{"id":1124,"date":"2008-12-16T16:27:17","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T16:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6.php"},"modified":"2008-12-16T16:27:17","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T16:27:17","slug":"bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6","title":{"rendered":"Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel&#8217;s 60th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON &#8211; President George W. Bush recognized Hanukkah on Monday while paying tribute to the nation of Israel&#8217;s 60th anniversary earlier this year.<br \/>\nThe story of Hanukkah recalls the miraculous victory of a small band of patriots against tyranny, and the oil that burned for eight nights, Bush said in welcoming about 70 guests to the White House reception for the holiday, which begins at sundown on Dec. 21.<br \/>\nHanukkah commemorates the Jews&#8217; successful rebellion against suppression of their religion under the Syrian-Greek empire in 165 B.C. Led by the Maccabee family, the Jews drove the Greeks from Jerusalem and reclaimed the Jerusalem Temple for religious services.<br \/>\nBush compared the Maccabee&#8217;s victory with the founding of the state of Israel, which he called &#8220;another miraculous victory.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;When President Harry Truman led the world in recognizing Israel in May of 1948, many wondered whether the small nation could possibly survive,&#8221; Bush said.<br \/>\nIn honor of this event, the reception featured the lighting of a menorah given to Truman by Israel&#8217;s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The grandsons of these two leaders, Clifton Truman Daniel and Yariv Ben-Eliezer, lit the menorah together.<br \/>\nAfter the lighting, Kol Zimra, an a cappella Jewish choir, performed a medley.<br \/>\nAttorney General Michael Mukasey, Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., were in attendance.<br \/>\n<em>Associated Press &#8211; December 15, 2008<br \/>\nCopyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON &#8211; President George W. Bush recognized Hanukkah on Monday while paying tribute to the nation of Israel&#8217;s 60th anniversary earlier this year. The story of Hanukkah recalls the miraculous victory of a small band of patriots against tyranny, and the oil that burned for eight nights, Bush said in welcoming about 70 guests to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel&#039;s 60th Birthday<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel&#039;s 60th Birthday\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON &#8211; President George W. Bush recognized Hanukkah on Monday while paying tribute to the nation of Israel&#8217;s 60th anniversary earlier this year. The story of Hanukkah recalls the miraculous victory of a small band of patriots against tyranny, and the oil that burned for eight nights, Bush said in welcoming about 70 guests to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-16T16:27:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel's 60th Birthday","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel's 60th Birthday","og_description":"WASHINGTON &#8211; President George W. Bush recognized Hanukkah on Monday while paying tribute to the nation of Israel&#8217;s 60th anniversary earlier this year. The story of Hanukkah recalls the miraculous victory of a small band of patriots against tyranny, and the oil that burned for eight nights, Bush said in welcoming about 70 guests to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-12-16T16:27:17+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6","name":"Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel's 60th Birthday","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-12-16T16:27:17+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-16T16:27:17+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/bush-honors-hanukkah-israels-6#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bush Honors Hanukkah, Israel&#8217;s 60th Birthday"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}