January mission to Israel
Cheryl and Kirsten will be in Israel from 11 to 22 January, delivering aid to the people AIC has been helping since October 7. What they bring depends on what we raise. Our goal is $10,000.
Jewish heroism
Survivors who sat down in front of our community and told it straight. And every day, something that happened on that date in Jewish history. Our history is full of people who stood up, and AIC keeps putting them in front of you.
I am not what happened to me.
Sami SteigmannHolocaust survivor and motivational speakerAn Evening with Sami Steigmann · May 2026Watch the talk →At 15, I wanted to be a terrorist.
Mustapha EzzarghaniMoroccan-born author; founder, Moroccan-Israeli Friendship AssociationBridges of Hope · March 2026Watch the talk →I survived the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir’s Hindus.
Surinder DharHuman rights activist and survivor of the 1990s ethnic cleansing of Hindus in KashmirBridges of Hope · March 2026Watch the talk →After the attack, I stood up as a Jew.
Tal HartuvSurvivor and advocateJustice Beyond Borders · July 2026Watch the talk →Naftali AklumEthiopian-Israeli educatorCelebrate Sigd · November 2020Watch the talk →I’m Jewish, I’m Israeli, and I’m a Black man.
The Jewish flame will continue to burn.
George RishfeldHolocaust survivor and educatorBridges of Hope · March 2026Watch the talk →Monday 19 October 8 Cheshvan 5787
1988 Germany to New York
A refugee boy wins the Nobel Prize
In 1934, American Jewish charities found homes for 300 German refugee children, and Jack Steinberger was one of them. The boy from Bad Kissingen went on to share the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Source: The Nobel Prize (nobelprize.org) (opens in a new tab)
2014 Israel
Ester Rada sings in Amharic
The Ethiopian-Israeli singer released “Nanu Ney,” the first Amharic song played on Israeli pop radio. Her parents came to Israel in Operation Moses in 1984.
1854 Philadelphia
Ernestine Rose leads the convention
Born in Poland, she presided over the national women's rights convention in Philadelphia. In print she praised the contributions of Jews throughout history, and Susan B. Anthony called her the “most eloquent speaker on our platform.”
Tuesday 20 October 9 Cheshvan 5787
1943 Warsaw
Irena Sendler's list
Nazi soldiers came up the stairs to arrest her, so she threw a package out the window to a friend. Inside was her list of the Jewish children she and her team had smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
2023 Gaza to Israel
Judith and Natalie Raanan come home
After two weeks as hostages in Gaza, a mother and her 17-year-old daughter came back to Israel. They had come from Evanston for the 85th birthday of Judith's mother.
1966 Stockholm
Agnon and Sachs win the Nobel
The Swedish Academy chose Agnon and Nelly Sachs for the Nobel Prize in literature. Agnon was the first Hebrew writer to win it, and Sachs had fled to Stockholm with her mother in 1940.
2020 Ben Gurion Airport, Israel
First UAE ministers land in Israel
A senior delegation from the United Arab Emirates landed at Ben Gurion Airport. It was the first time UAE ministers visited the Jewish state publicly, and they signed agreements that included a visa waiver.
Wednesday 21 October 10 Cheshvan 5787
1948 Beersheba
Israel takes Beersheba
Israeli forces took the city from the Egyptian army, which had made it a headquarters. After the war, new immigrants came to build their lives there, and today it is home to Ben-Gurion University.
1912 Budapest, Hungary
Georg Solti is born
A Jew, he sat out the war in Zürich, unable to conduct. Afterward he became one of the most highly regarded conductors of his time and led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1969 to 1991.
1944 Elsenborn, Belgium
Army nurse Frances Slanger
The night before German artillery killed her, she wrote to Stars and Stripes thanking the wounded for the privilege of easing their pain. She was the first American nurse to die in Europe after D-Day.
Thursday 22 October 11 Cheshvan 5787
1944 Kraków to Brünnlitz
Oskar Schindler's factory camp
The first prisoners arrived at Oskar Schindler's factory camp at Brünnlitz. He brought about 1,000 Jewish prisoners from Kraków and spent the fortune he had made there to save them until liberation in May 1945.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (opens in a new tab)
1973 Golan Heights
Mount Hermon is back in Israeli hands
Israeli troops fought their way back onto Mount Hermon, the highest peak in the region, which had fallen to the Syrians early in the fighting. Israel once again controlled the Golan Heights.
