Sacred and Mundane in Hanukkah and Beyond

Nero Ya'ir – 5772

Rabbi Michael Abraham

Introduction

Nachmanides' remarks and the dispute in the Jerusalem Talmud

Explaining the dispute

The basic difficulties

The character of the Hasmonean House

The character of the Greeks in the eyes of the Sages

The overall picture and its implications

Initial conclusion: a separation between the sacred and the mundane

A halakhic perspective: holiness, impurity, and the mundane

On kingship and the realm of the mundane in our time and in general

The doctrine of tzimtzum

Introduction

Maimonides, at the beginning of the laws of Hanukkah (3:1), writes:

In the Second Temple period, when Greece ruled, they decreed decrees against Israel, nullified their religion, did not allow them to engage in Torah and commandments, laid hands on their property and their daughters, entered the Sanctuary, breached it, and defiled what had been pure. Israel suffered greatly because of them, and they oppressed them terribly, until the God of our ancestors had mercy on them and saved them from their hand. Then the sons of Hasmonean, the High Priests, overcame them and killed them, saved Israel from their hand, and established a king from among the priests. Kingship returned to Israel for more than two hundred years, until the Second Destruction.

At the end of his remarks, we see that the restoration of kingship to Israel is one of the virtues of the Hasmonean victory over the Greeks. Many see these words as a source for the importance of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, to the point of viewing it as an expression of holiness appearing in the world. In what follows, I would like to moderate that conclusion somewhat and place it in a more modest perspective, which, to the best of my understanding, emerges from Nachmanides' well-known comments in the portion of Vayechi.

Nachmanides' remarks and the dispute in the Jerusalem Talmud

In Jacob's blessing to Judah (Genesis 49:10), he says:

'The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of peoples.'

The wording of the verse appears to be a prophecy about the future, that the scepter will not depart from Judah, or from the house of David. But some have also seen in this verse a normative meaning, that is, a command. Thus Nachmanides writes there:

Rather, its meaning is that the scepter shall not depart from Judah to one of his brothers, for the kingship of Israel, the rule over them, shall come from him, and none of his brothers shall rule over him. Likewise, the lawgiver shall not depart from between his feet, for every lawgiver in Israel who holds the king's signet shall come from him, for he shall rule and command all Israel, and the seal of kingship shall belong to him, until Shiloh comes, and to him all peoples shall gather, to do with them all as he wishes. This is the Messiah. For the scepter alludes to David, who was the first king to possess the royal scepter, and Shiloh is his son, to whom the peoples shall gather.

He then discusses the kingship of Saul and the other kings. Afterward he writes:

In my view, the kings who reigned over Israel from the other tribes after David violated their father's intention and transferred the inheritance. They relied on the statement of Ahijah the Shilonite, the prophet who anointed Jeroboam and said, 'And I will afflict the seed of David for this, but not forever' (I Kings 11:39). But when Israel continued appointing over themselves kings from the other tribes, king after king, and did not return to the kingdom of Judah, they violated the old patriarch's charge and were punished for it, as Hosea said (8:4), 'They made kings, but not by Me.'

According to Nachmanides, this is a command and not a prophecy. The conclusion from that interpretation is that one who appoints a king who is not from the tribe of Judah, and from the house of David, violates a prohibition, although it was not counted in the formal enumeration of the commandments.

Nachmanides now continues and explains, in light of this, the punishment of the Hasmoneans:

This was the punishment of the Hasmoneans who reigned in the Second Temple period. They were pious men of the Most High, and were it not for them, Torah and the commandments would have been forgotten from Israel. Even so, they were severely punished: the four sons of the aged Hasmonean, those pious men who reigned one after another, despite all their valor and success, fell by the sword into the hands of their enemies. In the end, the punishment culminated in what the Sages said: 'Anyone who says: I come from the house of Hasmonean, is a slave' (Bava Batra 3b), for all of them were cut off because of this sin. Although some punishment also befell the descendants of Shimon because of the Sadducees, all the seed of the righteous Mattathias the Hasmonean perished only because of this: they reigned though they were not from the seed of Judah and the house of David, and they entirely removed the scepter and the lawgiver. Their punishment was measure for measure: the Holy One, blessed be He, caused their slaves to rule over them, and those slaves destroyed them.

