Georgia’s Kennesaw State University Hosts Camel, Kangaroo on Campus for Israel Festival
by Rachel Frommer
A Georgia university hosted a camel and kangaroo on campus last week as part of a program celebrating Israeli culture, with organizers telling The Algemeiner on Friday that the event was a success with students.
Kennesaw State University’s (KSU) Hillel president, Aly Pitt, said the “IsraelFest” event on Thursday attracted some 500 individuals who were “interested and welcoming.”
According to a KSU Facebook page, the kangaroo — which, unlike the camel, is not native to the MidEast — “decided to tag along” because the animals “are buddies.”
“IsraelFest was the first Jewish event on campus of this magnitude and I think we really let our presence be known after the event,” Pitt said.
KSU’s president, Sam Olens, tweeted a picture of himself with the camel, and included the caption:
Between meetings so I checked out Israel Fest on the Kennesaw State Campus Green and ran into this guy. pic.twitter.com/4ThVssewby
— Sam Olens (@samolens) April 20, 2017
The program also featured a DJ, an Israeli food truck — free to students — and a number of booths, each of which corresponded with a different Israeli city and included an activity that organizers thought represented the neighborhood.
“For example, Tel Aviv is known for its amazing street art, so we had a graffiti wall with the prompt ‘Peace is…’ to promote messages of peace and unity,” Pitt explained.
Lara Schewitz, director of KSU Hillel, said the university’s Jewish population is small, but growing, especially in the last three years, which has “increas[ed] the demand in Israeli education on campus.”