1948 Tel Aviv to Gaza
The navy sinks the Emir Farouk
Paul Shulman, a young Annapolis graduate, was the Israeli navy's first commander. His sailors aimed small boats loaded with explosives at the Emir Farouk, flagship of the Egyptian navy, and it sank within minutes.
Friday 23 October 12 Cheshvan 5787
1973 House of Representatives
Rabbi Sally Priesand opens Congress
The first American woman rabbi gave the opening prayer in the House of Representatives, at the invitation of Bella Abzug. Abzug said she was the first woman to be given that honor.
1943 Auschwitz
Franceska Mann fights back
Tricked with a promise of Switzerland, the 26-year-old Jewish ballerina arrived at Auschwitz instead. She grabbed a guard's gun and shot Nazi guard Joseph Schillinger, who died a few hours later.
2020 Sudan
Sudan and Israel agree to normalize
Sudan and Israel agreed to normalize relations and end the state of belligerence between their nations. The leaders planned to start with trade, with an initial focus on agriculture.
Saturday 24 October 13 Cheshvan 5787
1784 Livorno, Italy
Moses Montefiore is born
He grew up to fight for the rights of oppressed Jews all over the world, from Russia to Romania. He went to the Holy Land seven times and lived to 100.
1983 New York
JTS opens its rabbinical school to women
The faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary voted 34 to 8 to admit women to its Rabbinical School. Within two years Amy Eilberg became the first woman ordained a rabbi by the Conservative movement.
Sunday 25 October 14 Cheshvan 5787
1894 Nantes, France
Claude Cahun
Born to a Jewish family in Nantes, she became a Surrealist photographer. When the Nazis took Jersey, she and her partner slipped forged letters from a German soldier into troops' pockets and cigarette packs.
1923 Vienna
Beate Sirota Gordon
Her father was a concert pianist and a Ukrainian Jew, and she grew up in Tokyo. At 22 she wrote the words in Japan's postwar constitution that made women equal under the law.
1974 India
Ruby Myers
An actress from India's Baghdadi Jewish community, she won the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, Indian cinema's most prestigious lifetime honor. At her peak she earned more than the Governor of India.
Monday 26 October 15 Cheshvan 5787
1994 Arava crossing
Peace with Jordan
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty near the Arava border crossing, north of Eilat. Some of the guests were veteran soldiers who had fought for years on opposite sides.
1935 New York City
Ora Mendelsohn Rosen
She grew up in a Zionist home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. As a research physician she cloned the gene for the human insulin receptor, and her work changed how we understand diabetes and cancer.
Source: Jewish Women's Archive (Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women) (opens in a new tab)
1942 Oslo, Norway
Arrests in Oslo
Norwegian police and German units arrested 260 Jews in Oslo, all of them men. Warned by Norwegian police officers and the underground, about 1,000 of Norway's Jews escaped to Sweden.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (opens in a new tab)
Tuesday 27 October 16 Cheshvan 5787
2019 Belgium
Sophie Wilmès
She became Belgium's first woman prime minister, and its first Jewish one. When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, she was given special powers to fight it.
1908 New York
Lee Krasner
Her family fled antisemitism in Odessa and kept an observant Jewish home in Brooklyn. Before World War II she was one of two painters in New York working in a completely abstract style.
Source: Jewish Women's Archive (Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women) (opens in a new tab)
2012 Israel
Neta Elkayam
Raised in Netivot in the south of Israel, she put out her first single, “Taali,” sung in Moroccan Arabic. It started a career spent bringing back the music of her Moroccan Jewish heritage.
2018 Pittsburgh
Tree of Life
A gunman opened fire inside the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill and killed 11 worshippers. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in United States history.
Wednesday 28 October 17 Cheshvan 5787
1948 Israel
Israel's flag becomes official
The Provisional Council approved the Zionist flag as the flag of Israel: a blue Star of David between two blue stripes. Citizens had sent in dozens of other designs.
1914 New York City
Jonas Salk
The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he was the first in his family to go to college. He made the first successful polio vaccine and tested it on himself, his wife, and their three sons.
Source: Lemelson-MIT Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (opens in a new tab)
2013 Israel
Paula Abdul comes to Israel
Paula Abdul, whose father is a Syrian Jew, landed in Israel for the first time. She came for a bat mitzvah at 51, and on her first day President Shimon Peres told her, “I’m very jealous.”
