Mizrachi Women's Organization of America. Avivah Chapter (Seattle, Wash.)

AMIT (abbreviation אמי״ת of the Hebrew name ארגון מתנדבות למען ישראל ותורתה, Association of Volunteers for Israel and Torah) is a non-profit membership organization devoted to the support and maintenance of a network of on-going projects in Israel in the field of youth education and child care. Based in New York City, AMIT is an American organization with members and chapters throughout the United States, and also includes some international members in a few chapters outside the United States. The projects it funds include schools, youth villages, surrogate family residences and other programs, with 25,000 youngsters in 98 facilities throughout Israel in 2011. It is considered to be the most effective and representative organization of modern Orthodox Jewish women with a Zionist orientation. At its peak in the 1980s, it had about 425 regional chapters in the world, representing 80,000 member volunteers. As of 2010 there were about 229 chapters and 40,000 members, which makes AMIT the largest women's religious Zionist organization in the world. AMIT has Boards of Directors in New York and in Israel and a sister organization in Britain, AMIT UK. AMIT is a member of the World Zionist Organization and its national president belongs to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In addition, AMIT offers public programming on matters of interest to the Jewish community at large and addresses issues confronting Jewish women in the twenty-first century. The organization also publishes the quarterly The AMIT Woman magazine, which covers Jewish and Israel-oriented topics.

The organization was founded in 1925 as a religious Zionist women's off-shoot of the Mizrachi Organization of America at the Mizrachi Convention in Cleveland. This group of religious women believed that they should support and administer their own projects. At that time scattered women's groups worked as auxiliaries for the Mizrachi Organization, but their financing depended on the men's Mizrachi chapters and their work was restricted in its scope. As a result of the initiative, regional women's groups formed their own national association which was called Mizrachi Women's Organization of America (MWOA), later American Mizrachi Women (AMW) and finally AMIT Women, Inc. It began to act independently, and was incorporated in 1933.

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