Alumni Monthly Fund

Each Passover, we gather around the seder table. With the Hagaddah sitting in front of us, we find ourselves with more questions than answers. The story of Passover orients us towards redemption and liberation, and anchors us in the arc of Jewish history and its cycles.

The period we find ourselves in now leading up to Shavuot, known as Counting of the Omer, is about breathing life into the lessons of Passover, taking them off the Seder plate and putting them into practice in our lives. For us at Achvat Amim, it's about enacting those commitments to education, growth, justice, and community.

Passover, and Counting the Omer, remind us why asking questions is so important. At Achvat Amim, we explore what Home/Land, People/Hood, and Self/Determination means - and like the Hagaddah, we don’t exactly provide an answer. Instead, over weeks of workshops, trips, Beit Midrash, volunteer placements, Hebrew and Arabic education, and more, participants find their place in community, solidarity, education, while understanding - the many ways we go about understanding home/land, people/hood, and self/determination, and the way we commit ourselves to growing and asking questions - that creates the foundation on which we can build genuine relations of solidarity and commit to self-determination for all peoples in the place they call home.

This past year, your support made Achvat Amim a reality. In 2024, your donations provided 32 participants with one-of-a-kind experiences. Tours of Lifta with Zochrot, Work Days in Masafer Yatta, Ruchani Study with Dr Shaiya Rothberg, Educational Trips to Battir, and more.

Our South Trip included visits to Sderot, Rahat, Beer Sheva, and Umm al Kheir. We opened up questions and conversations like - what is Center and Periphery? How do borders, citizenship, law, and politics affect Bedouin communities, from Rahat, to Unrecognized Villages, to Umm al Kheir? How has the history of Mizrahi migration and settlement around the Otef been marginalized and narrated, and what does that teach us about where we are today? How are we able to hold these painful, and for many, highly personal stories, and build an understanding community that can support each other?

This Spring Cohort joins 12 Participants from Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Israel, the United States, and Canada.

Our Immersive Participants are currently fulfilling volunteer placements with ALLMEP, the Storytelling Project, and Rabbis For Human Rights. We're super proud to say that all of our participants have since joined protective presence and shepherd accompaniment in the West Bank, in addition to community building activities like movie nights, protesting, food packing with Culture of Solidarity food drives, and more!

With 20 applications in for our Summer Solidarity Intensive a few weeks before the application deadline, there is more interest in Achvat Amim Programming than ever. 2024 was a challenging year to plan programming - flight cancellations, daily sirens, high security risks, and the pain and shock of the war meant otherwise interested applicants were unable to join solidarity on the ground. 

You, our alumni, and our participants who continue to join us reminded us that solidarity and education do not take breaks, and amidst the pain and violence, Achvat Amim has been able to provide a community that still builds a reality beyond war, militarization, borders, and occupation.

The biggest barrier to applicants is financial. Hopeful applicants from all over the United States, Turkey, South Africa, Hungary and more, are eager to take part in Achvat Amim's one of a kind programming. As much as we are committed to supporting their financing journey, we need our community to support this fund to build the scholarship pool that makes programming accessible and sustainable.

As alumni, you pay forward the gift of education with your monthly donations. Please consider taking your donation a step further, and sharing this campaign with your family and friends, to grow our monthly fund!

Looking at testimonials from our Winter Program, here's what some participants had to say:

"The program made it possible to build trust with individuals and have tough conversations more quickly. The facilitation, peer authenticity, and generosity, was unparalleled. It also brought many folks who I have not actually heard from on past trips before, like Palestinian communities from East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even on “progressive” trips where they may have been mentioned but were not invited to the conversation. Here, we actually got to meet, sit down, talk, and build a relationship."

"I really appreciated that we were given space to think freely. It didn't feel like propaganda or indoctrination, just exposure to ideas and people and freedom to make meaning of it for ourselves. Achvat Amim is a a chance to connect and learn with Jews from around the United States and the world who are wrestling with the same big questions about Israel, Palestine, Peace, Justice and Hope. The cohort based experience creates a safe community to challenge yourself, question your assumptions, and take concrete collective action toward a more hopeful future for everyone who calls the land home."

"First program that I’ve done that had a focus on the Occupation, and had a space for criticism of the Israeli state. I loved being welcomed into the activist scene, being able to meet people in this work, being able to sit down for dinner together or celebrate Christmakkah, and especially Shabbat meals. I thought that both the educational and volunteering components were done extraordinarily well, and the program exceeded my expectations."

Winter Program alumni are doing amazing things - organizing events with JStreet Brown, Let's Complicate, and more, showing us the longterm impact programming has on leadership and community building. Solidarity goes far beyond the end of the program.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for making spaces like these possible. They are the foundation on which we build a better world, together. As alumni, thank you for what you do to commit to activism wherever you are. From organizing events, to writing and art, to supporting your communities and continuing to support our program, we are grateful for your hearts and actions.

As always, we depend on your support to make programming accessible. Please continue to share this campaign with your friends, family, and cohort, so we can grow the scholarship pool for aspiring Achvat Amim participants.

Thank you for all that you do! Yours in solidarity,

Achvat Amim