Two and a half million Jews in New York and nearby communities will celebrate the festival of Passover tonight with seders and special services in the synagogues on the anniversary of the liberation of their ancestors from ancient Egypt. The holiday begins officially at sundown this evening.
In this city, as well as all over the country, special feasts will be held, and rabbis in the synagogues will devote their sermons to Passover subjects.
The most important celebration of the holiday will be held on Sunday evening, when Professor Albert Einstein will come to New York from Princeton to be guest of honor at a “Chalutzim seder” arranged by the National Labor Committee for Palestine. The feast will be held in the grand ballroom of the Central Plaza, 111 Second avenue. Professor Einstein will speak at the gathering, which will be attended by many leaders in Jewish life. A special Haggadah will be read, and a number of artists will offer entertainment. The Proceeds of the affair will go to the Arlosoroff Memorial Fund, for the purpose of colonizing Jewish families in Palestine.
SEDER FOR COLLEGES
Jewish students and faculty members of many American colleges will participate in a seder to be held tomorrow at Temple its very inception more than a Emanu-El, Fifth avenue and Sixty-fifth street. Rabbi Baruch Braun-stein, counselor to Jewish students at Columbia, will conduct the service with the assistance of Cantor Moshe Rudinow of Temple Emanu-El. A number of men and women distinguished in the field of education will be present, including many non-Jews.
Residents of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews, 121 West 105th street, will hold seder services at the Home. Yesterday a Passover play was given, with residents taking parts in the cast.
Patients, doctors and nurses of the Beth Israel Hospital, Stuyvesant Park East, will join in a service to be held at the hospital.
The children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, 1560 Amsterdam avenue, will go to the homes of their relatives over the holidays. Those who have no relatives will attend services in the synagogue and seder in the dining-room of the Asylum.
AT CONVALESCENT HOME
The Convalescent Home for Hebrew Children, in Rockaway Park, will also hold a complete seder service. Religious services will be held at Beth-El Sisterhood, 329 East Sixty-second street and the Sabbath School of Federation Settlement, 115 East 106th street, as well as all the Y. M. and Y. W. H. A.’s of the city.
Four hundred needy persons in the East Side will be fed tonight, tomorrow and during the entire Passover holiday at the Jewish Center of the East Side, 128 Stanton street. The Passover services will be conducted by Rabbi Meyer A, Kotcher.
In Brooklyn, a number of institutions will carry on charitable works over the holidays. The United Jewish Aid Societies will distribute money and clothing to more than 800 needy families, Samuel Rabinovitch, executive director, announced yesterday. Joseph J. Baker, president of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, declared that 3,000 meals will be served daily at the hospital during Passover.
A seder at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum tomorrow will be attended by more than 1,100 children being cared for at that institution, and the children will afterward be taken to the theatre or on trips through the city.
Patients at the Beth Moses Hospital, 404 Hart street, will attend services conducted by Rabbi A. Burack.
The Hebrew Free School of Brownsville, 402 Stone avenue, will hold assemblies of parents and children during the week, at which the children’s choir will present a musical program, it was announced by H. Handler, principal.
All the Greater New York districts of Ivriah, the women’s division of the Jewish Education association, will conduct Passover meetings during the week, at which rabbis will explain the meaning of the seder service.
The Metropolitan Conference of Temple Brotherhoods will hold a Passover rally and musicale next Wednesday at Temple Emanu-El. Hugo Levy, president of the conference, will preside, and speakers will include Rabbi Isaac Landman, Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson, Samuel B. Finkel, and Rabbi Nathan Stern.
IN THE SYNAGOGUES
The synagogues of the city will devote their week-end services to the holiday. At Congregation Emanu-El, Fifth avenue and Sixty-fifth street, a special service will be held this evening at 5:20 p. m. Tomorrow morning Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson will preach on “The School of Slavery.” The choir will sing Mendelssohn’s “Hear O Israel” and other sacred songs at the service this evening. Tomorrow morning another special musical program will be offered. The congregational seder dinner will take place this evening under the auspices of the Women’s Auxiliary and the Men’s Club.
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise will preach on “Pharaoh and Moses. Pilate and Jesus, Hitler and the Jew,” on Sunday morning at Free Synagogue services in Carnegie Hall.
A special Passover service, in which the children’s choir will participate, will be held tomorrow morning in the chapel of the Synagogue House, 40 West Sixty-eighth street. The rabbis of the synagogue will speak. The Oratorio by Handel, “Israel in Egypt,” will be sung by the choir under the direction of A. W. Binder at the services at Carnegie Hall on Sunday.
At Congregation Rodeph Sholom, 7 West Eighty-third street. Passover services will be held this evening at 5:30 p. m. Rabbi Louis I. Newman will preach tomorrow morning on, “Is Liberty an Impossible Ideal?” A Temple seder will be held tomorrow evening in the Temple house and on Sunday afternoon a children’s seder will be conducted by teachers and parents of children at the religious school.
A Passover festival will be held on Sunday evening by the Jewish Fellowship, at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Ninety-second street and Lexington avenue, at which Dr. I. L. Brill, Rabbi Joseph Lookstein and Rabbi William Margolis are to speak.
Tonight, Rabbi Henry M. Rosenthal will preside at Passover services and a seder of the young people of the Y. M. H. A., which is to take place in Buttenwieser Hall.
Other synagogues which will hold seders or special Passover services over the week-end include Temple Oheb Sholom, 257 West Ninety-third street; Temple Israel, 210 West Ninety-first street, which will hold its annual congregational seder and dance tomorrow night at Sherry’s, 300 Park avenue; Institutional Synagogue, both in its main building, 37-43 West 116th street, and its West Side branch at 148 West Eighty-fifth street; Park Avenue Synagogue, 50 East Eighty-seventh street; Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 117-121 East Eighty-fifth street; Temple Ansche Chesed, West End Synagogue, 160 West Eighty-second street; Mt. Neboth Temple, 130 West Seventy-ninth street, and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Eighty-eighth street, west of Broadway.
Synagogues in the Bronx are also planning to celebrate joyfully the Passover festival. At Congregation Hope of Israel, 76 Gerard avenue, a party and entertainment will be given on Sunday afternoon by the pupils of the Hebrew school. The Jewish Center of Kingsbridge, 5235 Broadway, will hold an open meeting, at which prominent speakers are scheduled to address the gathering, on Sunday evening. The Jacob H. Schiff Center, 2510 Valentine avenue, is holding special Passover services.
In Brooklyn, the Jewish community of more than a million is planning to feast and make merry at all the various communal centers, and to hold holiday services at the synagogues. Among the temples that will have these services are Congregation Beth Elohim, Eighth avenue and Garfield place; Flatbush Jewish Center, Church avenue and East Fifth street; Union Temple. 17 Eastern Parkway; Congregation Shaare Torah of Flatbush. 2252 Bedford avenue, and Temple Sinai, Arlington avenue and Bradford street.
In Queens, too, the Jewish community will celebrate at the synagogues. included among which and the Jamaica Jewish Center, ## Eighty-seventh road, Jamaica, and the Astoria Center of Israel, ## street and Grand avenud Astoria.
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