Our story
It Started with a Film.
Cheryl Dorchinsky wanted Atlanta to see Black Forest, the Israeli documentary about the 2010 machete attack Kay Wilson (now Tal Hartuv) survived outside Jerusalem, and she wanted Wilson in the room to talk about it. It isn’t an easy film to show, and for a while Cheryl couldn’t find anywhere that would. So she posted about it. Rabbi Yitz Tendler’s wife saw the post and showed him, and he reached out and offered to host it at Congregation Beth Jacob. He thought she should make an organization out of it. Billed as a Beth Jacob event, he said, it would only ever be Beth Jacob’s, and Cheryl wanted the whole city. So the name was his idea too: the Atlanta Israel Coalition. In 2018 the two of them founded it.
The US premiere was AIC’s first program, on 31 January 2019, in Heritage Hall at Beth Jacob. Wilson stayed for the questions, and she used them to talk about the salaries the Palestinian Authority pays the men who tried to kill her. By that night, nineteen Atlanta congregations, organizations, and businesses had put their names on it.
After that, Cheryl kept at it. She showed up again and again, and she took on the hard things that weren’t on anybody’s list. She did it on top of a corporate career, two decades in human resources and talent management, in a job that paid well and kept her traveling. She has since left it to do this.
Then the pandemic shut the rooms. AIC moved online and kept going: web talks with Raheel Raza and Bassem Eid, a Sigd celebration, and live virtual tours of Israel with guide David Sussman that kept people connected to the country when nobody could fly. In May 2021, days after the ceasefire, AIC helped pull together a solidarity rally in Midtown with more than forty Atlanta organizations, congregations, and schools behind it. That list is what the word coalition in our name means.
Since 2018, AIC has hosted more than 231 programs, led direct aid missions to Israel, and built partnerships across faith and civic communities. The work stays close to the ground: briefings people can act on, advocacy the community can use, missions that go where the need is, and gatherings that keep joy in the picture.
While AIC is a Jewish organization, our coalition is wider than we are: Christians, Muslims, and people of other faiths stand with us, co-host our programs, and share the stage. More than sixty organizations have put their names on AIC programs, from Atlanta’s synagogues and Chabad centers to Christian, Black, and Muslim organizations and civic groups. Partnership is free for congregations, schools, nonprofits, and civic groups, and a business can sponsor AIC for $1,000 a year or put its name on one Israel Up Close talk for $360. Bring your organization in
In October 2026 the Mitzpe Institute, home of the Israel Brief, became AIC’s educational program. The Institute writes the analysis, Sunday to Friday, and keeps every call it makes on a public record. The coalition is the people who read it and then do something. Analysis you can check, and a coalition that acts on it. About the Mitzpe Institute
