American Leaders Form Committee to Observe Israel’s 10th Anniversary

Four hundred and fifty-eight distinguished American leaders, representing the world of religion, art, science, law, labor, education, music, literature, theatre, motion pictures, radio, television and public service–accepting an initiation of former Senator Herbert H. Lehman–have joined in an American Committee to mark in the United States the Tenth Anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, it was announced today.

Senator Lehman has agreed to serve as the general chairman of the committee, which will plan a series of functions to be held during 1958, emphasizing “the community of interests which binds Arabs and Jews and Americans in the dynamic search for peace. ” The new group is to be known as the American Committee for Israel’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration. Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the American Jewish Congress, will serve as chairman of the committee. Nineteen vice chairmen represent every facet of organized American Jewish community life. Jack D. Weiler will serve as treasurer.

In announcing the formation of the committee. Senator Lehman underscored that “America’s security interests are involved in the Middle East as never before, ” and that America’s special role in the creation of the State of Israel should not be forgotten. “The world, especially the Western world, has a deep spiritual as well as temporal reason to take appropriate notice of this 10th anniversary of the re-birth of this ancient state, whose roots are common with those of western civilization itself. As the Land of the Bible was the cradle of the spiritual heritage of all of us, it is today the foothold and the focus of the forces of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.”

Associated with Senator Lehman are sixteen honorary co-chairmen, including General Lucius D. Clay; former Governor Thomas E. Dewey; Adlai Stevenson; Mrs. Ejeauor Roosevelt; former Senator William L. Benton; chairman of the board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; Thornton Wilder, playwright and novelist; John Gunther, author; Archibald MacLeish, poet and professor at Harvard University; George Meany, president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization; Walter Reuter. president of the United Automobile Workers of America.

Also, Carl Sandburg, poet laureate; Professor Reinhold Niebuhr, vice president of the Faculty at Union Theological Seminary; Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Methodist Bishop for the Washington area, a former president of the World Council of Churches; the Rt, Rew Msgr. John O’Grady, secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Charities; Louis Lipsky, president of the Eastern Life Insurance Company, and Dr. Abba Hillel Silver. Members of the committee, in addition to the officers, include 28 Governors; eight Bishops; 28 distinguished writers, among them nine Pulitzer Prize winners; nine world-famous scientists, five of them Nobel Laureates, and 32 educators, including 24 heads of collages and universities.