On October 7, Matan Boltax attended the Nova Festival with many of his friends and miraculously managed to escape after staying back extra late on the festival grounds. He narrowly escaped through farmland and hid for 10 hours in a town called Tekuma. A 23-year-old Israeli-American, Matan was born in New York and moved to Israel in 2009.
Exactly 370 days since escaping Hamas terrorists at the Nova Festival, Matan found himself at (one of) college football’s Games of the Year as the University of Oregon narrowly beat The Ohio State University in a thrilling and competitive game. How did he end up going to one of the toughest tickets in football this year?
The answer: AEPi’s Upsilon Omega chapter at the University of Oregon
“On October 10 of this year, this guy Matan came to Chabad who is a part of this organization called, Faces of October 7th.” He’s traveling around America speaking at different schools about his experience in Israel on October 7th and how it affected him and making sure that we hear their stories,” said Brother Jacob Ross (Oregon, 2027)
At the end of the meeting, Matan mentioned – perhaps jokingly – that he had never been to a college football game before. “I think he was joking,” said Brother Spencer Allen (Oregon, 2027). “But, Jacob and I knew immediately we wanted to something to be able to get him to the game.”
The Brothers set up a Venmo account and began reaching out to the Oregon Jewish community. “There’s a group chat for Jewish students and we sent out a message, explain what we wanted to do, and telling them the story and telling them that if they wanted to help Matan get into the game, how they could donate. Spencer and I also posted it on our Instagram story,” said Jabob.
“We reached our to our parents’ group chat and then got into the chapter’s alumni group chat,” said Spencer. “This all happened on the day before the game…on Friday.”
Within just 90 minutes, the brothers had raised nearly $800 to send Matan (along with his companion from Faces of October 7th) to the game. “Tickets were going for about $250 each so we got two tickets and gave them a gift card to go the Duck Store to buy some gear for the game. The money that was leftover, we donated to the Faces of October 7th organization,” said Jacob.
In just over 90 minutes, approximately 30 people donated to the cause including brothers, friends, students, alumni, family and even brothers from other chapters across the country.
“I texted him afterwards and Matan just replies with, ‘Insane!!!!’ and he told me that he had the best time ever,” said Spencer. “He was just a typical kid, attending a music festival with his friends. It was super powerful to hear what he went through and how some of his friends were killed in the attacks. We were just putting ourselves in his shoes and it was insane.”
“The thing that struck me was that that could have been any one of us in that situation. I might have been at that music festival if I was in Israel. I’m glad we were able to do this for Mattan,” said Jacob. “I got a sense of how connected we all are in the Jewish community, both in terms of how close it made us feel to what happened on October 7th but also in how much the community wants to help.”
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