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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Matisyahu sings at Israelpalooza festival

Matisyahu performs during Israelpalooza in Dunn Meadow on Tuesday.  The event was hosted by the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center at Indiana University.

Gathering people together to celebrate the culture of Israel and hear music from a variety of artists, including the international rock star Matisyahu, Israelpalooza was a platform for the Israeli voice on Bloomington’s campus.

The event took place Tuesday in Dunn Meadow for an evening of Israeli culture exposure.

Israelpalooza, usually a day-long cultural festival produced annually by Hillel, a Jewish organization on campus, was revamped this year by a new organization at IU, Students Supporting Israel.

Students Supporting Israel is a pro-Israel international campus movement that supports the Jewish Democratic State of Israel. Students Supporting Israel is a growing international movement with 30 chapters, including IU.

“I thought about putting on a music festival last spring ?showing our campus the eclectic and pluralistic Israeli society through music,” said Amit Boukai, president of Students ?Supporting Israel.

Tulane University had previously put on a similar concert with Matisyahu as the main headline as part of the Declare Your Freedom festival. DYF is a pro-zionist festival founded by a grassroots student-led movement. Boukai approached Hillel officials in attempts to change Israelpalooza to a music festival setting and ended up adopting the DYF concert as well.

The planning process started back in October when Boukai and her board decided to move forward with the festival. From then on, a lot of brainstorming took place and it transitioned into DYF confirming a headliner, not known at the time, and the board reaching out to different advocacy organizations on campus to become involved.

About 12 different outside ?organizations hosted booths and interactive activities at the festival. Most were organizations connected to Israel in some way, and others hoped to facilitate healthy conversation.

Masa Israel, Stand With Us, Indiana Israel Public Advocacy Committee, Jewish National Fund, Tamid group, The Jewish Federation, Greek Jewish Council, Nahariya Hospital Project, Table Talk and Save a Child’s Heart were all organizations that contributed to the festival.

“I’m excited to see at the end of this festival the impact that it has on the Israel conversation on campus and the way in which students on our campus think about Israel next time,” Boukai said. “To think about a country that is so important to so many people on campus.”

Other than Matisyahu, local artists including Stellardaze, Deven Khoury, Hooshir and DJ Skizz also performed.

The goal of the event in general was to show campus the story of Israel and celebrate Zionism, the Jewish self-determination for their homeland. Students Supporting Israel’s thought was a lot of people didn’t know about Zionism, but it wanted to show how important it was, especially to the 12 percent of Jewish students that make up the student body.

Crowds ranged from 400 to 750 students during the headliner, according to IU ?Police Department.

“This was the best send off to show what the Indiana community means to us,” Rochelle Windman, IU senior and volunteer, said.

Windman said she sees it as the duty of college students, especially at IU, to really take it upon themselves to change the world.

She said she believes this is one of those things that even though it’s new on campus, it can come back year to year and change the minds of people and their perception of Israel and Zionism to make the world a better place.

“There are a lot of people here that aren’t Jewish and don’t know anything about Israel other than what they see in the media, and it’s really nice to see people learning from other people that support Israel,” said Tziporah Ladin-Gross, a volunteer running the LGBT booth.

The festival lasted five hours with various activities, including Israeli sports, mosaic tile making, free food and free entertainment.

“I hope our campus will be more open to hearing our Israel story and come out to get a new perspective of what it means to be Israeli, to be Jewish, to be Zionist, to be proud of these things,” ?Boukai said.

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