1965 Vatican
Nostra aetate
Pope Paul VI proclaimed Nostra aetate at the Second Vatican Council. It rejected the old accusation that the Jews killed Jesus, condemned antisemitism, and said that “God holds the Jews most dear.”
Thursday 29 October 18 Cheshvan 5787
1945 United States
Anna Rosenberg
Born in Budapest, she advised Roosevelt and Truman and became the first woman to receive the Medal of Freedom. She also led the women's division of the Joint Distribution Committee.
1891 New York
Fanny Brice
Born to Jewish immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, she became the original funny girl. She starred in nine Ziegfeld Follies and later played Baby Snooks on the radio for more than ten years.
Source: Jewish Women's Archive (Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women) (opens in a new tab)
1941 Kovno, Lithuania
The Great Action in Kovno
German and Lithuanian police took more than 9,200 Jews from the Kovno ghetto to the Ninth Fort and shot them. Nearly 4,300 of them were children.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (opens in a new tab)
Friday 30 October 19 Cheshvan 5787
1928 Wilmington, Delaware
Daniel Nathans is born
His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and he was the last of their nine children. He shared the Nobel Prize for using restriction enzymes to map the DNA of a tumor virus.
1945 Manhattan
Henry Winkler is born
His parents got out of Berlin in 1939, and he grew up at Congregation Habonim with a dyslexia no one had diagnosed. He became Fonzie on Happy Days, and later wrote the Hank Zipzer books about a dyslexic boy.
Source: Emerson College Archives & Special Collections (opens in a new tab)
2023 Gaza to Israel
Ori Megidish is rescued
Hamas took Corporal Ori Megidish hostage on October 7 at the Gaza border, where she served as a lookout. The IDF rescued her in an overnight ground operation, and she was reunited with her family in good health.
Saturday 31 October 20 Cheshvan 5787
1924 Transylvania
Rabbi Yehuda Amital is born
He survived a Nazi labor camp, made it to pre-State Israel, and fought at Latrun in 1948. He came up with the hesder yeshiva, which combines yeshiva study and military service.
1936 Queens, New York
Michael Landon is born
Born Eugene Orowitz in Queens, he had his Bar Mitzvah at a synagogue in New Jersey. He grew up to play Little Joe on Bonanza and Charles Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie.
Sunday 1 November 21 Cheshvan 5787
1880 Kutno, Poland
Sholem Asch is born
He grew up in a traditional Jewish home and started out writing in Hebrew. Then, influenced by the writer Peretz, he turned to Yiddish, and his stories of shtetl life were translated into several languages.
1946 Toronto
Ossie Schechtman's first basket
The Knicks played the Toronto Huskies in the first game of the league that became the NBA. Ossie, a six-foot guard born to Jewish Russian immigrants, scored its first basket on a give-and-go layup.
Monday 2 November 22 Cheshvan 5787
1883 New York
Emma Lazarus writes The New Colossus
At Ward's Island she worked as an aide for Jewish immigrants. Asked for a sonnet to help pay for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, she wrote “The New Colossus,” and its words are on a plaque inside the pedestal today.
1917 Foreign Office
The Balfour Declaration
The British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, wrote to Lord Rothschild that his government favored “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The letter became known as the Balfour Declaration.
1949 Rehovot, Israel
The Weizmann Institute gets its name
It started in 1934 as the Sieff institute, with ten scientists and ten technicians. Now it took the name of Chaim Weizmann, its first president, who also became the first president of Israel.
Tuesday 3 November 23 Cheshvan 5787
1878 Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva is founded
Religious Jews from Jerusalem settled east of where Tel Aviv is now and named the place “Gateway to Hope.” It was the first modern agricultural settlement in Israel, and today it's one of the country's largest industrial centers.
Wednesday 4 November 24 Cheshvan 5787
1968 Jerusalem
Israel hosts the Paralympics
Israel hosted the Paralympic Games to mark 20 years of independence. Sir Ludwig Guttmann opened them before 10,000 people at the Hebrew University Stadium, and Israel beat the USA in the wheelchair basketball final.
Source: International Paralympic Committee (opens in a new tab)
Thursday 5 November 25 Cheshvan 5787
1968 4 Nov · Jerusalem
Israel hosts the Paralympics
Israel hosted the Paralympic Games to mark 20 years of independence. Sir Ludwig Guttmann opened them before 10,000 people at the Hebrew University Stadium, and Israel beat the USA in the wheelchair basketball final.
