Hosted by the URI Chaplains Association and URI Hillel, this year’s event features free food and refreshments from myriad cultures

KINGSTON, R.I. – March 23, 2026 – A tradition that began three years ago continues Thursday as the University of Rhode Island Chaplains Association and URI Hillel host their third annual Interfaith Festival at the Rams Den in the Memorial Student Union from noon to 2 p.m.

The festival is free and open to people of any faith – or no faith – and features signature menu items of myriad cultures, from challah, a special braided bread popular in Jewish cuisines, to rugelach, flaky pastries with sweet and savory fillings, and everything in between.

Student religious and cultural groups come together each year at the festival to enjoy the food, learn about other religious traditions – or share theirs – and promote mutual understanding and harmony. The event is also sponsored by the Center for Nonviolence & Peace Studies; the Multicultural Student Services Center; Dining Services; the Division of Student Affairs; and the Office of Community, Equity, and Diversity and funded by the Interfaith Outreach Grant from Hillel International.

“This is such an important event because when you watch the news and you hear about these conflicts going on, disputes over religion tend to be a lot of times at the heart of it, and that always gets the headlines,” said Amy Olson, the executive director of URI Hillel, the Jewish Student Center, “but most people just want to love thy neighbor. It’s a tenet of every single faith in different ways. That’s the golden rule.

“What we want, as the Chaplains Association, is to provide a model that shows how we can cooperate with one another and how we want students to do the same – especially at college. This is a great opportunity for many because there are a lot of people who may not have grown up knowing people from other religions, and this is their chance to get exposure to those cultures and remove any stigmas or preconceived notions they may have.”

The Interfaith Festival is still relatively new to URI, but also a spinoff of the annual Avi Schaefer Multicultural/Multifaith Shabbat Dinner hosted by Hillel prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was held in honor of Schaefer, a Brown University student and an active participant in the Jewish community whose life was tragically cut short when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver walking back to his dormitory in 2010. The Shabbat dinners were more formal, sit-down affairs, but featured the similar theme of bringing people from different religious groups and cultures together to break bread, share ideas, and build connections with one another.

Once campus life resumed following the pandemic, Hillel no longer had the funding to host the Shabbat dinner as some of the groups that had previously offered assistance began allocating their funds to different resources. Three years ago, Hillel International, a global organization supporting Jewish college students, partnered with Interfaith America, a Chicago-based non-profit that promotes religious diversity, to offer grant money to colleges and universities launching interfaith programs. URI Hillel earned funds through this grant and teamed with the Chaplains Association to brainstorm ways to bring different student groups together. They came up with the idea of a more modern version of the Shabbat dinner that factors in students’ busy schedules.

The Interfaith Festival is far less formal than its predecessor; students can stop in whenever they’d like, grab one or more items from the buffet-style lunch spread, take a seat with friends to enjoy, or eat on the go as they head to their next class. Representatives from the various student religious groups will also be on hand to share information about their organizations.

“We know it’s difficult to do a dinner nowadays. Some students have to leave campus after class and it’s harder for them to come back,” Olson said. “We decided to make it user friendly. If you have an hour, great. If you have only five minutes, that’s fine, too. Just stop in. We have booths available to promote our groups. Some students might not even know that some of them are available on campus. They come in, they see something they’re interested in, and we have a lot of delicious food for them to enjoy.”

Other menu items include dates, which are highly revered in Muslim culture, serving as a staple food deeply rooted in religious tradition; dumplings; matzah; baklava, a religiously significant pastry across the Middle East, Balkans, and Mediterranean; and fish. The entire menu, provided by Dining Services, is vegetarian to accommodate all cultures.

Visit uri.edu/chaplains to learn more.

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Michael Parente, director of communications and marketing in the URI Division of Student Affairs, wrote this news release.