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Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive: Moshe Sharett.

Alternate Chairman of the Executive of the WZO - Jewish Agency, American Section: Dr. Emanuel Neumann and Rose L. Halperin.

President of the World Zionist Organization: Nahum Goldmann.

Treasurer of the Jewish Agency: Louis Arie Pincus.

Chairman of the Immigration Department: Shlomo Zalman Shragai.

Chairman Absorption Department: Aharon Zisling.

Chairman Settlement Department: Levi Eshkol.

Chairman Youth Aliyah Department: Moshe Kol.

The Jerusalem Program is replaced at the 26th Zionist Congress with a new one of the same name reading as follows: "The aims of Zionism are: The unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of the Jewish people in its historic homeland Eretz Israel through aliyah from all countries; The strengthening of the State of Israel which is based on the prophetic vision of justice and peace; The preservation of identity of the Jewish people through fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values; The protection of Jewish rights everywhere."

December 28: Operation Yakhin - the transfer of the Jews of Morocco to Israel with the permission of the Moroccan government - begins. Some 80.000 Jews are brought to Israel from there by 1964.

December: The South African government forbids the transfer of funds raised by South African Jewry for the Jewish Agency. This prohibition reflects resentment of Israel's support of black African states against the South African regime. The ban remains in force until the Six-Day War, when sympathy for Israel's plight results in its being lifted.

New immigrants in 1961: 47,638.

January 1: Zvi Zur replaces Chaim Laskov as chief of staff.

January 11: The Egoz, a small vessel carrying Jews leaving Morocco illegally, sinks en route to Israel with the loss of 42 lives.

January 31: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion submits his resignation in the wake of the findings of the Committee of Seven. He accuses the government of "appointing itself as a judge."

January: Wolfgang Lotz, a "German businessman" arrives in Egypt and for the next 3 1/2 years transmits to Israel intelligence on the Egyptian rocket program being developed by German scientists.

February 4: The Mapai decides that Pinhas Lavon cannot continue to serve as secretary-general of the Histadrut. On 9 February, the Histadrut will accept Lavon's resignation. His successor will be Aharon Becker.

February 16: President Yitzhak Ben Zvi assigns David Ben Gurion the task of forming a new government. At the end of the month Ben Gurion will inform the president that he sees no possibility of forming a new government.

March 28: The Fourth Knesset moves to disband in light of the deepening crisis engendered by the Lavon Affair. Elections for the Fifth Knesset are scheduled for 15 August.

March: Israel Beer (1912-1966), a high-ranking member of David Ben Gurion's ministry of defense, is arrested by the Israeli Secret Service and accused of treason for having passed Israeli secrets to Soviet agents. In June, at a closed trial, he will be found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union.

April 11 : The trial of Adolf Eichmann for crimes against the Jewish people and humanity opens in the Jerusalem District Court before Presiding Judge Moshe Landau of the Supreme Court of Israel and District Court Judges Benjamin HaLevi and Yitzhak Raveh. Eichmann is prosecuted by Gideon Hausner and defended by Robert Servatius.

April 21 : The UN General Assembly adopts Resolution 1604 requesting the Palestine Conciliation Commission to implement a 1948 resolution regarding repatriation or resettlement of the Arab refugees.

April 25: The General Zionists and the Progressives unite to establish the Liberal Party with 14 members of Knesset. It favors a private economy with the minimum of state participation, and a reduction of the power of the Histadrut. The party's values are close to those of Herut.

April 28: Israeli combat planes shoot down an Egyptian Mig 17 that penetrates Israel's airspace over the Negev.

May 22: The first population census since 1948 is conducted. It gives a total of 1, 932,400 Jews (over 88%) and almost 250,000 non-Jews, which are divided between Muslim Arabs, Bedouin and Circassians (170,000), Christian Arabs (24,000) and Druze (24,000). The Israeli Arab population lives mostly in the Galilee, there are two Arab cities in Israel: Nazareth and Shfaram, and other cities with Arab and Jewish population: Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramle and Lod. The Israeli Arabs do not serve in the army, but Druze and Circassians are recruited and many Bedouins volunteer. In the first years of the state a Military Administration had been established over the Arab-inhabited areas in order to prevent hostile activities against the state from within. In 1962, the Druze will be exempted from the regulations. The Military Administration will be lifted altogether in 1966. Despite the Military Administration, the Arab population has the right to vote and there are several Arab parties. In 1962, a vocational center will be opened in Tamara, a vocational high school in Nazareth and a Muslim orphans' home in Acre.

May: U. S. President John F. Kennedy addresses individual letters to the heads of Arab states giving assurances of U. S. friendship and support for UN General Assembly resolutions on the Arab refugee problem. The letter is intended to allay Arab suspicions about the impending visit of David Ben Gurion.

May: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion has a private meeting with President Kennedy.

June 15: The Nigerian prime minister arrives in Israel for a visit. Other heads of newly established African countries follow suit.

June: El Al inaugurates the first nonstop service between New York and Tel Aviv.

July 1: The Port Authority is established. At the end of July the construction of the port of Ashdod will begin.

