Ani Agnihotri and Cedric Suzman are looking for members to join Atlanta's newly formed Indo-Jewish Coalition, which had its first formal meeting last Tuesday.

The group, which has been meeting informally for more than a year, will work to bridge the Indian and Jewish communities in Atlanta on business, cultural, educational and political affairs, Mr. Agnihotri and Dr. Suzman, co-chairs of the new coalition, told GlobalAtlanta at the recent meeting.

"There is a surprising connectedness between Jewish-Americans and Indian-Americans, as well as between Israel and India," said Dr. Suzman, who is also vice president and director of programming at the Southern Center for International Studies and board member of the Atlanta chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

Dr. Suzman cited the importance of education and family as shared cultural values between the two communities and added that both communities could work together on immigration and discrimination issues.

The organization is also slated to be proactive about legal issues, already designating an advocacy committee for the group, Mr. Agnihotri said.

Mr. Agnihotri, founding president of the five-year-old Georgia Indo-American Chamber of Commerce Inc. and president and CEO of IIIrd Millennium Inc., a business process outsourcing firm for health care and information technology companies, recently returned from a November trip to Israel that was organized by the American-Jewish Committee's Project Interchange, an educational program that began in 1982 to take American leaders to Israel.

The trip took 12 Indian professionals working in business, government and journalism fields across America on a two-week tour of Israel, which included visits to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and meetings with Ben Gurion 
University President Avishay Braverman, former Chief Justice Gavriel Bach, 
representatives from Israel's bio-tech industry and Palestinian academics 
and journalists.

In addition to Mr. Agnihotri, Atlanta representatives on the trip included Ritesh Desai, a member of Gov. Sonny Perdue's Asian-American Commission for a New Georgia, and Kavita Chhibber, a freelance journalist based in Atlanta.

For more information about the new coalition, contact Mr. Agnihotri at 
Ani@thirdm.biz, Dr. Suzman at cedric@scis.org, or Sherry Frank, executive 
director of the Atlanta chapter of the American Jewish Committee, at 
franks@ajc.org or (404) 233-5501.

To join the coalition, send a $25 check to the American Jewish 
Committee, at 6 Piedmont Center, Suite 510, Atlanta, Ga., 30305.



Source: Nema Etheridge for GlobalAtlanta