Judah Magnes, 1877-1948
Born in the San Francisco Bay area, Magnes was ordained as a rabbi in 1900 and helped found such U.S. organizations as the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. An advocate of…
Hannah Maisel-Shohat, 1890-1972
Maisel-Shohat was born in Belarus, where she was jailed for Zionist activities. She studied and trained for agriculture before moving in 1909 to Palestine, where she advocated women’s roles in farming and started agricultural institutions…
Ehud Manor, 1941-2005
Manor was a singer, songwriter, and TV and radio host. He wrote more than 1,200 songs, including the 1978 Eurovision winner, “A-Ba-Ni-Bi.” Many songs reacted to events such as the June 1967 war and the…
Bernie Marcus, 1929-2024
Home Depot co-founder Marcus has devoted much of his philanthropy to Israel and to organizations supporting Israel. Examples within Israel include the Israel Democracy Institute and Magen David Adom’s underground blood storage facility in Ramle….
Haim Margalit-Kalvarisky, 1868-1947
Margalit-Kalvarisky was an agronomist who purchased tracts in the Galilee and served as an administrator for the Jewish Colonization Association. He advised the British authorities and served in the Yishuv leadership in the 1920s. He…
Louis Marshall, 1856-1929
Marshall co-founded the American Jewish Committee and served as its president from 1912 to 1926. He supported efforts that aided the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and united Zionists and anti-Zionists in helping…
Golda Meir, 1898-1978
Born in Ukraine and raised in Wisconsin, Meir rose in Labor Zionism with the Histadrut and engaged in diplomacy for the Jewish Agency and Israel, including trying to keep Transjordan out of the 1948 war…
Merav Michaeli, 1966-
A Petah Tikvah native and Tel Aviv resident, Michaeli became the transportation minister in the governing coalition formed in June 2021. She is credited with reinvigorating the Labor Party since becoming its leader at the…
Mayer “Bubba” Mitchell, 1933-2007
A longtime resident of Alabama, Mitchell was the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee from 1990 to 1992 and AIPAC’s chairman from 1993 to 1996. As an activist and philanthropist for Jewish and…
Samuel Mohilever, 1824-1898
Born in Lithuania and ordained at the Volozhin yeshiva, Mohilever was a founder of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement in Russia and served as its president in the 1880s. He helped launch Religious…
Moses Montefiore, 1784-1885
Montefiore was an English entrepreneur and philanthropist who visited Ottoman Palestine seven times. Deeply affected religiously by his first visit, he financed Jewish land purchases, settlements, industry, education and health there and directed money bequeathed…
Leo Motzkin, 1867-1933
Born in Ukraine, Motzkin joined the Russian-Jewish Academic Society at the University of Berlin, a forerunner of political Zionism. At the First Zionist Congress he helped formulate the Basel Program for achieving a Jewish home…
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1927-2003
Moynihan was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1975 when the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism. He delivered a passionate speech lambasting the resolution and its supporters and…
