In another major breakthrough following President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, Ashraf Ghorbal, Egypt’s Ambassador to Washington, has accepted an invitation to address a meeting on Dec. 7 of the Board of Directors of the Synagogue Council of America, it was announced today by Rabbi Saul 1. Teplitz, president of the Council which is the umbrella organization for the rabbinic and congregational bodies of the three branches of American Judaism in the United States. The Council is the first Jewish organization in the United States to be addressed by the Egyptian Ambassador.
Teplitz welcomed Ghorbal’s acceptance of the Council’s invitation as “a further dramatic step in the inexorable movement in the direction of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East that was initiated by President Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.”
Teplitz noted that Ghorbal’s visit to the Council is consistent with a long-standing personal friendship that has existed between the Ambassador and Rabbi Henry Siegman, executive vice-president of the Council, “a friendship that has endured the most difficult periods of Middle Eastern hostility. The seeds for the remarkable flowering of Arab-Jewish reconciliation were planted by Ghorbal,” Teplitz said.
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