people. It is something her family does every year, they help host and prepare a dinner sponsored by the Herb Byer memorial fund. The dinner is open to the entire community and has a fantastic turnout each year. My sister asked for some extra assistance for her mother, who works the whole week preparing food for this dinner, entirely from scratch.
I was only able to help one day out of the week, from nine a.m. until about three p.m. Our first task was peeling potatoes for the latkes, which are extremely delicious potato pancakes. (One perk of the job was taste testing!) After peeling hundreds of pounds of potatoes with Becca’s whole family we moved on to place settings. Each place setting needed to be set and each table needed decorated. However, when you put six sorority sisters in charge of this the task goes nice and quick, and gets very entertaining. Luckily Becca’s grandmother was there to keep us on task and make sure everything looked as it should. Even our lunch break became an education when we learned all about kosher foods. What makes them kosher, the importance and the history. We even ordered kosher pizza for lunch! Our last task of the day was peeling and cutting apples so Becca’s mother could make homemade applesauce. Again, it was proven that many hands make light work and we were done in no time.
Throughout the day we had been asking Becca many questions about the Jewish faith, her synagogue, Hanukkah traditions and anything else we could think of. She was extremely patient with us and answered everything and fascinated us with her answers. Then we were able to get a tour of her temple, The Adath Israel Synagogue. It’s a beautiful building and our tour guide was excellent in explaining everything that perplexed us. We all left that day with a much better understanding of the Jewish faith and its traditions as well as some entertaining memories that can only come from peeling hundreds of pounds of apples and potatoes and setting tables to seat hundreds.
By: Alex Hartke