It is also possible that there was a sin in their kingship because they were priests, and they had been commanded, 'You shall safeguard your priesthood for everything of the altar and for within the curtain, and you shall serve; I give your priesthood as a service of gift' (Numbers 18:7). They were not meant to reign, but only to serve the service of God.

Nachmanides cites the Talmud in Bava Batra, which describes how the entire Hasmonean house was wiped out, to the very last one, by their slaves. He explains that this was measure for measure, because they ruled unlawfully. It should be noted that he raises here two possibilities for explaining their transgression in enthroning themselves: a. the punishment came because they enthroned themselves although they were not from the tribe of Judah; b. the punishment came because they enthroned themselves while belonging to the tribe of Levi. According to the second possibility, beyond the problem that they were not from Judah, which of course applies to all the tribes, a king from the tribe of Levi involves a unique problem.

He now adds that this is, in fact, a dispute between Amoraim in the Jerusalem Talmud, Horayot:

I found in the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Horayot (3:2 [15b]): 'Priestly kings are not anointed.' Rabbi Yehuda said: this is because of 'The scepter shall not depart from Judah' (Genesis 49:10). Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said: 'That he and his sons may long endure on his kingdom in the midst of Israel' (Deuteronomy 17:20). What is written after that? 'The Levitical priests shall not have…' (ibid. 18:1). Thus they taught here that kings from among the priests, the descendants of Aaron, are not anointed. At first it is explained that this is for the honor of Judah, since authority is not to depart from that tribe. Therefore, even though Israel may appoint over themselves a king from the other tribes as a temporary necessity, they do not anoint such kings, so that royal majesty will not rest upon them; rather they are to be like judges and officers. The priests were mentioned because, although they themselves are fit for anointing, they are not anointed for kingship, and all the more so the other tribes, as was said in the Talmud (Horayot 11b), that only kings of the house of David are anointed. Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba explained that the Torah itself bars the priests and Levites, the whole tribe of Levi, from having a share and inheritance in kingship. And this is a fitting and proper view.

The dispute in the Jerusalem Talmud concerns whether the sin of the Hasmoneans was because they were not from the tribe of Judah, or both because of that and because they were from the tribe of Levi. In any event, the Jerusalem Talmud too adopts a normative reading of the verse. The dispute is whether the exposition of the verse 'The Levitical priests shall not have…' is read in a way that forbids enthroning even priests, from the juxtaposition of that verse to the section dealing with the king, that is, one might initially have thought that priests were excluded from the prohibition applying to all the other tribes; or whether it specifically forbids priests, in addition to the general prohibition that includes all the other tribes. These are two completely opposite conceptions: the first holds that priests are more fit to rule than the other tribes, and therefore a special innovation is needed to teach that they too are disqualified from kingship. The second sees priestly kingship as more problematic than kingship from the other tribes[1].

It is important to note that there is no reason to see here a substantive dispute between Nachmanides and Maimonides. Even if Maimonides sees the restoration of kingship to Israel as a positive consequence of the war against the Greeks, that does not mean that he viewed positively the enthronement of kings who were not from the tribe of Judah and the house of David (see Sefer HaMitzvot, prohibition 362, and the Thirteen Principles as presented in his commentary to the Mishnah, Sanhedrin ch. 10, principle 12)[2].

Explaining the dispute

What is the point at issue between the two views presented in the Jerusalem Talmud and in Nachmanides? The first conception is the classic one: this is a transfer of inheritance. It should be noted that in the Jerusalem Talmud this is described as a transfer of inheritance, not as an injury to the institution of monarchy. That is, there is here a violation of Jacob's will, which bequeathed kingship to Judah, but not necessarily a violation of a Torah command that a king must come from the house of David. There is indeed an initial assumption that priests might be exempt from this, since there is in them something more fitting for kingship, but in the end that is rejected and they are included in the general prohibition of 'The scepter shall not depart from Judah.' The second conception is that beyond the requirement that a king come from the house of David, there is an additional requirement that he not be a priest or a Levite. Here that remains true even in the conclusion: one who appoints a king from among the priests violates two prohibitions.

Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba's conception, which seems to Nachmanides at the end of his remarks to be 'a fitting and proper view,' is that the Torah commands us to separate authorities. The priest and the Levite are occupied with holiness, and they are not supposed to be kings, because kings deal with mundane affairs. This is a demand to separate the sacred from the mundane.

It should be noted that in Jewish law there is no full separation of governmental powers in the modern sense. The religious court is the legislative branch and the judicial branch, and when there is no king it also receives executive powers, as we learned in tractate Moed Katan (6a; and see Mishnah Shekalim 1:1):

But this is contradicted by what we learned: On the first of Adar announcements are made about the shekels and about mixed species. On the fifteenth, the Megillah is read in walled cities, and they go out to clear the roads, repair the streets, inspect the ritual baths, attend to all public needs, mark the graves, and enforce the laws of mixed species.

The religious court is the Ministry of Transport, as it were, and is entrusted with all public needs. We should remember that the Mishnah was written in a period when there was no king, but when there is a king he apparently serves as the executive authority and takes into his own hands the mundane sphere.

Even so, the verse in the portion of Vayechi contains a demand to separate those who deal with holiness from involvement in mundane matters. Priests and Levites are not supposed to be kings, not only because they are not from the tribe of Judah, but by virtue of belonging to the tribe of Levi, which deals with holiness.

The basic difficulties

There is a major novelty here in the very demand to separate the sacred from the mundane. But beyond that, one should note that in Nachmanides' eyes the sin of those who failed to separate the sacred from the mundane was so grave that, despite the great self-sacrifice of the Hasmoneans, who gave their lives for the independence of Israel and for the war against Greece, and for Torah and the commandments in general, despite all those merits that surely stood in their favor, they were all exterminated, to the last one, by their slaves, because of this sin of not insisting on separating the sacred from the mundane.

This description raises two important questions: a. why is this sin so grave? b. and if it is indeed so grave, why did the Hasmoneans, who were people of self-sacrifice for Torah and the commandments, fail in this sin? Was this merely a pursuit of honor and power?

We will try to understand the second difficulty by considering the character and mode of conduct of the Hasmonean house. After that we will return to the first difficulty.

The character of the Hasmonean House

A look at the sources of the Sages shows that the Hasmoneans sought to stamp a very particular character on the conduct of the nation's life. The Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashanah (18b) says, in a passage from Megillat Ta'anit:

Rav Aha bar Huna objected: On the third of Tishrei the mention of the Name was abolished from legal documents, for the Greek kingdom had decreed a religious persecution forbidding mention of Heaven's Name on their lips. When the Hasmonean kingdom prevailed and defeated them, they enacted that God's Name should be mentioned even in documents. Thus they would write: 'In year such-and-such of Yohanan the High Priest, to the Most High God.' When the Sages heard of this matter, they said: tomorrow this one will repay his debt, and the document will be thrown into the garbage. So they abolished the practice. That day they made into a festival.

The Greek kingdom decreed that God's Name not be mentioned, and in response the Hasmoneans, upon their victory, enacted that God's Name be mentioned in legal documents. The meaning of this is that the Hasmonean house ordained that commerce in the marketplace be conducted in accordance with the Name of God. The sacred is to be applied to the mundane; one is not to leave a sphere of ordinary life detached from the sacred, from God's Name.

Another example, more esoteric, is found in the Mishnah in Berakhot (9:5), where we read:

They also enacted that a person should greet his fellow with the Name, as it is said: 'And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers: The Lord be with you; and they answered him: The Lord bless you' (Ruth 2:4); and it says: 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior' (Judges 6:12); and it says: 'Do not despise your mother when she is old' (Proverbs 23:22); and it says: 'It is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah' (Psalms 119:126). Rabbi Natan says: They voided Your Torah because it was a time to act for the Lord.

And Rashi there (54a) explains:

'That a person should greet his fellow with the Name' means with the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He. We do not say that this belittles the honor of Heaven for the sake of human dignity by bringing God's Name into it. They learned it from Boaz, who said: 'The Lord be with you,' and from the angel who said to Gideon: 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.'