Source: International Paralympic Committee (opens in a new tab)
Friday 6 November 26 Cheshvan 5787
1931 Berlin
Mike Nichols is born
As a boy he fled the Nazis with his younger brother, the two of them sent alone from Berlin to meet their father in New York. He grew up to win an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy.
1932 Etterbeek, Belgium
François Englert is born
A Jewish boy in Belgium under the German occupation, he hid his roots and lived in a string of orphanages. He grew up to share the Nobel Prize for work on the origin of the mass of subatomic particles.
Saturday 7 November 27 Cheshvan 5787
1929 Vienna to Brooklyn
Eric Kandel is born
He left Vienna for Brooklyn as a boy in 1939 and came to speak Hebrew almost as well as English at the Yeshiva of Flatbush. He spent his life studying the biology of memory and shared the Nobel Prize in 2000.
1944 Hungary
Hannah Senesh
A paratrooper trained to rescue Jews, she was caught crossing into Hungary and refused to give up her mission. She was 23 when she faced the firing squad, and she refused the blindfold.
Sunday 8 November 28 Cheshvan 5787
1929 7 Nov · Vienna to Brooklyn
Eric Kandel is born
He left Vienna for Brooklyn as a boy in 1939 and came to speak Hebrew almost as well as English at the Yeshiva of Flatbush. He spent his life studying the biology of memory and shared the Nobel Prize in 2000.
1944 7 Nov · Hungary
Hannah Senesh
A paratrooper trained to rescue Jews, she was caught crossing into Hungary and refused to give up her mission. She was 23 when she faced the firing squad, and she refused the blindfold.
Monday 9 November 29 Cheshvan 5787
1929 7 Nov · Vienna to Brooklyn
Eric Kandel is born
He left Vienna for Brooklyn as a boy in 1939 and came to speak Hebrew almost as well as English at the Yeshiva of Flatbush. He spent his life studying the biology of memory and shared the Nobel Prize in 2000.
1944 7 Nov · Hungary
Hannah Senesh
A paratrooper trained to rescue Jews, she was caught crossing into Hungary and refused to give up her mission. She was 23 when she faced the firing squad, and she refused the blindfold.
Tuesday 10 November 30 Cheshvan 5787
1929 7 Nov · Vienna to Brooklyn
Eric Kandel is born
He left Vienna for Brooklyn as a boy in 1939 and came to speak Hebrew almost as well as English at the Yeshiva of Flatbush. He spent his life studying the biology of memory and shared the Nobel Prize in 2000.
1944 7 Nov · Hungary
Hannah Senesh
A paratrooper trained to rescue Jews, she was caught crossing into Hungary and refused to give up her mission. She was 23 when she faced the firing squad, and she refused the blindfold.
1943 Warsaw
The ghetto fighters
On the eve of Passover, about 700 young Jews in the Warsaw ghetto took up arms against the German army. It was the largest Jewish uprising of the war.
1944 Hungary
Hannah Szenes
She volunteered to parachute into occupied Europe to reach the Jews of Hungary. Before she crossed the border she told a fellow paratrooper: “They will know that at least one person tried to reach them.”
1991 Addis Ababa to Israel
Operation Solomon
Israel flew 14,325 Ethiopian Jews home in 36 hours. Five babies were born on the planes.
2023 Ofakim
Rachel Edri
Five Hamas terrorists held her and her husband in their own home for 20 hours. She kept them calm with coffee and cookies, and held five fingers to her cheek so the police outside knew how many there were.
2023 Kibbutz Nir Am
Inbal Rabin Lieberman
The kibbutz’s security coordinator, just turned 26, armed her twelve-person team and held the gate for three and a half hours until the army arrived. Nobody at Nir Am was killed.
Our work
Speaker events, policy briefings, and community forums that build the knowledge confident advocacy depends on.
Civic engagement, rapid response, and interfaith partnerships that turn conviction into organized action.
When communities in Israel face crisis, AIC is there, on the ground and in partnership with trusted local organizations.
The Kosher Duck Revolution and initiatives that spread Jewish pride, connection, and joy in everyday spaces.
Our programs
An educational program of AIC
Research and analysis on Israeli security and the threats facing Jewish communities. The Flash Brief and the Field Dossiers are free; the full Israel Brief, the Closed Dossiers, Vantage, and Watchwords come with AIC membership.
About the program: The Mitzpe Institutemitzpe.org (opens in a new tab)
An initiative of AIC
A global movement spreading Jewish joy, unity, and kindness, one duck at a time.
