In a Rosh Hashanah message calling for the strengthening of Israel and Jewish life the world over, Israel’s President Zalman Shazar noted the “grave and bitter trials mankind continued to endure throughout the past year.” He voiced hope that the coming year “will bring us closer to the time when the sword will not judge between peoples and the mighty; and marvelous conquests of science will be diverted to joining the war against hunger, disease, ignorance and desolation.”
President Shazar deplored the fact that, “while Israel’s hand is extended for peace, the face of the Arabs is still turned toward war, and they are being misled by the intoxicating, blinding slogan–the desire to annihilate us.” He voiced the hope that the new year will bring “the blessing of free aliyah from every corner of the world” and called upon Jews everywhere to “resist the process of self-deprecation and fragmentation and, most dangerous of all, spiritual impoverishment.”
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol expressed the hope in his Rosh Hashanah greeting that the new year would “bring its blessing to those who are devoted to our Land and to those who engage in its defense. ” Turning to the “Jewish communities in lands of dispersion marked by persecution and separation from our people,” Mr. Eshkol declared:
“We are today again witnesses to Jewish communities facing the danger of rising anti-Semitism in the lands where they dwell. Jewish communities and among them a very large one, live cut off from the body of the Jewish people, without ways of expressing their Jewishness, and prevented from coming and joining their families in Israel. We know their distress. They are our brothers–in the past, the present and the future–in suffering and in hope; we wish them a year of pride and redemption.”
Voicing the greetings of the Israel Government “to our millions of brothers in the lands of abundance,” Premier Eshkol declared: “May this year be a year of deepening their Jewish identity, a year of fruitful activity on behalf of Jewish education, and the strengthening of Israel.”
Other messages of New Year greetings were extended by Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim, and Chief Chaplain Shlomo Goren.
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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.
