AIC is a grassroots, nonpartisan coalition. We educate, mobilize, and unite people of many faiths in support of Israel and against antisemitism, at home and around the world.
January mission to Israel
Cheryl and Kirsten will be in Israel from 11 to 22 January, delivering aid to the people AIC has been showing up for 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.
Thursday 15 October 4 Cheshvan 5787
1987 Moscow to Israel
Ida Nudel comes home
Jewish prisoners knew her as the “Guardian Angel.” A banner on her balcony asking for an exit visa cost her four years' exile in Siberia. At Ben-Gurion Airport she said: “I am on the soil of my people: at home.”
1948 Negev
Operation Yoav opens the Negev
Egypt broke the truce and blocked Jewish convoys to the Negev. After its forces fired on an Israeli convoy, the IDF launched Operation Yoav, and in seven days it opened the road and took Beersheba.
2003 New York
Tovah Feldshuh plays Golda Meir
Golda's Balcony opened on Broadway with Tovah Feldshuh alone on stage as Golda Meir. The play is set during the Yom Kippur War, as Golda looks back on her life and her role in founding the Jewish state.
Friday 16 October 5 Cheshvan 5787
1973 Suez Canal
The IDF crosses the Suez Canal
Ten days into the Yom Kippur War, IDF units crossed the Suez Canal. Israeli paratroopers set up a bridgehead, and for the Israelis the crossing was a great psychological boost.
Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian (opens in a new tab)
1886 Plonsk, Poland
David Ben-Gurion is born
The boy who grew up to be Israel's first prime minister went to a Hebrew school his father set up. By his mid-teens he led a Zionist youth group whose members spoke only Hebrew.
2010 Seattle
A Torah written by women
The Kadima congregation in Seattle read from the first Torah ever commissioned to be written by a group of women. Women trained as scribes to write it, and Jewish women artists made its ornaments.
1986 Lebanon
Ron Arad is captured
Captain Ron Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator, parachuted from his Phantom jet over southern Lebanon and was captured. The Mossad and IDF intelligence later concluded he likely died in 1988.
Saturday 17 October 6 Cheshvan 5787
1988 New York
Gertrude Elion wins the Nobel Prize
No graduate school would give her financial aid, so she worked as a receptionist and a substitute teacher. Her research led to the first effective treatment for childhood leukemia and made organ transplants possible.
1920 Bronx, New York
Clara of the Barry Sisters is born
With her younger sister Minnie, she formed the Barry Sisters, who sang traditional Yiddish songs backed by a jazz band. Audiences young and old tuned in to hear songs in their mother tongue.
2001 Jerusalem
Minister Rehavam Ze'evi is murdered
Palestinian terrorists from the PFLP shot Israel's tourism minister, a former general, in a Jerusalem hotel. It was the first assassination of an Israeli minister by Palestinian terrorists.
Sunday 18 October 7 Cheshvan 5787
2011 Gaza to Israel
Gilad Shalit comes home
Hamas captured the young Israel Defense Forces soldier in a cross-border raid and held him for 1,940 days. Prime Minister Netanyahu said: “I am bringing Gilad Shalit home, to his parents Noam and Aviva.”
1880 Odessa
Ze'ev Jabotinsky is born
He was one of the founders of the Jewish Battalions in the British Army in the First World War. Later he founded the Betar youth movement.
1948 New York
Molly Goldberg comes to television
Gertrude Berg made her television debut as Bronx housewife Molly Goldberg. She wrote and produced The Goldbergs, which showed millions of viewers the life of a second-generation Jewish American family.
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
1945 29 Oct · 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 29 Oct · 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 29 Oct · 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)
Saturday 31 October 20 Cheshvan 5787
1945 29 Oct · 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 29 Oct · 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 29 Oct · 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)
Sunday 1 November 21 Cheshvan 5787
1945 29 Oct · 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 29 Oct · 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 29 Oct · 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)
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 shows up — 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 230 programs since 2018.
Missions
When communities in Israel face crisis, AIC shows up — on the ground and in partnership with trusted local organizations.
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
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 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
· Online
· 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
· Online
· 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
Nothing is on the calendar right now. Past programming
Shop
Tees from $36, mugs from $18 and kosher ducks from $6, all in one cart.
Shop nowWhere the money goes: after the cost of making and shipping it, what AIC makes on your order pays for our programs, like Israel Up Close, The Author's Table and our work against antisemitism here in Atlanta.
Newsroom
Clips from our talks, news from our missions to Israel, and what is coming up next. We post Sunday through Friday.
Our impact
Figures as of August 2026 (AIC) and October 2026 (Mitzpe) · 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, Monday to Thursday, 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.
Stand with us
Community briefings, advocacy training, humanitarian missions to Israel, and the Kosher Duck Revolution — specifics on every tier.
Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
