Jews and Gentiles Break Bread at Shabbat 1000

“What brings me to Shabbat 1000? And I can’t say ‘because I’m Jewish’? Well, you know, I’m really here ‘cause I thought I might find a wife.” While a few dogged interviewees listed the celebration of culture and community as draws to the biggest Shabbat dinner in Harvard history, Adam J. Scheuer ’06 was not alone in his smart-ass sentiment.

So many of the students polled by FM offered up some variant of the search to “identify a provider,” as Jack P. McCambridge ’06 put it, that FM had to stop another would-be jokester mid-sentence to preserve our sanity before the dinner even began.

University President Lawrence H. Summers started the festivities off with a quip in response to the swelling applause that greeted him: “It’s a thrill to attend a warm and friendly Harvard meeting!” Once the Kiddush had been said, Jews and friends-of alike ate, mingled, and compared yarmulke couture. Soccer ball-patterned and pleather options were discussed; no consensus was reached on which would best suit attendee Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz. Mark D. Lurie ’07 and his tablemates, sporting yarmulkes in tasteful basic black, almost made up for the sartorial impasse with a collaborative effort to generate “the Jewiest quote ever!” As the evening—by all accounts a resounding success, according to Hillel and Chabad event co-ordinators—drew to a close and Andrea Jonas ’08 and Joy Z. Chen ’08 (“not Jews, just aspiring”) conquered their fears and succumbed to the oblong allure of gefilte fish, Seth R. Flaxman ’08 delivered with aplomb the one liner heard more often than smart remarks involving nice Jewish girls–“Nice to be among so many Jews for once. Oh, wait. I go to Harvard.”