The State of Israel was established on Friday, May 14, 1948, the day before the British Mandate was due to expire. The news was greeted with ecstatic celebration in Chicago and in Jewish communities around the world. That Sunday, more than 25,000 people gathered at the Chicago Stadium to salute the new state. A photograph of and an “old patriarch” (later identified as Elisha Kite) overcome by emotion and dancing in the aisles ran in many of the local papers the following day.