In this handout image provided by American Friends of Lubavitch, (L-R) Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and Rabbis Levi Shemtov and Nachman Holtzberg acknowledge the estimated two thousand event participants, after lighting the National Menorah on the Ellipse in front of the White House December 21, 2008 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images).
Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski, left, passes a lit candle to the country’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, right, as Israel’s Culture attache Alon Simhayoff , center, looks on during a Hanukkah celebration in Warsaw, Poland, Sunday Dec. 21, 2008. Kaczynski’s visit to Nozyk Synagogue marks the first time that a Polish president has visited a synagogue in his country. (AP Photo by Czarek Sokolowski).
Russia’s chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, left, and Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, right, light the first candle at the menorah marking the start of Hanukkah in front of the Moscow Kremlin, late Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008, with the Kremlin’s Troitskaya (Trinity) Tower in the background. Dozens of people huddled together in below-freezing temperatures on Saturday outside the Kremlin to watch the lighting of a 5-meter (16.5-foot) high menorah. The lighting of a menorah begins an eight-day commemoration of the Jewish uprising in the second century B.C. against the Greek-Syrian kingdom, which had tried to put statues of Greek gods in the Jewish
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