In a moment of extraordinary challenge for Jewish life in America and around the world, the American Jewish Committee is meeting the moment with energy, urgency, and purpose. From the halls of Congress to the headquarters of Chabad in Brooklyn, from a business summit bridging Israel and the Arab world to a landmark partnership to fight antisemitism online, AJC CEO Ted Deutch’s latest dispatch paints a picture of an organization that has spent 120 years learning how to defend Jewish dignity — and has no intention of stopping now.

The centerpiece of AJC’s May agenda is the 2026 Global Forum — a three-day summit bringing together Jewish leaders, diplomats, elected officials, and advocates from more than 70 countries to the nation’s capital. This year’s gathering carries special weight: it falls in the same year that AJC marks 120 years of existence and America celebrates its 250th anniversary. That convergence — of Jewish longevity in this country and America’s own defining milestone — is not lost on the organization’s leadership, and the programming will reflect both the history and the urgent stakes of the present moment.

Bipartisanship in the Age of Division: Fetterman and McCormick

In a political environment where bipartisan cooperation has become almost endangered, AJC is showcasing it — deliberately and unapologetically. One of the Global Forum’s signature sessions will bring together two U.S. Senators from Pennsylvania who represent opposite sides of the aisle, in a conversation about what American unity can still look like when the stakes are high enough.

The session — moderated with AJC’s characteristic commitment to non-partisanship — will explore what bipartisanship looks like today and how trust across political divides can be rebuilt. It is a timely conversation. AJC has spent 120 years insisting that the defense of the Jewish people is not a left-wing or right-wing cause — it is an American cause. Fetterman and McCormick, two Pennsylvania senators who have each shown willingness to put principle over party on Israel-related issues, embody that argument.

Mourning and Memory: Milgrim, Lischinsky, and Foxman

Before the celebration comes the grief. This week, AJC commemorated the one-year anniversary of the murder of Sarah Milgrim z”l and Yaron Lischinsky z”l with the unveiling of a memorial in their honor. Their deaths — a reminder of what antisemitic violence actually looks like when it turns lethal — anchor AJC’s advocacy work in a reality that goes beyond policy papers and panel discussions.

AJC also mourned the passing of Abe Foxman, the Holocaust survivor who became one of the most formidable Jewish leaders in American history. Foxman’s life was itself an argument — that survival demands not silence but engagement, not retreat but confrontation. His death is a loss for the entire American Jewish community and for everyone who believes that fighting hatred is not optional.

Warning at Milken: Far-Left and Far-Right Antisemitism Are Both Real

At the Milken Institute Global Conference, Ted Deutch delivered a message that the comfortable corners of American political discourse would rather not hear: antisemitism is not a problem of one side. It comes from the far left, and it comes from the far right. Both are real. Both are dangerous. Both must be confronted.

Deutch named names — something that requires a degree of courage in the current climate, where the pressure to treat left-wing and right-wing antisemitism differently based on who the speaker supports politically is intense. AJC refuses that pressure. The organization’s core commitment — bipartisan on politics, zero-tolerance on hate — is exactly the right model for a moment when Jew-hatred is being mainstreamed from multiple directions simultaneously.

New Partnership: AJC + CyberWell Take the Fight Online

Words alone don’t stop hate. AJC has formalized a partnership with CyberWell — the first-of-its-kind nonprofit that specializes in tracking and combating online antisemitism — and together they have released a landmark report: The State of Antisemitism in America: Findings and Recommendations for Major Digital Platforms. The report puts specific, actionable demands on social media companies and creates an accountability framework for measuring their response.

Bridges in Miami: Israel and the Arab World — Building Something Real

One of the most hopeful items in Deutch’s dispatch comes from Miami, where AJC’s Center for a New Middle East hosted a summit bringing together high-level business leaders from Israel, the United States, and across the Arab world. The Business Bridge Strategic Initiative — focused on fostering economic cooperation between Israel and Arab nations — is not a talking exercise. It is an attempt to build the kind of durable, interest-aligned partnerships that make peace permanent rather than fragile.

Economic ties between Israel and Arab states — the logic of the Abraham Accords writ large — have proven to be the most durable architecture for regional stability the Middle East has seen in decades. AJC’s Business Bridge initiative understands this. When Israeli and Arab businessmen are invested in each other’s success, the political incentives for war diminish and the incentives for cooperation multiply. That is not idealism. That is strategy.

A Day at 770 — Chabad, Connection, and Collaboration

Ted Deutch also visited 770 Eastern Parkway — the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn, one of the most spiritually significant addresses in global Judaism. Meeting with Rabbis Motti Seligson and Shmaya Krinsky, Deutch explored avenues for collaboration between AJC and the Chabad movement, which operates the world’s largest Jewish outreach network spanning nearly every country on Earth.

Why This All Matters: America and Its Jewish Story

AJC was founded in 1906 — a time when American Jews faced discrimination, quotas, and casual prejudice that the broader society barely noticed. One hundred and twenty years later, Jewish Americans have become one of the most integrated, successful, and civically active communities in the nation’s history. They have served in every level of American government, won Nobel prizes, built institutions, fought in American wars, and contributed immeasurably to the cultural and intellectual life of the republic.

And yet the work is not done. Antisemitism is rising. It is coming from the left and from the right. It is spreading online faster than any previous generation of Jewish leaders had to contend with. The Iranian regime — which has spent decades calling for Israel’s destruction and funding the groups that try to carry it out — remains a direct threat. And the memory of the Holocaust, carried in the bodies and stories of survivors like Abe Foxman, grows more distant with every passing year.

What AJC’s May 2026 dispatch shows is an organization that is not retreating in the face of that challenge — it is advancing. Building coalitions that cross party lines. Naming enemies of the Jewish people by name. Creating new tools to fight hatred online. Honoring those who gave everything. Forging connections between Israel and its neighbors that could outlast any political cycle. And gathering leaders from 70 countries in Washington, D.C., to affirm together that Jewish life matters, Jewish safety matters, and the 120-year-old American Jewish story is far from finished.