In this issue: Under three weeks to Rosh Hashanah — where AIC has been this year, and the two things we need to do more of it.
We are ten days into Elul. Rosh Hashanah is under three weeks out, and this month is where you take stock before anybody makes you.
So we have been taking stock. In March we hosted Bridges of Hope at Beth Shalom: a Persian Jewish vocalist, a Moroccan-born author, an Iranian-American comedian, a soul composer who runs the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, an Atlanta hip-hop producer, a Holocaust survivor, and a man who lived through the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir. One stage, one night. This year we also put people in a room with Sami Steigmann and with Yirmiyahu Danzig. In July we sat with Arnold Roth and Tal Hartuv and listened to them make the case for two women nobody has answered for yet — that panel is up on the site and it is worth the hour. Since October 7 we have led five direct aid missions to Israel. Everyone who went paid their own way.
Most of what AIC does never happens in a room at all. We work with local, state and federal government, and with our own institutions, to get real security measures in place for Jewish Atlanta — and we take the same case to the same offices for Israel.
The threats are close to constant. They come by mail, by phone, in the DMs. We are undeterred.
None of that happened because AIC has a staff. There is no staff, and there never has been — not one paid person since AIC started in 2018. It happened because somebody took a night off and stood at a door, and because somebody else paid for the room.
What we want for 5787 is more of it, and more people in the room for it. That takes two things, and both of them are below. Hands, and money.
We would rather say that plainly now, in Elul, than dress it up in September.
— Cheryl Dorchinsky, Executive Director
Ten jobs are open. Two of them come first.
AIC is grassroots, all-volunteer, and self-funded. Nobody draws a salary, so every event evening, every visiting speaker and every delegation happens because somebody picked up a piece of the work.
We want to put on more of it this year, and more people in the room for it. Ten jobs are open. Two of them we need before the rest.
The first is social media. AIC is on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, and all four run off the same desk as everything else, so they get whatever is left at the end of the night. The job is turning what AIC already does into something people see: the evening that just happened, the speaker coming next, the panel worth an hour of somebody's Sunday. A few hours a week, from anywhere. If you already do this for a living, you will be faster at it than any of us.
The second is fundraising, and it decides how much of the rest we can do. We handle the grants; this half is sitting down with people you already know and making the ask. You would get a briefing pack before every conversation, so you never go in cold, and you never handle the money. What the money pays for is below.
There is a third we want filled at the same time, and it is the plainest job here. Somebody has to keep track of who offered to help, who is free when, and who is still waiting to hear back. Remote, email, a couple of hours a week. If you cannot stand a list going unanswered, that is the one — and it is the job that decides whether everything else here actually happens.
Two more are new, and neither one exists yet. We want a regular webinar series and a monthly book club over Zoom, and each needs somebody to own it: pick the subject, land the speaker or the author, run the hour. Whoever takes one builds it from nothing, which is either the best part or the worst part depending on who you are.
The rest is mostly hands, and mostly event-based: door and table at events, looking after a visiting speaker, carrying an invitation into your own synagogue or church, event photography, and helping prepare a delegation to Israel from here in Atlanta. An evening, a few times a season, counts.
One ask, and it is the unglamorous one.
AIC is self-funded and nobody here draws a salary. What that buys you is an organization that spends almost everything it raises on the evening itself — the room, the speaker, the security at the door.
That last one is the part people do not expect. We have no building. Every event happens in a synagogue, a church, a community center or someone's living room, and every one of them needs licensed armed security contracted for the night. For an organization our size that is among the largest costs we carry, and it comes straight out of what would otherwise pay for the next evening. At the last one — four guards and an off-duty officer with a marked car out front — our director paid for it out of her own pocket.
MITZVAHS THAT FLOAT
Send someone into the new year smiling
Somebody left a duck on a chair at Ben’s Kosher Deli in Riverhead, New York. Whoever found it wrote in the same day: “I found this adorable duck on my chair and I love it. Keeping it always.”
That is the whole idea. Ducks turned up this summer in Netanya and down on the Florida coast at Treasure Island too, and somebody left every one of them on purpose.
Rosh Hashanah is under three weeks out. A duck packs easily for a grandchild, a college kid, or a friend who could use a good year — and whoever gets it can hide it again and put their own pin on the map.
Jewish joy, weekly
Finding the Joy · Uriel ben Avraham · Parashat Ki Teitzei · Aug 21
Don’t Waste the Discomfort — Preparing for Rosh Hashanah 5787
Your Weekly Dose · Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman · Aug 21
Spiritual Sparks · Rabbi Ze’ev Smason · Aug 20
#995: The Donkey and Its Owner
Gimme Some Torah · Rabbi Eli Garfinkel · Aug 19
Celebrating a deeply abundant and juicy life
The Shabbat Drop · Miranda Lapides · Aug 14