“The basic idea was to get synagogues from all denominations to work together to help Israel from a cultural point of view,” said Prince, a native of Short Hills, who helped create the event five years ago.

He pointed around the campus atrium to the numerous colorful booths displaying Israeli goods and services, including food, jewelry, religious items, even the new Israel Baseball League, which begins play in June.

Prince said Israel’s diversity was represented by the variety of activities and presentations, with crafts, puppet shows, and sing-alongs for the younger crowd, as well as Israeli dancing and performances by the children’s choir of B’nai Shalom in West Orange and Yom Hadash, a Boston-based rock band for all ages.

The program was structured to take an “egalitarian approach to Israel. Hopefully the people in the community can support that.”

On a more serious note, Prince said Israel needed to employ ever-changing communications and media technologies to present its message to the world.

“From an Israel perspective, from a Jewish perspective, we’re very defensive with respect to our connection to Israel. We’re not proactive, we’re not assertive in who we are we don’t tell the story very well.”

Speaking on this topic at length was Amos Kamil, a marketing executive who, together with Prince, has been seeking funding for Blue and White TV, a multimedia project intended to show the many sides of Israel and Jewish life.

In a session on Using Media to Effectively Tell the Full Story of Israel, Kamil said that Israel must be viewed as a “brand” to be marketed, as undignified as that may seem.

“Where is the Jewish Al Jazeera?” he asked, referring to the Qatar-based television network that broadcasts news from the Muslim world’s perspective. “Everyone is telling Israel’s story but the Jewish people.”

Kamil, a resident of Montclair, said the proliferation of “social networks” on the Internet has opened a new door for Jazeera-like outlets to spread misinformation. “A kid in Idaho is logging on to MySpace and getting the Palestinian version of Israel,” he said. “If you’re Coca-Cola, you don’t let Pepsi tell your story.”

Other speakers at the Israel celebration included Andrea Yonah, executive director of the New Jersey-Israel Commission; Ravit Bar-Av, information officer at the Consulate General of Israel in New York; and Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor-in-chief of the NJ Jewish News.

Prince, a member of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, estimated that by day’s end 2,000 people would participate in the celebration, which was sponsored by the MetroWest NJ Grassroots Coalition for Israel.