Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024CIE+
The 39th U.S. president, Carter mediated the 1978 Camp David Accords and 1979 peace treaty between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The treaty was the first between Israel and an…
Omri Casspi, 1988-CIE+
Casspi was the first Israeli-born first-round NBA draft pick and player. He made his professional basketball debut for Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2005 at age 17. The Sacramento Kings drafted him 23rd overall in 2009,…
Emanuel Celler, 1888-1981CIE+
Celler was New York’s longest-serving congressman, holding a House seat from 1923 to 1973. He read Herzl during World War I and became a Zionist. He attempted to assist fellow Jews by opposing the Immigration…
Winston Churchill, 1874-1965CIE+
Churchill visited Palestine in March 1921 as the British secretary of state for the colonies and declared that a Jewish national home would be a “blessing to the whole world.” In July 1922, after the…
Aaron Ciechanover, 1947-CIE+
Ciechanover shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2004 with Israeli Avram Hershko and Jewish American Irwin Rose for showing the role of the protein ubiquitin in breaking down other proteins in cells. He was…
Clark Clifford, 1906-1998CIE+
As a special presidential counsel, Clifford opposed the pro-Arab State Department and urged President Harry Truman to maintain support for the U.N. partition of Palestine and to lift the arms embargo on Jewish forces heading…
Bill Clinton, 1946-CIE+
As president, Clinton hosted the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, helped Jordan and Israel achieve a peace treaty in 1994, and mediated the 1995 Oslo II agreement that recognized the Palestinian Authority. He brokered…
Eli Cohen, 1924-1965CIE+
Israel’s most famous spy, Cohen infiltrated the Syrian government in the 1960s. Born in Egypt to Syrian Jewish parents, he applied his language skills to pretend to be businessman Kamel Amin Thaabet. He befriended top…
Irwin Cotler, 1940-CIE+
Cotler is Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism after serving as a member of Parliament and justice minister. He defended Israel and Jews at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in…
Richard Crossman, 1907-1974CIE+
A leader of the Labor Party Zionists in the British Parliament, Crossman served on the 1944-1946 Anglo-American Palestine Commission, which aimed to set the number of Jews permitted into Palestine after World War II. He…
Lester Crown, 1925-CIE+
American billionaire Crown is a philanthropist who supports many Israeli causes, including Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is dedicated to sharing Israel’s accomplishments with the world. He is a director…
Dani Dayan, 1955-CIE+
An Argentina native who moved to Israel at 15, Dayan founded the information technology company Elad Systems. He gained prominence as a leader of the Yesha Council, the organization of West Bank settlers. His role…
Moshe Dayan, 1915-1981CIE+
Known for the patch he wore after losing his left eye in World War II, Dayan was a military leader and politician. As a field commander, IDF chief of staff and defense minister, he helped…
Ted Deutch, 1966-CIE+
Deutch, a Democratic congressman from Florida since 2010, succeeded David Harris as the American Jewish Committee CEO on Oct. 1, 2022. In the U.S. House he introduced and supported legislation and resolutions to further U.S.-Israel…
Artem Dolgopyat, 1997-CIE+
A Ukraine native who moved to Israel at 12, Dolgopyat won the artistic gymnastics gold medal for floor exercise at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. He also won gold in the event at the…
Blanche “Baffy” Dugdale, 1880-1948CIE+
A close adviser to Chaim Weizmann on his relations with British officials, Dugdale was a strong, non-Jewish advocate for Zionism. A niece of Arthur Balfour’s, she wrote a biography of him and a book on…
Abba Eban, 1915-2002CIE+
A native of Cape Town, South Africa, who was raised in England and made aliyah in 1944, Eban was a diplomat, politician and writer. With the Jewish Agency’s U.N. delegation, he was heavily involved in…
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955CIE+
Einstein was a Zionist who wrote about the importance of Jewish nationalism in 1921. The physicist credited Zionism with strengthening the Jewish community, though he preferred a binational Palestine to partition. He raised money for…
Arik Einstein, 1939-2013CIE+
Einstein has been called the most important man in Israeli music. Combining folk and rock, Einstein’s music has been celebrated since his first album in 1960 and still influences pop. He introduced rock to Israel,…
Shmuel Eisenstadt, 1923-2010CIE+
Warsaw-born Eisenstadt was an internationally acclaimed sociologist noted for enhancing understanding of cultures and civilizations. Aside from guest professorships, he spent his career at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including time as department chairman and…
Eliahu Elath, 1903-1990CIE+
A Ukraine-born journalist, politician and diplomat, Elath arrived in the Land of Israel in 1924, joined the Jewish Agency in 1934, and became Israel’s first ambassador to the United States and, when the diplomatic post…
Karine Elharrar, 1977-CIE+
Elharrar became Israel’s minister of infrastructure, energy and water at the formation of the coalition government led by Naftali Bennett in 2021. She had been a member of the Knesset from the Yesh Atid party…
Levi Eshkol, 1895-1969CIE+
Eshkol, Israel’s third prime minister, was a farm worker after arriving from Ukraine in 1914. He organized labor and became a Mapai and Jewish Agency leader. He raised money for arms and for immigrant absorption….
Michelle Cohen Farber, 1971-CIE+
Farber studied the Talmud at Bar-Ilan University and graduated from the Midreshet Lindenbaum’s scholars program for women. Without the option to be an Orthodox rabbi, she uses the title rabbanit and advocates for more women…
