Richard Crossman, 1907-1974
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-
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-
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, 1915-1981
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-
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…
Meir Dizengoff, 1861-1936
A native of what is now Moldova, Dizengoff became a leader with Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) in Russia. He moved to Palestine in 1893 and managed a glass factory. He opposed the Uganda Plan…
Artem Dolgopyat, 1997-
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, 1880-1948
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, 1915-2002
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, 1879-1955
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, 1939-2013
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, 1923-2010
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, 1903-1990
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…
Itzhak Elazari-Volcani, 1880-1955
An agronomist from Lithuania who moved to Palestine in 1908, Elazari-Volcani was a Hapoel Hatzair leader who advocated settlement by Jewish labor. He taught farming and advised the Zionist Organization and Palestine Office on agriculture….
Karine Elharrar, 1977-
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, 1895-1969
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….
Akiva Ettinger, 1872-1945
Belarus-born agricultural settlement leader Ettinger encouraged Jewish families to live on the land outside capitalist society. He served as director general of the Jewish Colonization Association in South America and in a leadership role for…
Michelle Cohen Farber, 1971-
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…
Maxine Fassberg, 1953-
Named one of CNN’s “10 Most Powerful Women in Tech” in 2010, Fassberg immigrated from South Africa in 1975, rose to become CEO of Intel Israel and retired in 2016 after 33 years with the…
Berthold Feiwel, 1875-1937
Feiwel was born in Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. He co-founded the Jewish People’s Voice in 1897 and the Jiidischer Verlag publishing house in Berlin in 1902 and served as the editor of Theodor…
Max Fisher, 1908-2005
Pittsburgh native Fisher, who made his fortune in Midwestern gas stations and real estate, advised Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush on the Middle East and Jewish issues. He helped persuade Nixon…
Abraham Foxman, 1940-
Foxman was the national director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015. He and ADL spoke out against rising anti-Israel sentiment as an expression of increasing antisemitism beginning in the late 1990s. A Holocaust…
Gal Fridman, 1975-
Fridman was the first Israeli to win an Olympic gold medal, which he earned in windsurfing in Athens in 2004 after taking the bronze in Atlanta in 1996. He also was the first Israeli to…
Israel Friedlander, 1876-1920
A Ukrainian-born scholar, Friedlander was a commissioner for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He became a U.S. Zionist leader and wrote books including “Past and Present: A Collection of Jewish Essays.” He was a…
