Concluding a speech to more than 30 students Wednesday night, former Israeli soldier and professional basketball player LaVon Mercer stressed one last message that neatly summed up his presentation: Do not limit yourselves.

Mercer, a 6-foot, 10-inch tall African-American Israeli, was the embodiment of stepping outside the box. Walking up to the whiteboard, he picked up a marker and wrote his name in Hebrew.

“My name means white but I’m black,” he said, referring to the Hebrew word for “white”, which is “lavan.”

Yet Mercer, who moved to Israel in 1980 to play professional basketball, said racism was not even an issue for him. He chose instead to speak about his experiences in Israel, where he spent 14 years in Israel playing for the Hapoel and Maccabi professional basketball teams in Tel Aviv, as well as for the Israeli national team. While there, Mercer learned to speak Hebrew, became an Israeli citizen and served in the Israeli Defense Force.

Now back in the United States, Mercer shares his experiences in Israel and encourages others to step outside their familiar worldviews and think about Israel in a different way than the media typically portrays.

“I try to represent the positive side of the state of Israel,” he said. “A lot of what you see is the sort of publicity that really causes such a negative image sometimes [despite] all of the beauty that [Israel] does for others.”

Medill sophomore Liana Balinsky-Baker, a member of Students For Israel, one of the event’s co-sponsors, said that it is important for people to hear a pro-Israel message from a non-traditional Israeli advocate.

“What I think was important was that we had non-Jewish students and African American students and not just the typical crowd that goes to pro-Israel events,” Balinsky-Baker said.

Israel is a melting pot of culture and people, Mercer said, and he said he tries to advocate that cultural fusion here in the United States. While also a basketball coach at Spelman College in Atlanta, Mercer travels to schools, churches and other religious organizations to promote a positive image of Israel, a nation of which he grew fond during his time abroad.

“What I do is to try to bring people together,” Mercer said. “I love bringing people together because it makes all of us grow.”

It’s all about stepping outside of the comfort zone, he said.

Whether that means dining with an Arab family and learning to eat without utensils or introducing yourself to another classmate, Mercer believes life is all about expanding one’s limits.