Chanuka Torch Lit at Kennedy Airport

Masada, the national youth movement of the Zionist Organization of America, employed a two-foot-high copper torch flown in specially from Israel in a ceremony at Kennedy Airport today to mark the first eve of the eight-day-Jewish festival of Chanuka.

The torch–a replica of one ignited earlier today at Modiin, Israel, site of the Maccabean revolt for religious freedom in 168 B.C.C.–was run by a relay of 10 Masada youths over a one-mile route to the airport’s International Synagogue and used to light the candles on a Chanuka menorah. The candle-lighting ceremony opened a celebration that included speeches by U.S. dignitaries and ZOA leaders.

At the ceremony, which was attended by more than 400 persons, the final relay runner presented the torch to Congresswoman Bella Abzug. William B. Schwartz of Oradel, N.J., a 21-year-old college student who is president of Masada, lit the menorah candles from the torch and recited the Chanuka blessings.

In a message of greeting read at the ceremony by Zieden Atashi, a consul at the Israeli Consulate in N.Y., Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir said Chanuka “symbolizes our faith that the light of peace will envelop us and guide us on our onward march in meeting all the challenges of the hour and the future.” Other messages were received from Vice-President Spiro Agnew, Gov, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mayor John V. Lindsay, Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban and Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin.

In a gesture of inter-religious solidarity, young Jewish volunteer workers will replace Christian employes in Brussels hospitals on Christmas eve. This action is organized each year by the Jewish weekly, “Bengisch Israelitisch Weekblad.”