NEW YORK CITY, April 21, 2015 – Today, the Washington Oxi Day Foundation began a commemoration that it hopes will become an annual event across the country. Its goal is to bring the Hellenic and Jewish communities in America closer together. Washington Oxi Day Foundation President Andy Manatos met with the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee David Harris in his New York City Office to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day (pronounced “Yom Hah-ahtz-mah-oot”), which begins on the evening of April 22. Harris is a long-time friend of Manatos and the Greek-American community, and the 2013 recipient of the Oxi Day Foundation’s Metropolitan Chrysostomos Award.

Manatos said, “We are proud of the fact that both nations, the United States and Israel, looked to ancient Greece’s philosophical and governmental principles as a foundation upon which to build their countries. The Founding Fathers of America and the Founding Father of Israel learned the Greek language so they could read about and better understand ancient Greece’s democracy. That democracy included the concepts of constitutional government, trial by jury, freedom of speech, individual rights, and civilian control over the military, among many others. The flame ignited by ancient Greek democracy has, more than any other philosophy tried by humankind, brought freedom and prosperity.

“When David presented the 2014 Metropolitan Chrysostomos Award to former Israeli President Shimon Peres, President Peres explained how the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, like America’s founders Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison and others, learned Greek. President Peres said:

‘David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the state of Israel, decided to learn the Greek language. Why? He thought there was something missing in our history, and that was the meaning of the state. He thought, we have great prophets, we have great priests, maybe we have some good kings, but we don’t know real statesmen. He decided to learn the Greek philosophy in order to understand what it meant to be a head of a state. He studied the Greek language, and made it part of our ideology.’

To see a video of this presentation, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWmN3tWdoqI

“We Hellenes welcome the celebration of the birth of these nations, the United States and Israel, which are the modern progeny of these ancient Greek principles. Therefore we take great pride in joining our Israeli friends in celebrating today Israel’s Independence Day – Yom Ha’atzmaut.

“Next year the Foundation plans to initiate such celebrations between Greek-Americans and representatives of the government of Israel on Yom Ha’atzmaut in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, DC.”