Ruth Almog
Almog was born in Petach Tikvah in 1936 and is one of Israel’s most decorated authors. An educator by training, she published her first short story in 1967 and her first novel, The Exile, in 1970. Almog’s father passed away when she was fourteen, and many of her works explore the relationships between fathers and […]
Chaim Herzog
A politician, lawyer, writer, and 6th President of Israel, Herzog was born in Ireland and immigrated to Israel in 1935. After the War of Independence, he headed the IDF Military Intelligence and later served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, famously shredding in 1975 the UN Resolution 3379 which equated Zionism with racism. He […]
Gal Fridman
Gal Fridman is an Israeli Olympic athlete. A windsurfer, Fridman is the only Israeli athlete to win multiple Olympic medals and the first and only Israeli Olympic gold medalist. Fridman won a bronze medal in Atlanta in 1996 and a gold in Athens in 2000. He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of […]
Ariel Sharon
A decorated military veteran and former Prime Minister, Sharon is often a controversial figure in Israel’s history. He was a commander in the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars and as Minister of Defense launched the first Lebanon War in 1982. He championed Israeli settlement growth, however as Prime Minister, Sharon was responsible for the […]
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Israeli Knesset
(20 November 1977) Israel. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Speech by Egyptian President Sadat to the Knesset.” Israel’s Foreign Relations: selected documents, 1977-1979. Ed. Medzini, Meron. Jerusalem: Ahva Press, 1981. 182-90. Print. We Truly Welcome you to Live Among us in Peace and Security In the name of God, Mr. Speaker of the Knesset, ladies and […]
Dalia Itzik
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 […]
Naftali Bennett
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 […]
Shalom Hanoch
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 […]
Yitzhak Shamir
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, […]
Amos Oz
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
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 […]
Israel@70: Israel’s Tougher Neighborhood
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 […]
Yitzhak Rabin
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 […]
Natan Sharansky
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.
La visión y la redención: David Ben-Gurion
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.
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau
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 […]
Levi Eshkol
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 […]
Itzhak Perlman
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.
Dan Kahneman
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 […]
Anita Shapira
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 […]
Zerach Warhaftig
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 […]
Pinhas Sapir
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” […]
David Ben-Gurion: “Vision and Redemption”
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.
Mira Awad
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. […]
Avigdor Liberman
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 […]
Paul Rivlin: The Crisis in Gaza
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.
Avraham Yitzhak
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’s 17th Annual pre-collegiate Educator Workshop on Modern Israel in Atlanta, GA, June 24-28, 2018
CIE remains at the forefront of providing cutting edge content and pedagogy for the teaching and learning of Israel.
Shai Agnon
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.
Leah Goldberg
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.