Meet Tali Adri, a student at San Diego State University, your Maccabee of the Month.
Tali is an exemplary student leader for Israel, holding several leadership positions on campus including president of Mishelanu at SDSU, a student group that passionately represents Israel on campus and educates their peers about Israeli culture.
Over the last 3 years, Tali has led countless pro-Israel initiatives on campus. This includes spearheading her campus’s Israel Committee. In this role she strategized and orchestrated a week of events designed to educate the larger campus about Israel and strengthen the bond of the Jewish community on campus! She was able to reach hundreds of students through these events.
Tali is aware that her campus is in a hotbed of Antisemitism in California. While SDSU is currently not facing strong anti-Israel activity, they have had Antisemitic activity in her time there. Rather than sit idly by, waiting for things to get worse, Tali is working tirelessly to ensure this will not happen on her watch. She shared that is why she has been involved in Israel advocacy since her first day of college and this is why she was one of the 5 pro-Israel leaders on her campus’s Fact Finders trip to Israel.
“Israel is a part of my identity and I take a lot of pride in that SDSU is overall supportive of Israel. I work hard to ensure it stays this way, because if we don’t continue to educate ourselves, and try to spread love and show people that it’s not what you see on the media, then it could all suddenly change”-Tali Adri
Being Israeli herself, Tali was well equipped for the daily group discussions that took place during the Fact Finder’s trip and helped her peers see the truth.
Maccabee Task Force is proud to support Tali and the thriving community of pro-Israel students at San Diego State University. By providing tools and funding to help support critical pro-Israel initiatives at SDSU — such as a Fact Finder mission to Israel, advocacy trainings, Israel Shabbats and coalition building events – we are helping Tali and her peers ensure the SDSU campus remain a safe place for Zionist and Jewish students.
“I want to get more people involved and educated on Israel. We have a great community of Jews and Israelis on campus, but we NEED to expand on that”
We need YOUR HELP TODAY to keep to continue educating students.Will you help Tali and other Zionist students like her?
Support Tali and Other Pro-Israel Students Today!
How has Maccabee Task Force helped you or your campus to support Israel?
A lot of people that are involved in our Hillel are not Jewish and are not really informed of what’s going on in the world. Thanks to Maccabee Task Force’s help we were able to create events and unforgettable experiences around Israel and to successfully fight Antisemitism. We’ve had some incidents on campus in the past year, and MTF has genuinely helped us address them and fund some of the most successful events that we’ve had that brought real allyship to the campus.
Why do you care about supporting and defending Israel?
Israel is a part of my identity and I take a lot of pride in the fact that SDSU is overall supportive of Israel. I work hard to ensure it stays this way, because if we don’t continue to educate ourselves, and try to spread love and show people that it’s not what you see in the media, then it could all suddenly change. As an Israeli, I’m fortunate to be able to show people my side because I’ve learned that the media won’t do that for you.
Tell me about the Fact Finder’s trip you participated in.
The trip is so important! Without it, it’s very hard to show students the truth.
I think it’s very vital for those non-Jewish student leaders to go to Israel and see it with their own eyes so they can come back to campus and spread that knowledge they gained with their peers. The vision is for this to make our campus a better place and even more pro-Israel than we already are.
What was it like seeing Israel through the eyes of your peers who aren’t connected to Israel?
That was one of the biggest “wow” points for me. I felt like I was experiencing it in a new light while also trying to guide people. For me, Israel is my home. It’s my family. Half my family still lives in there. It’s who I am. But for them, it’s like an empty canvas. This trip is for them to make experiences on their own and see the truth with their own eyes. We would have discussions every night and talk about what we saw that day, and it was really interesting to see how their opinions formed over the course of the trip. Students who started with a somewhat neutral view of Israel, eventually saw the truth and the efforts being made to find a solution.
Do people came back from the trip thinking differently than they did beforehand?
There were students on the trip that initially weren’t as open minded but toward the end, after being exposed to so much information and so many diverse speakers, became willing to truly listen. Now, after the trip ended, there are strong friendships between all of us and we’re very proud of that. I wish we had more trips like that so we could bring even more students to Israel so they can understand what is going on.