Long-Delayed Hanukkah for Goldfarb

Recently freed Soviet dissident David Goldfarb made plans Thursday to leave his Manhattan hospital bed and attend his first Hanukkah celebration in more than 60 years.

“I am happy and I am satisfied,” Goldfarb, 68, said from his bed at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. “I am going to take part in the ceremony that symbolizes the freedom of the Jews.”

If all goes as scheduled, a private car will take Goldfarb from the hospital where he has stayed since arriving in the United States in October and take him to the celebration tonight at the Temple Shaaray Tefila.

The invitation was extended earlier this month, and his son, Alexander Goldfarb, said the ailing dissident seized on the opportunity to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Lights for the first time since 1923.

Goldfarb, who is suffering from lung cancer and diabetes, arrived in the United States on Oct. 16 after an eight-year battle to leave his Soviet homeland.