Roadrunners once again got the opportunity to participate in Hillel San Antonio’s Israel Expo, an exhibition of Israeli culture, history and government. Set up outside the Student Union, the expo — hosted on March 25 — featured five different booths on innovation, pop culture, history, humanitarian aid and diversity. Students could read from infographics and win prizes from games and roulette wheels while representatives offered bags of popular Israeli snacks, one of them being Bissli and Bamba and limonana, a mint lemonade popular in Israel during summer.
As the local chapter of nonprofit Jewish empowerment group Hillel International, Hillel San Antonio is part of a larger mission to enrich “the lives of Jewish students so that they may enrich the Jewish people and the world.”
The organization has previously visited UTSA, sparking debate with other student organizations — including the San Antonio chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Hillel’s previous ‘Israel Block Parties’ were met with protests from SJP, and in 2023, Hillel organized a display on the Sombrilla Lawn depicting Israeli hostages kidnapped during the conflict.
This year’s Israel Expo marks Hillel San Antonio’s second year holding the event. Attendees were informed of ethnic, religious and sexual diversity in Israel, offered cards detailing Israel’s humanitarian aid to various countries and quizzed on Israel’s influences in pop culture and technology.
Students interested in Israel’s history could play a version of cup pong with a representative where each cup held a slip of paper revealing facts about Israel or visit the History Booth, which featured pamphlets describing Israel’s history spanning over 3,000 years. At the Diversity Booth, students could get their names written in Hebrew.
As Hillel San Antonio continues hosting events at UTSA, the organization engages students in Israeli history, culture and discussion.
When contacted for an interview, Hillel San Antonio did not respond.
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