How it all began — and how it didn’t
A brief history of the Celebrate Israel parade’s march to prominence
Sixty years ago, on a sunny Sunday morning, New York’s Jewish community turned out on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan by the tens of thousands for what was being called “The Salute to Israel Day Parade.” It was followed immediately by a pro-Israel rally in Central Park that featured prominent political personalities and musical performances.
The date for the parade — May 2 — was chosen because Israel’s Independence Day, Yom Ha’Atzmaut, was being observed four days later, on Thursday, May 6. That was so even though the actual date for Yom Ha’Atzmaut — the fifth of Iyar — fell out that year on Friday, May 7. Because Friday is erev Shabbat, the public observance had to be moved to Thursday.
All that is fact, but a huge element of fiction appears to be attached to the question of why Fifth Avenue was chosen. It has to do with a visit to New York by a towering Israeli figure that probably never happened — a visit that was meant to promote an event in Israel that was still months away from happening. More about this further on. For now, let us stick with the provable facts as we answer the question of how this parade came to be.
It began in the mind of Haim Zohar, Israel’s liaison to the Jewish community here. His job was to turn American Jewry’s listless relationship with Israel into an enthusiastic one. Working out of the Israeli consulate’s offices on Second Avenue, he had noted that New York had several ethnic pride parades, most of which took place not far from his office on Manhattan’s East Side. It occurred to Zohar that a Jewish pride parade could be an effective way of jump-starting his efforts.
After receiving permission from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and encouragement from Abe Harman, Israel’s ambassador here at the time, Zohar first tried to involve various local Jewish organizations, but one after another turned him down. Some dismissed the idea as destined to fail, causing the Jewish community a huge embarrassment and endangering U.S. support for Israel, as well. Politicians count heads, and a failed parade would suggest to them that they did not have to fear losing the Jewish vote if they did not support Israel.
Others whom Zohar approached were apprehensive about overt public demonstrations of Jewishness that could encourage more antisemitism and also could lead to accusations that American Jews care more about Israel than about the United States. There also were those who simply felt that parades were not “the Jewish way.”
Ambassador Harman urged Zohar to keep at it nonetheless. If he could not get organizational support, Zohar thought, perhaps he could assemble a team that was influential enough to do that. He soon identified four communal leaders who fit that bill. Each of them, he knew, were working on projects that matched his own goals for the parade.
Charles Bick chaired the American Zionist Youth Foundation. Ted Comet was the AZYF’s director. The two men had been seeking a way to raise Jewish awareness generally and Israel awareness specifically among Jewish youth. “We had to do something to make Israel more visible,” Comet once explained. “It took us 2,000 years to bring about the establishment of a Jewish state. It’s a miracle that deserves to be celebrated.” Comet’s enthusiasm made him the natural choice to be the parade’s chairperson.
Dr. Alvin Schiff, who would begin a 21-year reign as the executive vice president of the city’s Board of Jewish Education in 1970, headed its day school department at the time. He also wanted to raise Jewish and Israel awareness among young Jews, using the education system to achieve that goal. Schiff later would help create the annual March of the Living program out of the same concern.
The American-born Dr. Dan Ronen was an emissary of the Jewish National Fund at the time. He was sent back to America to raise American Jewish awareness of Israel. He was the perfect choice to be the parade’s first director because he could draw on the experiences he gained while working in Israel’s Ministry of Education and Culture and while serving on the international board of directors of the Festivals of Folklore. He succeeded in creating a parade that was colorful, energetic, and participatory; something to which people look forward every year.
Together, Zohar and his team decided on creating a “Youth Salute to Israel Parade,” but they needed to try it out on a small, modest scale. Using his education connections, Schiff got the Manhattan Day School, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, to agree to have its students march along nearby Riverside Drive, Israeli flags in hand, and then turn east to walk over to a theater on Broadway. (News that such a parade was being planned inspired several schools in Queens to schedule smaller parades of their own for the same day.)
Using what they had learned from this modest “Youth Salute to Israel Parade,” Zohar and his team decided on a more inclusive approach when they scheduled the first “Salute to Israel Day Parade” for May 2, 1965. They also decided to have the parade march up Fifth Avenue, rather than Riverside Drive. That was, after all, where other pride parades were held. It also was — and still is — the city’s most identifiable street to people throughout the world.
That choice, however, is where legend kicks in.
As so many sources report it as fact, former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was visiting New York, trying to drum up support among American Jews for the new political party he had only recently formed. It was called Rafi, the acronym for Reshimat Poalei Yisrael, or the Israeli Workers List in English. He formed Rafi to rival the Mapai Party, which he had left earlier that year. Mapai is the acronym for Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael or, translated, the Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel. He had helped launch Mapai 35 years earlier. From then until 1977, it was the dominant political party in Israel, and for most of those years, Ben-Gurion was its leader. A falling out with his successor, Levi Eshkol, led him to launch Rafi.
One morning during his visit, the streets of Fifth Avenue filled up with an impromptu demonstration involving several thousand people who wanted to honor the man who had steered the Yishuv, the Jewish Settlement in Palestine, into statehood and was Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, a record that remained unbroken until Benjamin Netanyahu overtook it. There were so many people, in fact, that the crowd stretched from 57th to 74th Street. No one in that huge crowd could have known that they were laying the foundation for what would become the Salute to Israel Day Parade on those same streets.
The demonstration that day, however, was a godsend for Haim Zohar and his team, or so the legend goes. They were uncertain that Riverside Drive was the best venue. The thousands of people who turned out on Fifth Avenue for Ben-Gurion gave them their answer.
And thus, legend says, was born the Salute to Israel Day Parade.
Proving this version is virtually impossible. No record exists for any of it. For one thing, David Ben-Gurion, being who he was, would not have been able to plan even a private visit to the United States without the U.S. State Department and local law enforcement knowing about it. The State Department’s Office of the Historian maintains a list of all visits by Israeli leaders to the United States. It shows that Ben-Gurion made an unofficial visit to New York on May 30, 1961, when he met with President John F. Kennedy here. The next visit by an Israeli prime minister noted on this list is that of Levi Eshkol in June 1964. There is no record of Ben-Gurion visiting here in 1965.
As for seeking support for his newly formed political party, Ben-Gurion actually formed Rafi in mid-July 1965, months after the parade. Rafi was not just a last hurrah for an old man nursing a bruised ego. It represented a major shakeup in Israel’s dominant — ruling — political party. That is because Ben-Gurion took with him such other prominent and powerful Mapai figures as future Prime Minister Shimon Peres, future President Chaim Herzog, future Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, and future Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. A visit from Ben-Gurion to New York — or anywhere, for that matter — at this time certainly would have garnered at least some media attention, yet the media was silent. The media was equally silent about thousands of people suddenly appearing on an 18-block stretch of Fifth Avenue to cheer on Ben-Gurion.
How and why this version of the parade’s origins came to be is a mystery. The legend itself obscures how a few determined people gave New York Jewry a much-looked-forward-to annual event that draws hundreds of thousands of people, and that they did so in spite of the hesitancy of so many established Jewish organizations.
This event—now known as the Celebrate Israel Parade—is organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, working with other organizations. The parade is what its founders hoped it would be. It is more than just a march. It is a vibrant expression of solidarity, identity, and community pride that has evolved over six decades.
And may there be more decades to come.
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