July 5 : Israel fires a rocket, Shavit II, which was planned and constructed by Israeli scientists. The rocket is described as a research instrument for the stratosphere and ionosphere.

July: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and Upper Volta President Maurice Yameogo announce a treaty of friendship between their nations and jointly state that the Africans, who form a majority of South Africa's population, have a fundamental right to respect for their dignity.

August 15 : Israel holds national elections for the Fifth Knesset, with 1,006.964 votes cast. Mapai wins 42 seats; Herut 17 seats; Liberals 17 seats; Ahdut HaAvoda 8 seats; Mapam 9 seats; National Religious Party 12 seats.

September 4: The Fifth Knesset convenes. Kadish Luz is elected speaker.

September 6: President Ben Zvi assigns Ben Gurion the task of forming the government. The next day Ben Gurion announces that he is unable to form a government "in the existing circumstances."

September 14: The president assigns the task of forming the government to Levi Eshkol, who announces that his intention is to form a government led by Ben Gurion.

September 30: The U.A.R. disbands. Syria resumes its status as an independent country. It applies for renewed membership in the UN.

October: Prime Minister David Ben Gurion addresses the Knesset, saying the proposal to give Arab refugees freedom of choice is calculated to destroy Israel; the refugees should be resettled among their own people in countries with good land and need of manpower; Israel will assist in such resettlement, using its own experience.

October: Israel's supreme rabbinical court rules there is no doubt concerning the Jewishness of the 5.000 member Bnei Israel community from India.

November 2: The new government is installed, with David Ben Gurion as prime minister and minister of defense, and Golda Meir as minister for foreign affairs. New ministers are Yigal Allon (labor), Zerah Wahrhaftig, Eliyahu Sasson and Yosef Almogi. Mapam does not join.

December 4: Prime Minister Ben Gurion leaves for a visit in Burma.

December 11: Yitzhak Ernst Nebenzahl takes offices as state comptroller, replacing Siegfried Moses.

December 14: The Jerusalem District Court sentences Adolf Eichmann to death by hanging.

December: The U. S. votes against a draft resolution sponsored by 16 members of the UN General Assembly calling on Israel and its Arab neighbors to undertake direct negotiations to settle the dispute between them, including the question of the Arab refugees. Israel favors and the Arab states oppose the resolution.

The Israel Academy of Sciences and the Humanities is established in Jerusalem through the adoption of a law by the Knesset. Its function is to advise the government in sciences and humanities and to represent Israel at international conferences.

Next to the ruins of Roman and Crusader Caesarea an 18-hole golf course with club house, villas and hotels is built.

By the first half of 1961, an estimated 5.000 of 11.000 Jews living in Cuba at the time Fidel Castro came to power, emigrate. 3.500 go to the United States, others to Israel, to Latin American countries, and Canada.

The first trial held in the Soviet Union pursuant to legislation enacted to fight economic crimes involves two Jewish defendants, Rokotov and Faibishevich. During the next to years, about 56 trials are held, and 111 defendants (60% of them Jews), are sentenced to death.

Stanley Kramer directs "Judgment at Nuremberg", a film about the war crime trials held in postwar Germany, which reflects on the question of German guilt. The movie shows documentary films of the liberation of Buchenwald and its victims.

July: The publication of a Yiddish periodical "Sovetish Heymland", under the editorship of party functionary Aron Vergelis, begins in the Soviet Union. Twenty-five thousand copies of the bimonthly magazine are printed.

September: Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar" is published. The poem denounces those who reject Jewish martyrdom and is a symbol of the opposition to the official and popular antisemitic climate in the Soviet Union. It arouses severe criticism in official literary circles and from Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Government.

October: Three leaders of the Leningrad Jewish community and three leaders of the Moscow Jewish community are arrested, tried and convicted of supplying information to a capitalist state embassy. All receive prison terms. Soviet press reports deny that Jews are being persecuted and accuse Israeli agents of involving them in espionage activities.

December: The World Council of Churches, representing 342 churches in 120 countries, condemns antisemitism as a sin against God and man. "In Christian teaching the historic events which led us to the crucifixion should not be so presented as to fasten upon the Jewish people of today responsibilities which belong to our corporate humanity and not to one race or community."

Raul Hilberg, U. S. historian, writes "The Destruction of the European Jews", based on the first detailed study of German documents on the Holocaust. His criticism of Jewish passivity, i.e. an almost complete lack of resistance to the implementation of the "final solution", will arouse controversy.

Robert Hofstadter, U. S. physicist, is awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his investigation of the structure of atomic nuclei and nucleons.

Melvin Calvin, U. S. biochemist, is awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his studies of photosynthesis.

The orally administered polio vaccine, developed by Albert Sabin, begins to be widely used. As a consequence, the disease is almost totally eradicated. In 1970, he will become president of the Weizmann Institute of Science and settle in Israel.

Brian Epstein (1934-1967), owner of a Liverpool, England, record shop, discovers the Beatles in the Cavern, a local nightclub. He shepherds them to worldwide prominence.