top

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.

Chairmen Absorption Department: Avraham Czygel, Moshe Erem.

Chairman Settlement Department: Raanan Weitz.

Chairman Youth Aliyah Department:Moshe Kol.

December, 30: The 26th Zionist Congress opens in Jerusalem.

The government declares the Benei Israel from India to be Jews in every respect, equal in their rights to all other Jews. The decision follows public demonstrations resulting from rabbinic hesitancy regarding matrimonial matters affecting them. By 1969, over 12,000 Benei Israel will have emigrated to Israel.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's younger brother, Benzion Shkolnik, receives a rare exit permit from the Soviet Union and arrives in Israel.

New immigrants in 1964: 54,716.

January 1: Yitzhak Rabin replaces Zvi Zur as chief of staff.

January 5 : Pope Paul VI visits Christian holy places in Jordan and Israel.

January 13 : At the first summit meeting of Arab countries in Cairo, Syria proposes making use of Palestinian refugees to destabilize Israel. The proposal is accepted. The summit also resolves to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River in order to preclude Israeli access to them.

January 19: Egyptian pilot Mahmud Abbas Hilmi lands in Israel in a Yak training plane and requests political asylum.

March 3: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, a widower, marries Knesset librarian Miriam Zelikowitz.

March 17: Yitzhak Nissim is elected Sephardi Chief Rabbi, and Yehuda Isser Unterman becomes Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi.

March: The "Shalom", flagship of Israel's Zim line completes her maiden luxury cruise. The ship serves an exclusively kosher cuisine in deference to religious objections to dual cuisine, preferred by the ship's operators as an attraction to passengers.

May 29 : The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is founded in East Jerusalem. According to its founding manifesto the organization's aim is to "attain the objective of liquidating Israel". To this purpose, a Palestine Liberation Army is established. The PLO will receive financial backing from the Arab governments. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser hopes to win patronage of the Palestinians from Syria and places both Sinai and the Gaza Strip at the PLO's disposal.

May: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol visits President Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington, the first official visit of an Israeli prime minister in the U.S.

May: The first agreement between Israel and the Common Market is signed in Brussels.

June 10: The National Water Carrier is fully operational following a running-in period.

June 16: The Knesset passes a basic law titled "The President of the State."

June: Prime Minister Levi Eshkol visits France and meets with President Charles de Gaulle, who repeatedly refers to Israel as "our friend and ally".

September 11: The second Arab summit reaffirms the diversion by the Arabs of the Jordan Rover headwaters in order to preclude Israeli access.

September: Mordechai Oren, an Israeli who had been a prosecution witness in the 1952 trial of Rudolf Slansky, is officially exonerated by the Czech judicial authorities. Oren was released after serving 3 years of his 15-year term. He waged a long battle to clear his name and that of his cousin Shimon Ornstein, who was also used to falsely incriminate Slansky.

October 29 : The new town of Karmiel, the center of the Galilee development plan, initiated by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, is inaugurated. It is planned for a population of 50.000.

November 2: The 16th World Chess Championship opens in Jerusalem.

November 3: A shooting incident with the Syrians develops in the Tel Dan vicinity.

November 4: Mapai is in a state of internal dissent over rivalry between David Ben Gurion, who continues to serve as an MK, and Levi Eshkol; continued fall out from the Lavon Affair; and pressure from a majority to amalgam with Ahdut Haavoda. Moshe Dayan, who supports Ben Gurion, resigns as minister of agriculture. His successor will be Chaim Gvati.

November 7: A group of Mapai activists, calling themselves "From the Foundations", identified with Pinhas Lavon, leaves the party.

November 13: Israel uses air power to silence heavy Syrian artillery fire along the border.

November 15: The Mapai executive approves an alliance with Ahdut Haavoda.

December 14: Levi Eshkol announces his resignation as a result of a dispute with Ben Gurion related to the Lavon Affair. The government resigns as well.

December 22: A new government is formed by Levi Eshkol.

December 23: Jordanian soldiers fire at an Israeli police escort accompanying Arab women picking olives in the Israeli enclave on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.

The Bezalel National Museum in Jerusalem holds an exhibition of the collection of Jewish art of Heinrich Feuchtwanger.

May: A memorial at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland is dedicated in the presence of high Polish officials and many Jewish delegations from abroad. A huge stone holding a menorah surrounded by smaller stones representing cities and villages where the Jewish victims lived, the memorial is situated on the spot where the gas ovens once stood.

June: Spain's General Francisco Franco establishes a center for Hispanic-Jewish (Sephardic) Studies and designates El Transito synagogue of Toledo, erected in the 14th century by Samuel Abulafia (ca. 1320-1361), as a museum.

October: Between 12 October and 24 August 1965, 10 SS men who served at Treblinka, including Kurt Franz, deputy commander of the camp, are tried for war crimes by the West German government, at Düsseldorf. Franz and three others who are convicted are sentenced to life imprisonment; five are sentenced to 5 1/2 years of imprisonment; one is acquitted.

November:At the close of the third session of the Second Vatican Council, the Council Fathers specifically repudiate the notion of the Jewish people as "rejected, cursed or guilty of deicide" and admonish Catholics not to "teach anything that could give rise to hatred or contempt of Jews in the hearts of Christians."

Saul Bellow, U.S. novelist, writes "Herzog", a novel of Moses Herzog, a professor of history, and his involvements with two wives, his children, a friend who betrays him, and his career in writing and teaching. The book is a humorous attack on higher education in America.

Isaac Bashevis Singer publishes "Short Friday, and Other Stories."

Arthur Miller writes "After the Fall", a play in which a young Jewish lawyer tries to comprehend why he has failed in his relationships with his mother, his wives and his friends.

The Broadway musical "Fiddler on the Roof" with a score by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock and choreography by Jerome Robbins, opens. It is based on Yiddish stories by Sholom Aleichem. Zero Mostel (1915-1977) plays the role of Tevye. (Photo)

Paul Simon (b. 1941) and Art Garfunkel (b. 1941), a singing duo known for their gentle folk-rock style, release their first album, "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M."

Konrad Bloch, U.S. biochemist is awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discoveries of the mechanism of cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.

Marc Chagall's ceiling painting at the Paris Opera House is inaugurated.

The permanent exhibition Synagogue Textile Treasures from the 16th to the 20th Centuries is opened in the Jewish State Museum in Prague.