Huge Throng Witnesses Lighting of Candles Here Marking Israel’s 21st Anniversary

More than 3,000 persons in Manhattan Center today witnessed the kindling of 21 huge candles to mark the 21st anniversary of Israel’s independence. Independence Day will be celebrated in Israel on Wednesday, April 23. The candle-lighting ceremony was part of the annual conference of the council of organizations of the United Jewish Appeal of Greater New York. It was addressed by Morris J. Levinson, president of the New York UJA, and Gen. Uzi Narkiss, director of the Jewish Agency’s immigration department in Jerusalem.

The Synagogue Council of America issued an Independence Day statement noting that the American Jewish community viewed the event with mixed emotions. According to Rabbi Jacob P. Rudin, president of the Council, which speaks for Conservative, Orthodox and Reform Jewry, Jews feel “the primary sense of gratitude that the State exists, that Israel is a reality.” But, he added, Israel still faces the obdurate hatred of the Arabs and, despite its victory in the June, 1967 war, it has not been able to win the peace which it fervently desires.

Sen. Charles Goodell of New York said here today that the Big Four talks on the Mideast could be fruitful only if the course they pursued was “persuasive rather than dictatorial.” The New York Republican spoke at an Israel Independence Day celebration and religious service arranged by the New York metropolitan region of the United Synagogue of America (Conservative) and attended by 1,000. He said the current talks between the U.S., Britain, France and Soviet Russia “can only be effective if they lead to Arab and Israel sitting down together at the table and ironing out their own differences by force of argument rather than by force of arms.”