Jerusalem celebration set

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

“Celebrating Jerusalem Day: The 50th Anniversary of the Reunification” will be the topic of a free 12:30 p.m. May 21 program in the multipurpose room at the Jewish Community Center, 505 Gypsy Lane.

The featured speaker will be Dr. Itzhak Brook, who was an Israeli Army medic during the six-day Arab-Israeli War, June 5-10, 1967, during which Israel captured East Jerusalem, which it still occupies today.

“From 1948 [when the modern-day State of Israel was founded] up to the war in ’67, Israel had no access to the holiest sites of Jerusalem,” noted Bonnie Deutsch Burdman, director of community relations and government affairs for the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

Dr. Brook was an Israeli Army battalion physician during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and served 27 years in the U.S. Navy.

Dr. Brook is a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and past chairman of the Anti-Infective Drug Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

For reservations, call Gon Erez at 330-746-3250, ext. 159, by May 17.

“It’s an opportunity to really commemorate this miraculous event – the moment that Israel survived and the moment when Jerusalem was reunited,” Burdman said of the event.