Recently Williams College – a pretty ancient liberal arts university as far as things go in North America in Williamstown, Massachusetts – has been caught in the middle of a rather amusing kosher storm in a teacup about an especially religious jewish student demanding special privileges.
Joseph Feldman writing for ‘VIN News’ on 23rd April 2026 summarises the situation as follows:
‘Williams College, a nearly 235-year-old private liberal arts school in Williamstown, Mass., is denying an Orthodox Jewish student proper religious accommodations, according to a complaint that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday.
The complaint, which was shared with JNS, alleges that the college denied requests from the student, whose name is redacted, to receive a physical key to his dormitory to use on Shabbat, when his faith prohibits using an electronic key card.The school rejected his request, citing vague “security” concerns, per the complaint, which means he has to wait outside his dorm building until another student arrives and lets him in. (JNS sought comment from the college.)
Williams College suggested that during Shabbat, the student could knock on the door of a campus office and ask for an escort to his building. The complaint described that recommendation as “equally, if not more, uncertain, inconvenient and lengthy than the untenable process he was already enduring.”
In February, the student met with Maud Mandel, the president of the college and a Judaic studies scholar, about the issue. She denied his request and said that using a physical key would “trigger an alarm,” per the complaint.
“He’s locked out of his dorm in the freezing cold on a regular basis, sometimes over an hour, and made repeated requests to the college to figure out a way to rectify this,” Rachel Balaban, senior litigation counsel at the Brandeis Center, told JNS.
“Nothing was done about it, so we felt we needed to pursue this on behalf of the student and other students in his position at Williams,” Balaban said. “This student’s ability to exercise, freely, his religion should not be incompatible with his equally important right to fully participate in residential life at Williams.”
The complaint also alleges that the school denied the student’s request for proper kosher meals and gave him vegan dinners instead that “were nutritionally inadequate and often so unappealing that he found them inedible.”
Those meals were also “noticeably different” from vegan options given to non-kosher-keeping students, according to the complaint.
Pre-packaged kosher meals at the college’s Jewish Religious Center, which does not follow Orthodox standards in its kitchen, have made the student “violently ill on several occasions,” the complaint alleges.
The student has to find kosher meals that are consistent with his faith at off-campus restaurants and at a local Chabad center on Friday evenings, the complaint states.
According to the complaint, the student told the college about his need for kosher food before he accepted its admission offer. He was told that if the school’s available options didn’t meet his needs that he shouldn’t attend Williams, according to the complaint.
The college violated Title VIII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, known as the Fair Housing Act, when it comes to the student’s unmet needs for a working key and kosher food, according to the complaint.
“Being provided these services in connection with housing that are unequal and inferior to those provided to other students because of his religion is a violation of the Fair Housing Act, and is a serious concern for the Brandeis Center and the student,” Balaban told JNS.’ (1)
The ever reliably insane Itamar Eichner similarly shrieked in an article on 24th April 2026 for ‘YNet’ that:
‘As a result, the complaint says, the student suffered embarrassment, humiliation, social stigma and emotional distress. It says he often had to remain in his dorm room on Shabbat to avoid being locked out of the building if he left.
The complaint also alleges that Williams discriminated against the student over his request for kosher food. It says the college refused to provide kosher meals and instead offered vegan meals, which the student could not eat because they were not kosher.
Williams College requires most students to live on campus for all four years, according to the complaint. Despite that requirement, the complaint says, the college repeatedly denied the student’s requests for religious accommodations.’ (2)
Eichner’s article was then re-worded by the similarly insane voice of the Israeli radical right ‘Arutz Sheva’ as follows:
‘In addition, the complaint alleges that the college refused to provide him with kosher food and instead offered vegan meals that did not meet Jewish dietary requirements.
Williams College requires most students to live on campus throughout their four years of study, but the complaint argues that the institution rejected every request for basic religious accommodations.
The complaint accuses the college of violating the federal Fair Housing Act, claiming that the student was denied equal access to campus housing and services because of his religion.’ (3)
Now let’s take the claim that a jew cannot use an electronic key card on Shabbos first and as this answer from the Judaism board of Stack Exchange explains: the rabbis are split on the issue but generally speaking jews should not use electronic key cards on Shabbos if at all possible but it is not actually forbidden just discouraged:
‘DailyHalacha.com quoting Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef says that one should attempt to avoid such a problem. However where that is the only option he should arrange prior to Shabbos that a non Jewish staff member will open his door when required. If one did not arrange this before Shabbos it is still permitted to ask a non Jewish staff member to open the door for him.
Rabbi Tzvi Goldberg from the StarK also permits this by leaving the key at the front desk prior to Shabbos.
Although electronic card keys may not be used and are muktza on Shabbos, guests may leave them at the front desk before Shabbos, and then on Shabbos ask non-Jewish staff members to open their door.
Rabbi Joshua Flug – end of page 22 quoting Minchas Yitzchak 3:23 and Yabia Omer Orach Chaim 7:36 says that since engaging an electric device that does not produce heat is only a Rabbinic violation in a case of need it is permitted. Due to the question whether this is truly a case of need when one knows in advance that a non Jew will be required to open the door for him, he brings two suggestions from Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein.
One is to leave some small gifts, chocolates, etc. in the room and when asking the non Jew to open the door say “I really want to give you a gift, however I can not give it to you as my room is locked”, thus he is opening the door for his own benefit.
