Plans Under Way in N.Y. Metropolitan Area to Celebrate Israel Independence Day

Elaborate plans are being made in the New York area for the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day on May 10. It will be the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the Jewish State. The Israel Anniversary Committee here is sponsoring a show to be presented at Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center. The presentation will feature David Frost, a popular television performer and Shelley Winters, Hollywood and Broadway actress. Metropolitan Opera star Martina Arroyo, said she would interrupt a concert tour to perform at the Israeli celebration, accompanied by the City Symphony under the direction of Jak Zadikov. The program includes addresses by Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and Sen. Jacob K. Javits of New York.

Sponsors of the annual Salute to Israel Parade on Independence Day hope for an even greater number of marchers than the 60,000 who turned out for the Israel Independence Day Parade in 1969. Marchers and floats will move along Fifth Avenue from 57th to 86th Streets. This year’s parade theme is “Israel blossoming from 4000 year roots.” The parade is a project of the American Zionist Youth Foundation. Mayor John V. Lindsay is an honorary chairman. Others are Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, of New York and Gov. William T. Cabill, of New Jersey. Independence Day ceremonies sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Bergen County, N.J. will be held May 6 at the Garden State Plaza auditorium at Paramus. It features a cultural exhibition and a Hebrew poster contest for school children. The Israeli Consul, Nahum Eshkol, will open the proceedings. (Overseas, the Chief Rabbinate of Britain will sponsor Israel Independence Day services on May 10 at the Bevis Marks Synagogue. The service is the representative religious event of British Jewry on Israel’s anniversary.)