It’s a Friday afternoon. 

For most students at the University of Maryland, the dining hall is a few steps away.

For freshman Ari Porter on North campus, it’s a 20-minute walk to the Maryland Hillel. 

In a rush to prepare for Shabbat and find time in between classes, he skips lunch again.

“I found myself skipping Friday lunch and sometimes Sunday lunch as well, just because it was so inconvenient,” Porter said. 

For observant students like Porter, keeping kosher at the University of Maryland means reshaping day-to-day life around the Hillel because of how inconvenient and inaccessible kosher food is. While touting inclusion and religious diversity, UMD– home to the largest Orthodox Jewish student population in any secular university– has one dining option for kosher-keeping students. 

During Porter’s first semester, he’d pack a duffel bag and leave his North Campus dorm every Friday afternoon—not for a grand weekend trip with his buddies, but to sleep on a friend’s couch who lived closer to the Hillel. 

“We didn’t live in our dorm for at least a day every week,” Porter said. “It was just too much.” 

Porter was placed in Ellicott Hall on North campus at the start of the semester, but as an observant Jew, that just meant he was in diaspora from the Hillel. 

“My roommate and I both got bikes…to not have to walk 20 minutes for food,” said Porter. “I’d usually come back to Hillel after class because it was too much time and too much effort to go all the way back to my dorm when I was just going to come right back to Hillel for…the next services or the next meal.”

However, on Shabbat, bike riding is prohibited for Orthodox Jews. For Porter, this meant frequently sleeping at upperclassmen’s apartments closer to Hillel.

“It was so annoying and a hassle, and just a general inconvenience to walk that much back and forth on Shabbat,” he said. 

Because of how difficult a religious, kosher lifestyle was on North Campus, Porter moved to the South Campus dorms at the start of the second semester and it was a “total game changer.”

Living on South Campus still doesn’t make keeping kosher perfectly easy, though.

“As a Jewish religious freshman, I’m very reliant on Hillel for meals,” said freshman Adam Goldfarb. “I don’t really have any other source of meals.”

The Hillel, however, has set meal times. That means if he’s hungry at 2:30-5:00 p.m. on a weekday or Saturday night, too bad. 

For Goldfarb, set meal times are a “big struggle.”

“There have been times where I’ve had a club meeting and I have to take a box for food, or I had to ask a friend to get food for me, because I missed the meal time,” he said. 

Even when freshmen have access to kitchens, kosher eating is still hard.

Freshman Shayna Towler, for example, lives in an off-campus apartment, partly because it made more sense financially. According to the university, freshmen living in dorms need to be on a full time meal plan. Because Hillel’s kosher full-time meal plan costs ​​$3,225 without the option of dining dollars, it isn’t always an option for kosher-keeping freshmen to dorm. 

Because Towler isn’t on a meal plan, she has to cook for herself at all times without the option of affordable or convenient kosher food nearby. 

“It’s an extra hour added to my day when I have to cook,” said Towler. “I…wish there were cheaper Hillel options because that would benefit me a lot.”  

Our College Park, a ticket in the 2025-2026 Student Government Association election, featured Shuli Frankel, a candidate for vice president who was committed to improving kosher and halal food on and off campus.

“We will work with Dining Services and student groups to expand certified options on campus and advocate for more kosher and halal choices and vendors who accept dining dollars,” Our College Park said on its Instagram page. 

Our College Park did not win the election, however. Now, kosher students are relying on the university itself to create solutions.

Bart Hipple, assistant director of marketing and communication at Dining Services, said they’ve been working to expand kosher access to students for ages.

“We’ve been trying to break down that wall for years and years and years, and we seem to get closer and closer and closer, but we haven’t actually broken it yet,” Hipple said. 

The university faces challenges in expanding kosher access because of the need for a mashgiach (kosher supervisor) at all times, which state employees cannot fund. 

“The stumbling block is that kosher isn’t just ingredients, it’s also an oversight,” he said. “We cannot use state funds to pay someone to do a religious function.”

UMD has also tried to partner with Hillel, but the high costs and paperwork burden led to Hillel seeking other options.

Despite the university’s efforts, In all three dining halls, 10 cafes, and two food courts, the best a kosher-keeping student will find is a Cliff bar and coffee. 

In a time when being a practicing Jew already poses so many challenges, Porter thinks the inconvenience of kosher food access is enough to push away someone who is trying to become more religious.

“A lot of people have a tough time connecting spiritually…so having that added barrier of distance and time is for sure enough to deter someone.”