Joy & Resilience

A rubber duck left on a cruise ship started this.

Cheryl Dorchinsky took a whimsical trend — people hiding little rubber ducks on cruise ships, on strangers’ cars, in the ordinary corners of a day — and gave it a Jewish spin. Kosher-themed ducks, left anonymously, for whoever finds them.

One of them reached a woman who posted about it to a cruising-duck group hundreds of thousands strong. A message turned into a conversation, the conversation turned into a friendship, and the two of them ended up at a Shabbat service onboard together, trading stories about Jewish life. A rubber duck had built a bridge.

That is the Kosher Duck Revolution. It will not settle an argument, win a vote, or serve anybody dinner. It puts Jewish pride somewhere unexpected and hands a stranger a friendly reason to ask about it.

Anyone can join the Jew Crew. Age and artistic talent are beside the point: make a duck, hide it, tell people where it went. The community trades designs and finds in the Kosher Duck Revolution Facebook group, and the project now has a home of its own at kosherduckrevolution.com. It remains an AIC project.

Every duck carries a tag with a QR code. Scan it and you land on the sightings map, where each pin is a real duck found by a real person — a cruise-ship buffet in the Bahamas, the Chagall windows in Jerusalem, a car wash in South Carolina, a burger joint in Athens. The same site runs two weekly columns, so somebody who came for a duck can stay for a page of Torah.

Why a pro-Israel coalition runs a duck project

Because a community that only ever gathers around danger will not keep gathering. AIC’s other three pillars deal in hard material — antisemitic incidents in our own neighborhoods, war footage, security line items, the names of the dead. People burn out on that, and people who burn out stop showing up.

So AIC builds the other side too. An Evening of Solidarity and Song brought neighbors together to sing. Bridges of Hope filled a Dunwoody room with music and comedy from artists across cultures and faiths who chose to stand together for Israel out loud. On a mission to Israel, an Atlanta bat mitzvah project turned into a delivery of toys for Israeli children in time for Chanukah, because a girl named Addison decided the kids should have something to open.

Cheryl has written that Hanukkah is her favorite Zionist holiday — the story of Jewish resilience, sovereignty, and light. She has also written, in plainer terms, that Atlanta needs to invest in real education and in programs that build Jewish pride and resilience. This pillar is that second half. The resilience is the point; the joy is how a community sustains it long enough to be useful.

Spread joy with AIC: make a duck, hide it somewhere ordinary, and tell us where it landed.