The second suggestion mentioned in the name of Rav Elyashiv Zatzal is telling the manager upon rental that he can only take the room if it is accessible over Shabbos and that he can not enter the room with a card. If the manager agrees to provide an arrangement where an employee will open it over Shabbos he is doing it for his own benefit.’ (4)
While having a physical key is subject to very similar halakhah and is similarly largely proscribed with Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld commenting at ‘Aish’ how:
‘I assume first of all that your neighborhood does not have an eruv – a form of surrounding structure (usually composed of vertical posts and a surrounding wire) which permits carrying within it. Many Jewish communities worldwide have them.
It is forbidden to carry an item as small as a key on Shabbat. However, there is an old trick for doing so: making the key a part of your clothes.
The idea behind this is as follows. Although it is forbidden to carry in public on Shabbat, a person is obviously allowed to wear his clothes out of doors. Walking about wearing clothes is not “carrying” since the clothes are considered a part of the person. This extends to items which are clearly subordinate to one’s clothes – such as a belt, suspenders, safety pin, shoelaces. Even though you are not exactly “wearing” such things, they are helping your clothes stay on properly and so are considered a part of them (Rambam Hil’ Shabbat 18:17, Shulchan Aruch OC 301:39).
This would extend to a key as well if you “wear” it. How does one wear a key? There are two common methods. One is to fashion a tie clip out of a key, in which the top part of the clip is actually a key. Note that this would only work if your tie would be loose otherwise. If you are wearing a sweater or vest which holds down your tie, the clip would be serving no purpose and could not be considered a part of your clothes (The Shabbos Home, p. 130).
The second common method is to use your key as a belt buckle. This would involve removing the tongue of your belt and attaching your key in its place. Other similar methods might be replacing the buckle with a key, attaching a string to the other side, and threading the string through the hole at the top of the key to fasten your belt. As you can see, such methods require some ingenuity.
Note that such contraptions will typically have to be fashioned before Shabbat, since creating them may involve other forms of Shabbat labor – such as gluing or tying.
Note also that these methods will generally only work for a single key. I have seen people carry a ring with several keys attached to it in which one of the keys was holding their tie down. This is not correct. The entire addition to your clothes must be functioning as a part of them.
Make sure you are already “wearing” your key before leaving your house, and while entering it since it is forbidden to carry from a private to a public area. (You will then take the key off for a moment to lock/unlock your door, and then re-attach it before continuing.)’ (5)
This is all ‘we trick god’-esque but the essential point is that having a physical key is no better than having an electronic key card for entry to your dorm room on Shabbos in the halakhah and rabbinics so the problem isn’t actually having or not having a physical key here, but rather the jewish student concerned is trying to pick a fight with Williams College in order to launch a civil rights case against them and basically get a large compensation settlement.
The fact that the president of Williams College – Maud Mandel – is not only a fellow jew but a ‘Judaic Studies’ scholar is telling in that Mandel is likely very aware – as am I – that the jewish student has multiple other options per the rabbinics on the issue of access on Shabbos and that they are essentially engaging in vexatious behaviour in order to set up a law suit against the college not because there is actually a massive problem.
This can be seen in the other component of this lawsuit which is even more ridiculous and concerns access to kosher food.
The relevant passage is this:
‘Pre-packaged kosher meals at the college’s Jewish Religious Center, which does not follow Orthodox standards in its kitchen, have made the student “violently ill on several occasions,” the complaint alleges.
The student has to find kosher meals that are consistent with his faith at off-campus restaurants and at a local Chabad center on Friday evenings, the complaint states.’ (6)
This is more pointedly explained in an article in Williams College’s student newspaper ‘The Williams Record’ in an article published on 23rd April 2026:
‘The complaint alleges that the College’s discriminatory practices began before the student arrived at the College. Before accepting his offer of admission, the student and his father met with Dining Services last spring to discuss whether he would be able to keep kosher while living on campus. At the meeting, the College allegedly refused to provide kosher meals per the student’s standards, and instead offered vegan dinners in the dining hall and suggested that the student cook his meals at the Jewish Religious Center (JRC).
According to Director of Jewish Life and College Chaplain Rabbi Seth Wax, the JRC is not operated under Orthodox Rabbinical supervision nor has it claimed to be under his leadership. Rabbi Wax said that he oversees the supervision of kashrut at the JRC, having been ordained in this capacity by the Hebrew College in Newton, Mass.’ (7)
Basically, what the jewish student is actually upset about is that the ‘Jewish Religious Center’ on Williams College’s campus isn’t of the same kashrut level that he wants to observe so he is demanding in effect that everyone spend money and adhere to different standards in order to accommodate him which is patently ridiculous.
The fact that they’ve even offered him pre-packed kosher meals of the appropriate kashruth standard – which he has rejected – as well as automatically kosher vegan meals (8) suggests that what we are dealing with here is a vexatious jewish attempt to demand impossible and unrealistic standards of individual accommodation and support from Williams College in order to set them up for a civil rights lawsuit in order to get a large compensation settlement from them.
It is that simple.
References
(1) https://vinnews.com/2026/04/23/williams-college-locking-orthodox-jew-out-of-dorm-in-freezing-cold-on-regular-basis-per-complaint-filed-with-federal-gov/
(2) https://www.ynetnews.com/jewish-world/article/rjowctup11x
(3) https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426020
(4) https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/48165/hotels-electronic-keys-and-shabbat
(5) https://aish.com/carrying-keys-on-shabbat/
(6) https://vinnews.com/2026/04/23/williams-college-locking-orthodox-jew-out-of-dorm-in-freezing-cold-on-regular-basis-per-complaint-filed-with-federal-gov/
(7) https://williamsrecord.com/472630/news/orthodox-jewish-student-files-federal-religious-discrimination-complaint-against-the-college/
(8) https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426020
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