January 12th started like most other school days. Nothing marked it as unusual from the get-go. Whole-school Tefillah, followed by a lovely breakfast – the typical JLA Monday. Students milled around, in all shades of emotion and exhaustion – the typical JLA Monday. However, something was peculiar. There was a disturbance in the air, something that marked that day, that week, as out of the ordinary. It wasn’t midterms, though those perhaps contributed to the stressful air. Every student had been adequately warned of what was coming, and whether they studied or not was a choice that lay in their hands. No, it was something else. 

The first to lay their eyes upon that week’s lunch menu perhaps thought it a mistake. The breakfast selections were what they were observing. Their tired eyes had deceived them. However, a few double-takes quickly confirmed that this was the reason for the bizarre atmosphere. And it was so much more bizarre than expected. 

Everything is organized at JLA. There’s a schedule, a setup, a plan for everything. Sports, academics, buses, dismissal, Tefillah, fire in a certain area, fire in another area, etc. What happens when a schedule is changed or disrupted? Such a shift causes quite a bit of chaos and confusion, even if it’s the smallest change, in the least prioritized activity. How much more so if it’s the most crucial part of every student’s day?

First, we must answer what that schedule is.

It’s not the academic schedule; while still important, those are typically memorized after the first or second week. It’s not the sports schedule; while still important, they don’t apply to everyone, just the people on the team. The most important schedule? The lunch menu. While the specific items for each day are unpredictable, there is one thing that can be expected. There is a dairy lunch on Mondays and Fridays, and a meat lunch on the other days. On January 12th, 2026, the entire world turned upside down, for it was discovered that for two full weeks, every single day was dairy. Unexpected. Disrupting. Abnormal. Such a shift from the ordinary? Essentially traumatizing.

An outside observer of JLA would have believed the students to be in a state of mass hysteria. They were disoriented and befuddled. Questions flew through the air. They were quite varied, but the most common one was “Why?” Hypotheses were perhaps just as bizarre as the occurrence itself. “The meat kitchen burned down!” “The school is trying to turn us all vegetarian!” No one could agree on what could have caused such an unusual travesty.

The true answer was much less climactic. The meat kitchen was simply being renovated. 

Perhaps that’s what they would like us to believe.