57th to 74th St. up Fifth Ave.
Sunday, June 3, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
www.salutetoisrael.com
Sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council, the annual Celebrate Israel Parade, previously known as the Salute to Israel Parade, takes place on Sunday, June 3, on Fifth Ave. from Fifty-seventh to Seventy-fourth Sts. This year’s theme is “Israel Branches Out,” focusing on the sixty-four-year-old Mideast country “being fruitful, growing flowers and other crops, and finding its roots, seeds, etc.” The parade, which features more than thirty thousand marchers and hundreds of thousands of viewers, will be led by Grand Marshal Harvey Kaylie, a CCNY graduate, philanthropist, and founder of the Brooklyn-based design, manufacture, and distribution company Mini-Circuits. The 2012 parade lineup includes the NYC Transit Pipes & Drums, the Shabazz High School Marching Band, the Amir and Ron Orchestra, the Brooklyn Jumbies, the Youth Arts Marching Cobras, the Israeli Dance Institute, Sisters in Motion, the Approaching Storm Marching Band, Areyvut Mitzvah Clowns, the DSNY Pipes and Drums of the Emerald Society, and the Frederick Douglass Academy Harlem Samba. Among the special guests are Dr. Ruth Westheimer, anchorman Harry Martin, reporter Robert Moses, sports commentator Becky Griffith, and such bands as SOULFARM, Blue Fringe, Musical Minds, J Viewz, the Moshe Hecht Band, and 613.