Denver’s Jewish community will celebrate Israel’s 73rd year of independence with a COVID-safe, pop-up drive-in festival, Sunday, May 2, at multiple locations, instead of the community’s Celebrate Israel Parade.
The drive-in Celebrate Israel festival on May 2 will take place in the parking lots of Temple Sinai and Temple Emanuel in Denver in two shifts each: 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Space is limited and advance registration is required. Participants may pick up car-decorating kits in advance of the event.
In Boulder, celebrants may join Shaliach Itai Divinsky and his family for a picnic at North Boulder Park, 5 p.m.
Denver’s annual Israel parade started, as many things do, in New York City.
The notion for a Celebrate Israel Parade began more than a half-century ago with Theodore Comet, who was national director of the American Zionist Youth Foundation.
He wanted to stage a public show of support for Israel on the streets of Manhattan, and thus Celebrate was born.
Over the next five decades, the event grew exponentially and inspired similar events nationwide, including in Colorado.
Earlier this month, the now 96-year-old Comet spoke at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Yom HaShoah event.
The son of Polish immigrants, Comet grew up in Cleveland. He went to France as a student to volunteer in a program funded by the Joint Distribution Committee to rehabilitate war orphans from WW II.
While working at a home for orphaned children in Versailles, the first orphan he befriended was Elie Weisel, Holocaust survivor, who went on to become a prolific author and Nobel laureate. That experience inspired Comet’s lifetime of Jewish communal work.
In the first New York City parade, held on Riverside Drive, Comet and Haim Zohar, Charles Bick, Alvin Schiff and Dan Ronen worked together to plan the Youth Salute to Israel Parade.
The following year in 1965, David Ben-Gurion visited the city.
Thousands of people lined Fifth Avenue, and the parade route followed today was carved out: north on Fifth Avenue, from 57th Street to 74th Street.
The current version, which annually attracts more than 40,000 marchers, is described as the world’s largest gathering of people in support of Israel.
In 2011, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York assumed management and officially changed the event name to the “Celebrate Israel Parade.”
Now, a national network of parades and festivals mark Israel’s Independence Day.
The Denver event began as a walk-a-thon for Israel, orginated by shaliach Shaul Amir.
JEWISHcolorado JCRC Committee Chair Diana Zeff Anderson recalls the Denver-Boulder parade that was held in 2006, when the shaliach — or Israeli emissary — Raz Arbel helped organize an event.
In following years, shlichah Michal Uziyahu, working with Jco’s Israel engagement committee and Anderson as committee chair, organized a walk in conjunction with the Celebrate Family Festival at the Staenberg-Loup JCC.
Longtime event committee leader Dana Friedman says that over the years, “the event mushroomed in ideas and support.”
It was moved to different parts of the city, and each time, garnered larger and larger crowds. In a normal year, says Friedman, “we’ve had something for every age group and a clearinghouse of events and information about Israel.”
She says Celebrate Israel is also an event where, no matter where you stand on politics, “we can all come together to celebrate the shared values that we have with the State of Israel: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, women’s rights, and so much more.”
By 2019, the Colorado Celebrate Israel event attracted more than 2,500 people, but in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced parades and festivals to go virtual.
Meanwhile, back in New York, the parade is virtual for the second year due to COVID-19 health protocols, and planners are already focused on 2022.
Says the event website, “We believe we will be able to be together on 5th Avenue for our scheduled date on Sunday, May 22, 2022.”
Dana Friedman agrees and says that Denver’s event will return in force. “I think people are hungry for connection, and we will resume in 2022.”
