By: Avi Fuld

There are several elements that go into producing a successful pro-Israel event: food, music, and educational content. What is often underplayed, however, is the hard work and elaborate planning which serves as the backbone of any amazing event.

Several students from the Brandeis Zionist Alliance (BZA) internalized this recipe for success this past weekend. On Sunday November 20^th, BZA hosted its annual Israel Gourmet Buffet. The members of this cultural, Pro-Israel group spent hours upon hours shopping for ingredients, collecting recipes, and cooking an array of food covering the wide spectrum of ethnic delicacies in Israel.  Ranging from Moroccan lemon cake to your standard hummus and pita, BZA’s Israel Gourmet featured it all.

As soon as word got out that one of the Israel groups on campus was giving out free food, dozens began to swarm to the function hall. Within minutes, the room was packed with over 70 people socializing and bobbing their heads to the latest Idan Reichel song.

The food served as a crucial incentive to draw in the student masses, but to have an event with just free food and no educational follow-through leaves the average attendee unaffected by the event. So BZA took the event to the next level by displaying sheets of paper throughout the buffet which described different missions which the State of Israel completed, rescuing hundreds of thousands of Jews from countries like Ethiopia, Yemen, and Morocco.  These populations, now large minorities in Israel, have brought their respective cultures’ recipes to Israel. This exquisite buffet showcased several of these recipes.

“It's amazing to see a whole diverse panorama of students relishing in the beauty of Israeli culture and cuisine on the Brandeis Campus with the Israel Gourmet Buffet,” exclaimed Pinchus Polack, Hasbara Fellow from this past summer trip.

While this definitely gave students some new tidbits of information about Israel, it’s still not enough, but it is a starting point for further discussions. It’s now the BZA students’ responsibility to follow up with attendees and have deeper, more meaningful discussions about Israel and Israeli culture. So in conclusion, my advice to every person reading this: take advantage of those little, insignificant conversations about Israeli food or entertainment which your events spawn, and let them serve as segways to real conversations.