With housing selection for the fall semester over on Tuesday night, observant Jewish students can finally stop scrambling to find living arrangements that satisfy one of their basic practices – keeping a kosher kitchen.

Since the first South Campus Commons buildings opened in 2001, dozens of apartments have been kashered, the Hebrew term for making a cooking area fit for making food (according to Jewish traditions). As the process of kashering a kitchen can be very lengthy, Jews clamor to inherit an apartment that has already gone through the daunting but necessary ritual. What has evolved over the years is a system in which many rising seniors choose to pull in rising sophomores and juniors to keep the tradition of a kosher kitchen going.

“The ‘lineage’ system is the closest one can get to guaranteeing that their apartment will, in fact, be kosher,” said junior Avi Mayer.

The government and politics and Jewish studies major, a resident assistant in building 5, kashered his apartment at the beginning of the fall semester. He scrubbed down his entire kitchen, then poured boiling water in the sink and other surfaces. To kasher his microwave, he boiled water in it for several minutes. To clean the oven, he scrubbed it and ran it on its highest setting for several hours. Finally, he let the stove burners on until they turned red and he could see all food remnants burn away.

“The process took me a number of hours over the course of a few days,” he said.

Junior Rachel Solomon was part of the tradition last fall when rising seniors pulled her in. Now the criminology and criminal justice and Jewish studies major is pulling in sophomores for this fall in hopes that the apartment will stay kosher even after she graduates.

Melissa Enbar, a senior special education major, has lived in building 1 for three years. When she was pulled in, all of the girls in the apartment kept kosher, so they kept up kashering their kitchen. In the time Enbar has lived there, five other girls have passed through, all of them keeping kosher.

“I think that there is definitely an attempt to pass on kosher apartments simply because it will make it easier for the lowerclassmen once they move in,” she said.

She is staying for one more year as she completes her master’s and is pulling in a sophomore who plans to keep the apartment kosher.

While Jewish students living in Commons have a convenient place to cook their food, they have a harder time finding approved kosher food. Many students shop at Shaul’s in Wheaton or Koshermart in Rockville; both are at least 20 minutes away. The drive, plus the rising price of gas and the high price of kosher food, has put students at a disadvantage.

However, the Commons Shop recently started carrying several kosher brands, lessening the number of trips students make to get their food. It’s helped students save trips when they’ve forgotten to pick kosher items up, Enbar said.

Rabbi Elli Fischer works at Hillel, which ran a “kashrut orientation” at the beginning of this school year for about 30 students. Fischer, the director of Jewish learning initiatives, said the fact that students are staying kosher in the first place is most significant.

“I think the important thing is having a large number of students who have made the commitment to keep kosher,” he said. “It allows students to celebrate [the Sabbath] and other holidays the way they want.”

Contact reporter Melissa Weiss at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.