Proceeds from the shop support AIC’s mission.
About the initiative: Kosher Duck Revolutionkosherduckrevolution.com (opens in a new tab)
Events
Briefings, speakers, and community evenings, online and in person: more than 231 programs since 2018.
Missions
When communities in Israel face crisis, AIC is there, on the ground and in partnership with trusted local organizations.
Online series
Talks
Twice a month, live online, with the people who know Israel and Am Israel firsthand: a 45-minute talk, then your questions. Free for AIC members, and members’ questions go first.
Book club
One book a month, read together and discussed live. Free for AIC members: you only buy the book. Come for the month you have read and skip the one you have not.
Briefing
Four times a year, the Mitzpe Institute’s research presented for AIC: what the analysis found and what it means for this community.
Events
· In person
With Rabbi Leo Dee
Hosted with Congregation Beth Jacob, Congregation Ohr HaTorah, and New Toco Shul
Rabbi Leo Dee lost his wife Lucy and their daughters Maia and Rina to a terror attack in 2023. He comes to Toco Hills to talk about what a person does the next morning, and the morning after that.
· Online
With Joel Rubin, Joel Rayburn
Israel votes on 27 October. Americans vote on 3 November. On the 28th, a Democrat and a Republican talk with each other about what is at stake for Israel whichever way the House and Senate go.
· Online
With Guy Haran
Guy Haran has been taking people around Israel’s wineries since 2006. On 5 November he comes to you, live from Israel.
· Online
With Shai Davidai
Shai Davidai taught at Columbia Business School until he resigned in July 2025, so he is not writing about this from a distance. The first session is free and open to everyone.
· Online
With Mustapha Ezzarghani
Mustapha Ezzarghani grew up in Morocco and now spends his days telling Arabic speakers the truth about Jews and Israel. He comes to Israel Up Close to talk about that work, and to take your questions.
· Online
With Howard Lovy
Since October 7, some publishers and agents have told Jewish writers “now is not the time.” Howard Lovy started a press to say yes.
· Online
With Amanda Elliot
A Hanukkah love story, read the week after Hanukkah. Amanda Elliot comes on at eight to take your questions.
· Online
· Online
· Online
· Online
With Lara Burns
Lara Burns spent two decades following Hamas’s money through America for the FBI. She’ll show you what she found, and what’s still here.
· Online
· Online
With Justin Yehuda
Justin Yehuda built a New York coffee company that gives 18 percent of its profits to organizations supporting Israel. He’ll tell you how it came together.
· Online
With Uri Zehavi
A year after the war with Iran began, where it has left Israel, the region, and Jewish communities here.
· Online
With Rachel Lester
Rachel Lester was inside the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit for the war over the story, from October 7 through the campuses. Note the time: this one is at noon Eastern.
· Online
· Online
· Online
Our impact
Mobilized means everyone AIC has brought into a program or briefed on Israel, each counted once.
Figures as of October 2026 · See our impact
Why now
Three people were murdered in antisemitic attacks in this country in 2025, the first such killings since 2019. Assaults with a deadly weapon went up 39 percent. Here in Georgia, ADL counted 83 incidents, 32 of them in Atlanta, and more vandalism than the state has ever recorded. We still hold our events in the open, and we plan every one for safety: the address goes only to people who’ve registered, and each event gets a security plan that fits it. Your support pays for that.
Sources: ADL audit figures for Georgia as reported by CBS News Atlanta (May 2026); ADL, Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2025 (May 2026).
Membership
Membership keeps this work going year-round, and every level comes with a Mitzpe Institute membership: the full Israel Brief, Sunday to Friday, and the members’ analysis.
AIC is a 501(c)(3). Membership gifts are tax-deductible beyond the value of what the membership includes.
In their words
The Atlanta Israel Coalition represents the very best of grassroots pro-Israel advocacy — meaningful opportunities for people of all backgrounds to learn, connect, and stand with Israel.
The Atlanta Israel Coalition leads with courage, compassion, and a genuine commitment to collaboration — a trusted partner in education, empowerment, and meaningful community engagement.
AIC is a credible curator and organizer of Israel programming that is compelling and informative — a resource that can be counted on to tell Israel's story in a way that resonates with diverse audiences.
Give
Community briefings, advocacy training, humanitarian missions to Israel, and the Kosher Duck Revolution, with specifics on every tier.
Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
