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An educator by training who served for five years as the chairperson of the Jerusalem Teachers Union, Itzik was elected to the Jerusalem City Council in 1989 with the portfolio of deputy mayor in charge of education. In 1992, she was elected to the Knesset and in 2006 she became the first woman to serve […]

The leader of Habayit Hayehudi, the Jewish Home Party since 2012, Naftali Bennett is currently serving as Israel’s Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs. Born in Haifa, Bennett is a former tech CEO who also served in the IDF’s Sayeret Matkal special operations unit. Bennett is opposed to a two-state solution with the Palestinians and […]

Born and raised on Kibbutz Mishmarot in 1946, Hanoch began writing and performing songs at the age of 14. A member of the Israeli army band during his military service, Hanoch is known for his poetic lyrics. He was a long-time collaborator with Israeli rock-and-roll greats, Arik Einstein and Meir Ariel. Himself a pioneer of […]

Shamir was the 7th Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms. He was a Likud hard-liner, and was active in underground activities against the British during the Mandate. Shamir ordered Operation Solomon in 1991, successfully airlifting thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Like Menachem Begin, he refused to stop Jewish settlement in the West Bank, […]

Oz is a decorated Israeli writer, novelist and journalist. He has publicly endorsed a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was one of the first Israeli intellectuals to do so, in his 1967 article, “Land of Our Forefathers.”

Ada Yonath is an Israeli chemist and the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for having shown what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. Yonath is one of 10 Israeli winners of a Nobel Prize, and the only woman. She is currently the director of the Helen […]

In January this year, the veteran Arab journalist Rami Khouri made this assessment of the Middle East as a region, “Never before has the Arab region been so fractured, violent, volatile and vulnerable to the whims of desperate citizens, powerful autocrats, renegade militants, durable terrorists, and predatory foreign militaries.” By comparison, when Israel came into […]

Former Prime Minster, General, Chief of Staff, and Ambassador, Rabin signed the Oslo Peace Accords with the PLO in 1993 and a Peace Treaty with Jordan in 1994. He was assassinated during a peace rally by a right-wing activist in 1995. He won the Nobel Peace Prize together with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat in […]

Sharansky is best known as the Soviet refusenik who was imprisoned in Siberia after attempting to exit the country for Israel. Following his release in 1986, Sharansky immigrated to Israel and began work in politics, human activism, and writing. In 2009, he became the Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Ben-Gurión elegantemente conecta el moderno Israel desde la redención mesiánica al sionismo, formando al país por medio de la labor y la inmigración, con dos necesidades para permanecer activamente conectados a la diáspora judía y a los valores judíos por medio de la educación.

The youngest survivor of Buchenwals, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau made aliyah with his brother in 1945. He became the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1988 and five years later was elected as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, a position he held for ten years. An outspoken advocate on the importance […]

Eshkol was the 3rd Prime Minister of Israel. A gifted organizer, Eshkol both raised funds to absorb immigrants and supplied materials to the young IDF. In 1937, he founded the National Water Service and developed the national water carrier which opened in 1964. He was prime minister during the Six Day War, though he tried […]

Perlman is an Israeli-born violinist who is internationally renowned for his contributions to music. He has played for famous world leaders on many occasions, including Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama.

The first Israeli to win a Noble Prize in a scientific discipline, Dan Kahneman is a behavioral psychologist and professor at Princeton. Born in Tel Aviv in 1934, he spent his early years in Paris before his family returned in 1946. He was educated at Hebrew University, where he later taught. Kahneman won the 2002 […]

An internationally recognized historian and scholar, Anita Shapira has written numerous books and articles, including biographies of many of Israel’s founding personalities. Her 2012 book, Israel: A History won the National Jewish Book Award. Additionally, she was awarded the Israel Prize in 2008 for her work in Jewish history. She is Professor Emerita at Tel-Aviv […]

Rabbi Zerach Warhaftig was a founder of Israel’s National Religious Party and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He made aliyah in 1947 and served in the Knesset from 1949 until 1981, serving as Minsiter of Religious Affairs for most tof the 1960s. During World War II, he played an important role in helping […]

