Their First Hanukkah in the Holy Land

Stand for Israel  |  December 20, 2017

This week a Fellowship Freedom Flight landed at Ben Gurion Airport, giving 208 new olim (immigrants) a wonderful Hanukkah gift – the gift of new lives in their biblical homeland. Our friends at JNS report on this miraculous event during this season of miracles, made possible by The Fellowship’s faithful supporters:

The flight of 208 immigrants was chartered by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship) and arrived at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on the seventh day of Hanukkah. The immigrants enjoyed a festive breakfast of jelly doughnuts and lit a menorah in the airport.

“It is so symbolic that you arrived in Israel at the height of the Festival of Lights—Hanukkah,” Israel’s Minister of Aliyah and Integration Sofa Landver told the new immigrants.

“You are adding a lot of light to the state of Israel, and I hope that your first Hanukkah lights in Israel will light your way to building a new home,” she said.

Representatives from The Fellowship also greeted the immigrants at the airport.

“You’ve arrived just at the right time,” Yael Eckstein, the organization’s global executive vice president, told the group. “Like the miracle of Hanukkah, it’s a big miracle that you’ve arrived…”