Representative Ogden R. Reid of New York asked 2000 guests at the 41st annual Histadrut Third Seder “Why is this year different from all other years?” and answered that “as Passover celebrates the exodus of Jews from Egypt, so we are seeing in our own days a new exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. Yet, many are there who still want to leave and cannot, and I say that we must not rest until Russian Jews have the right to leave the country and go to Israel.”
The former United States Ambassador to Israel hailed the Jewish State on its 25th anniversary, declaring that Israel “must have the necessary materials to defend herself. This means military equipment, this means economic development, this means all the things which will ensure her survival, her growth, her progress.”
Aaron L. Solomon, chairman of the Greater New York Histadrut Council, which sponsored the Passover festival, listed four contemporary “miracles” that the 20th century has witnessed: the creation of Histadrut as the pioneering vanguard of the Jewish State, the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto 30 years ago, the rebirth of the Jewish State itself in 1948, and the “crack in the Iron Curtain” through which Soviet Jews are beginning to emerge.
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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.
