Rosh Hashanah was a relaxed and happy time in Israel, with the hotels in Jerusalem. Tel Aviv and other tourist centers in this country filled to capacity while observant Jews crowded all regular synagogues and 1,000 temporary houses of warship to offer prayers. An estimated 7,000,000 New Year’s greetings were exchanged by mail.
The holiday was heralded at dusk Wednesday with a ceremony on Mr. Zion where Jews were called to prayer with a shofar salvaged from BergenBelsen, a notorious Nazi death camp. Since many of the new immigrants who entered kibbutzim in the last year were Orthodox, more collective settlements than ever before held services and, in many instances, rabbis from nearby towns were invited to conduct them.
Here, in the capital. Argentine Ambassador Gregori Toplevsky, acting dean of the diplomatic corps, extended New Year’s greetings to President Isaac Ben Zvi in the name of the foreign community. In his own behalf, Ambassador Topolevsky, a Jew, exchanged greetings in Hebrew with the President. The holiday was marred by one shooting incident when rifle fire from Jordanian territory killed an Israeli Arab shepherd in the Afula area.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
