As Jews around the world this week celebrated the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days, one Jerusalem couple was marking a very different Chanukah miracle – one bestowed on them by medical science.
According to a spokeswoman at Shaare Zedek Hospital, the couple, enrolled in the hospital’s in vitro fertilization program, had been unable to conceive during six previous cycles of treatment. But in the seventh cycle, the spokeswoman said, doctors tried a new technique on the 38-year-old wife, who was identified only as Yehudit.
“Just in time for Chanukah, when we relate the miracle of the oil, Yehudit had her own miracle – she gave birth to a baby boy,” the spokeswoman told Israel Radio.
Elsewhere in the country, Israelis marked the holiday in more traditional ways, lighting the menorah and eating the traditional potato pancakes and jelly donuts.
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