By Tracy Frydberg, ICB Reporter
Sixty pro-Israel students from across the Southwestern United States will gather at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) for the first annual
Talk Israel Regional Shabbaton this weekend. The three-day event is sponsored by the David Project, The Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest, and the Jewish National Fund.
Students will participate in Israel advocacy training with cultural and educational workshops and have the unique opportunity to network and share ideas with others on effective Israel advocacy strategies in the Southwest region.
Students from seven Texas schools and two Arkansas universities will participate. Most of the schools that will be represented have very small Jewish populations with no organized pro-Israel group on campus.
Ayala Peer, the Israel Fellow at UT, said the weekend provides an opportunity to provide participants with resources to introduce or grow Israel advocacy on their respective campuses.
Sophomore Zach Saul, the co-president of Hendrix College’s Hillel in Conway, Arkansas, is looking forward to gaining a better understanding of how best to build the strongest possible case for Israel . Going to a school with such a small Jewish community, Saul said it is difficult to stay connected with the latest strategies in the pro-Israel community. He hopes to learn how to better communicate the facts regarding Israel to the larger secular community at his college.
Senior Holdon Wilen, the president of Texas Tech’s Hillel in Lubbock, said that on his campus, “Israel is not a big deal,” and there are very few Israel-related events. Wilen, who recently came back from Israel on a Taglit-Israel Birthright trip, hopes to enhance his education about Israel that began on the trip. He will be accompanied by eight other Texas Tech students, and he said he hopes the Shabbaton will “give them a sense of what Israel actually is and inspire them to go on Birthright.”
Yuval Haddad, the community shaliach to Arkansas, is optimistic that the Shabbaton will jump start a “long process of creating pro-Israel groups on Arkansas’ college campuses.”
Saul hopes that by bringing interested students together, the Shabbaton will “foster discussion in the region to get more students thinking critically about Israel.”
Wilen is excited to meet other pro-Israel students and to expand his network of pro-Israel contacts. “Coming from a school with not many Jews,” he said, “we forget that there are people in this state who also care about Israel.”
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