Flagler County Jews to Mark 91st Balfour Day with Picnic at Herschel King Park

Flagler County’s Jews will gather at Palm Coast’s Herschel King, Sr. Park at 12 noon, Sunday, November 2nd to picnic and to celebrate the 91st anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, proclaiming the British Government’s support for the founding of a Jewish State in what was, on November 2, 1917, called Palestine. The event is open to the public and tickets are $12 and include a full picnic lunch, children under age 13 are free. All are welcome. For further information contact Temple Beth Shalom at 386-445-3006.

The picnic is a program of the Palm Coast synagogue’s Men’s Club and Sisterhood and will include a brief program honoring the The Balfour Declaration dated November 2, 1917 a classified formal statement of policy by the British government stating that the British government "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the understanding that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The declaration was made in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation, a private Zionist organization. The letter reflected the position of the British Cabinet, as agreed upon in a meeting on October 31, 1917. It further stated that the declaration is a sign of "sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations."

The statement was issued through the efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, the principal Zionist leaders based in London but, as they had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home, the Declaration fell short of Zionist expectations. The "Balfour Declaration" was later incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with Turkey and the Mandate for Palestine. The original document is kept at the British Library.

Palm Coast Hadassah to mark Veteran’s Day with UF Dean Emeritus Lowenstein

The little-known but indispensable role of American Jews in the creation of Israel will be described at 1 p.m. Tuesday, November 11, by a University of Florida professor speaking to the Palm Coast Chapter of Hadassah at Temple Beth Shalom in Palm Coast. 
Ralph Lowenstein, dean emeritus of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida in Gainesville, will speak on the topic “Anonymous Ally: The American Jewish role in Israel’s War of Independence.” The public is welcome to attend. There is no charge and no advance arrangements for the hour-long program are necessary. For directions to the synagogue at 40 Wellington Drive in Palm Coast, call 386-445-3006. Additional information is available through Palm Coast Hadassah at 386-446-9353. 

Veteran’s Day speaker Lowenstein is a native of Danville, Virginia and fought in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence after he volunteered for the Israeli Army at the age of 18, while a summer exchange student in Europe at the end of his freshman year at Columbia University. He lived in a Displaced Persons camp in Marseilles under an assumed name, then saw combat as a half-track driver with the 79th Armored Battalion, 7th Brigade, 10 days after being smuggled into Israel. He later served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Lowenstein holds two degrees from Columbia and the Ph.D. from the University of Missouri where he served as chairman of the News-Editorial Department of the University’s School of Journalism. An award-winning reporter, he was visiting professor and head of journalistic studies at Tel Aviv University from 1967 to 1968. He is author or co-author of five books, including "Bring my Sons from Far," (World, 1966), a novel about Israel's War of Independence
  
In 2005, Professor Lowenstein built the Museum of American and Canadian Volunteers in Israel’s War of Independence in the University of Florida’s new Hillel Jewish Student’s Organization building. Since 1982, he has been collecting extensive archives, including questionnaires, memoirs and photos, for the University of Florida Libraries on the 1,250 American and Canadian men and women who worked on American ships rescuing Holocaust survivors from Europe or who served in the Israeli armed forces during the War of Independence.