The Southern Jewish Weekly

Israel's Fifth Anniversary Sunday Night

The official observance of the fifth anniversary celebration of the state of Israel begins at sundown on Sunday, April 19th. Jewish communities throughout the world will offer prayers of thanksgiving and praise to God such as are recited on Jewish holidays.

In Jacksonville the Jewish Center will be the scene of a city-wide affair sponsored by the Zionist and Hadassah groups. The event will begin at 8 P. M. on April 19th and will feature Marvin Lowenthal, outstanding Jewish leader, as guest speaker. No admission will be charged, and neither will there be appeals of any kind, and the entire public is cordially invited.

Exactly five years ago there occurred the miracle for which Jews had been dreaming and praying for more than eighteen hundred years—the proclamation of the State of Israel, the declaration of Jewish national independence on the ancient ancestral soil. It was a great, thrilling occasion for Jews throughout the world who danced in the streets for joy, who felt themselves privileged to live to witness this great turning point in Jewish history.

The Jewish state was born out of the suffering and martyrdom of Jews throughout the ages, and more particularly out of the great calamity—the greatest calamity in Jewish history since the destruction of the Second Temple—which overtook European Jewry when six million, a third of world Jewry, were massacred on orders of a criminally insane German government. Out of the ashes of these millions of burnt and gassed Jews, who ten years ago rose in a last desperate revolt against their murderers in the Warsaw Ghetto, there arose phoenix-like the resurrected Jewish nation in Palestine, symbol of the Jewish will to live despite all the efforts of its enemies to annihilate it.

But even at its birth the Jewish republic had to fight desperately for its survival against seven neighboring Arab nations who were out to destroy it. It won its fight for survival, it welcomed to its shores the remnants of European Jewry, it more than doubled its Jewish population in the space of a few years, it received international recognition as a member of the United Nations which had helped to create it.

Today, as the republic of Israel is celebrating its fifth birthday, it is still beset by grave though not insoluble problems. But, like our brethren in Israel, we are confident that the young state will overcome all hurdles, whether economic, political or military.