Born in Poland as Pinhas Kozlowski in 1907, Sapir came to the land of Israel in 1929. Sapir served as a cabinet minister from 1955 to 1972, and as Minister of Finance and Trade and Industry. While serving in the Cabinet, Israel sustained healthy economic growth. Sapir opposed Israeli territorial expansion beyond the “Green Line” […]

In addition to being Israel’s first Prime Minister and the most significant leader in the Jewish community –yishuv – in Palestine before the state’s establishment, David Ben-Gurion was above all a Zionist enthusiast, expressed through his prolific writings.

Awad, a Christian Arab from a village in the Gallilee, was educated in Haifa before moving to Tel Aviv to pursue a music and acting career. In 2009, she was the first Arab to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Festival. Awad has used her music to advocate coexistence and dialogue between Jews and Arabs. […]

Currently serving as Israel’s Defense Minister since June 2016, Liberman is the leader of the Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) Party. Liberman immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union in 1978. Liberman worked closely with Benjamin Netanyahu, before splitting with him and forming his own party in 1999. In addition to Defense Minister, he has […]

Though written in May 2017, Paul Rivlin, a Moshe Dayan Center researcher analyzes a rich trove of data to analyze the Gaza Strip’s troubling economic character. Five major reasons are enumerated for its dilemmas: absence of investment, extraordinary high unemployment, a very young population, inability of goods and services to go in and out of the strip, and Hamas’s stranglehold on taxation and spending.

An Ethiopian immigrant, Yitzhak came to Israel in 1994. Although he was only 19 at the time of his aliyah, Yitzhak had already started medical school in Ethiopia. In 1999, he became the first Ethiopian immigrant to recieve an MD degree in Israel and began serving as a surgeon in the IDF. He accomplished another […]

CIE remains at the forefront of providing cutting edge content and pedagogy for the teaching and learning of Israel.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon, or Shai, immigrated to Israel in 1907. A prolific Hebrew writer whose works depict the decline of Galician Jewry and the pioneers of Israel, Agnon received the 1966 Noble Prize in Literature, becoming Israel’s first Nobel laureate.

Goldberg dedicated her life to the literary movement, writing numerous works in the areas of children’s books, drama, and poetry. Her acclaim and legacy has left her forever imprinted on Israel’s future banknotes, as decided in 2011 by the government.

Star of the 1977 European Basketball champion Maccabi Tel-Aviv team, Tal Brody arrived in Israel for the Maccabi Games in 1965 after being selected with the number 12 pick in the NBA draft. Brody was persuaded to stay in Israel and help grow the sport of basketball in the country. In 1977, at the height […]

One of Israel’s preeminent art photographers, Adi Nes was born in Kiryat-Gat in 1966. Nes uses staged phtotgraphy to convey themes of masculinity and identity. His photographs are often influenced by art history and iconic works. One of his most well known pieces, “The Last Supper Before Going out to Battle,” is itself a recreation […]

Assembled by Ken Stein and Eli Sperling Emory University and Center for Israel Education kenstein@israeled.org or kstein@emory.edu Raphael Ahren, “As Israel fetes Air India flight over Saudi airspace, El Al cries foul,” Times of Israel, March 26, 2018. https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-israel-fetes-air-india-flight-over-saudi-airspace-el-al-cries-foul/ Meirav Arlossoroff, “When Ben-Gurion saved Israel’s Economy at any Price,” Haaretz, March 23, 2018. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-when-ben-gurion-saved-israel-s-economy-at-any-price-1.5936686 Amoz Asa-El, “Yair Lapid’s […]

Kollek served as the Mayor of Jerusalem for nearly 30 years, having been in office from 1965 until 1993. Some have referred to him as the builder of Jerusalem, as the city developed into an urban entity that assured free access to all religions. In the pre-state period, he worked in the Haganah and Mossad […]

A professor of materials science at the Technion in Haifa, Dan Schechtman became Israel’s eighth Nobel Prize winner in 2011. Schechtman won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of “Quasicrystals.”