November 29, 1947
Important enough to be the name of a Jerusalem street.
It was the day the UN passed Resolution 181
to re-establish a Jewish State in our ancestral homeland.
“The UN Vote: Then and Now”
was the theme of a November 29th conference
featuring former Ambassador Danny Ayalon as the keynote speaker.
Workshops were held in the afternoon on topics
which included delegitimization, antisemitism,
Anti-Zionism, BDS, Hate Bias, and Jewish rights.
The morning panel on Public Diplomacy on Shaping Social Action
was moderated by former Jerusalem Post editor Steve Linde.
Barry Shaw, Olga Deutsch, Avital Leibovich, Asher Fredman,
and Ashley Perry (left to right) spoke about current advocacy.
Zipporah Porath gave her eyewitness account
of the excitement that filled the Jerusalem streets many years ago
when the UN made possibly its first and last pro-Israel proclamation.
The World Zionist Organization marked 70 years since the historic vote
with music and Israeli dancing.
Zionist leaders were again on the balcony watching the proceedings.
That is Yaakov Hagoel and Avraham Dudevani on the left, Natan Sharansky in the middle,
and Theodore Herzl on the right side of this photo.
Lights and visuals were projected on to the building.
Could Theodore Herzl imagine such a scene?
He certainly never imagined David Ben-Gurion taking a selfie
while standing there next to him.
The date of November 30, 1947, marked
the beginning of the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries,
the Jewish Nakba Day.
Most came to Eretz Yisrael,
and after many hardships, began new lives.
This year Sigd was celebrated on November 30.
After thousands of years of going to mountain tops
and yearning to return to Jerusalem,
the Ethiopian holiday has become an official Israeli one.
November 30 at night is also Rosh Chodesh Kislev,
so besides Israeli and Ethiopian dancing,
the streets are beginning to be lined with suffganiot,
The Hanukkah donuts season has begun.
