Hundreds of Hamantaschen

Hi everyone,

I’m Rachel Fields, the Holidays and Culture Chair on Harvard Hillel’s Student Board, and I’m writing to you fresh off one of my favorite weeks of the year: Purim.

Purim has been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember. I’ve been baking hamantaschen with my family since I was four years old — over a hundred every year. When I came to Harvard as a first-year, I brought that tradition with me to Hillel, and it’s grown into something I never could have imagined.

This week, we held our 3rd annual Hamantaschen Bake, and we set a new Hillel record: 302 hamantaschen. Jews and non-Jews came together to bake, hang out, and recount the story of Purim, and it was one of those events that reminded me why I love this community so much.

Monday night, our community came together for three concurrent megillah readings in our building: one with the Orthodox Student Minyan (OSM), one with the Worship & Study Minyan reading alongside SHEM (Student Harvard Egalitarian Minyan, the rebranded SCM), and a women’s reading. Shout out to the many undergrads who read the Megillah for their respective minyanim! OSM celebrated with a party after their reading. It was a great kickoff to a week full of Jewish joy.

All week, students have been handing out hamantaschen to classmates and friends across campus, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes this holiday so special to me: sharing something with people who might not have experienced it before, and building connections beyond our own community.

If you’re looking for more of that energy, mark your calendars for our annual Latke-Hamantaschen Debate this Sunday night at 7pm. Professor Julia Rhyder, a Hebrew Bible scholar whose research covers food, law, and identity in ancient Israel, will face off against Professor Doris Sommer, a leading voice in Romance Languages and the public humanities. It will be a blast!

Shabbat Shalom,

Rachel Fields ’27
Holidays and Culture Chair