'And it says: It is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah' means that sometimes one suspends words of Torah in order to act for the Lord. So too here: one whose intention is to greet his fellow, this is the will of the Omnipresent, as it says, 'Seek peace and pursue it'; therefore it is permitted to set aside the Torah and do something that appears forbidden.

That is, this enactment was problematic, but they saw it as a temporary need in order to act for God. Who were those who enacted this ordinance? Ostensibly, it was in the days of Boaz, for the verse cited here is from the book of Ruth. But in the Talmud (63a) some derived it from Gideon. Among the medieval authorities the opinions are divided[3]. Some learned that the enactment goes back to Boaz (see Makkot 23b, and Ruth Rabbah 4:5). Others understood it to be an enactment of Ezra (see Rashash to Bava Kamma 82a).

Now in Sefer HaMikhtam, by Rabbenu David of Narbonne (printed in Ginzei Rishonim to Berakhot, pp. 121-122), he cites in the name of the Raavad:

'They enacted that a person should greet his fellow. I do not know when this enactment was instituted. For such an enactment would only have been necessary because they were attached to idolatry and would say that the Name of God should not be mentioned, while the pious among them would mention it even in greeting. In the Second Temple period there was no such attachment to idolatry, so perhaps this enactment was in the days of Boaz, even though it appears later in the Mishnah. Or perhaps it was in the days of the Greeks, who issued decrees against Israel, and when the Hasmoneans prevailed they enacted this and learned it from the earlier ones, as it says: “And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem.” So too the Jerusalem Talmud implies that Boaz enacted it. And in the Tosefta: when the early elders saw that Torah was being forgotten from Israel, they would slip it in among them, as it says: “And behold, Boaz…” It appears that this enactment was not from the days of Boaz, but that the pious of that generation practiced it on their own.'

The Raavad raises here the possibility that this enactment came from the court of the Hasmoneans. This is a very puzzling assertion. There is no basis for it in the Talmudic discussions, neither in Berakhot 63a nor in Makkot 23b, nor in the words of the Sages generally.

The more puzzling and unsupported this assertion is, the more one must look for the inner logic of why the Raavad attached it specifically to the Hasmonean house. It seems that he thought such an enactment suited the character of the Hasmoneans very well. They were zealots, and we have seen that they decided to impose the sacred on the mundane in the sphere of commerce. That is why they ordained that commerce be conducted in the Name of God. Therefore the Raavad infers that they also ordained that human relations be conducted in the Name of God, that is, that one greet his fellow using the Name. Indeed, Rabbi Israel Shpansky (ibid., note **19) also raises the possibility that the Raavad learned this from the sugya in Rosh Hashanah about the enactment to put God's Name on documents.

From here one may assume that their seizure of kingship too was carried out out of that same tendency: as part of imposing the sacred on the mundane, they understood the mundane as needing to be governed by the sacred. The priests should be the kings. If so, the takeover of the monarchy was done in the name of an ideology that sees all of reality as holy. This seems to be the meaning of the Jerusalem Talmud cited by Nachmanides, and the meaning of Nachmanides' own words.

We can now answer the second difficulty raised above: how could such exalted holy men suffer from a lust for power that led them to violate the prohibition of 'The Levitical priests shall not have…' ? As we have seen here, this was not a lust for power but an ideology that advocates an imperialism of holiness — an ideology unwilling to leave any room for the mundane in our reality. That was the motivation of the Hasmoneans, and it suits their character and tendencies.

The character of the Greeks in the eyes of the Sages

As we saw above, the enactment to write God's Name on legal documents was a response to the Greek decree forbidding use of God's Name. In the language of the Sages: 'Write for yourselves on the horn of an ox: We have no share in the God of Israel' (Genesis Rabbah 2:4). According to the Raavad, the enactment to greet one's fellow with the Name is likewise a response to that same Greek policy. And indeed, one can see consistently that this was the Greek ideology: to impose the mundane on the sacred.

In the piyyut 'Maoz Tzur,' dedicated to the succession of our persecutors throughout the generations, the Greeks are depicted in the words 'They breached the walls of my towers and defiled all the oils.' That is, the central Greek characteristic is the breaching of walls. The source seems to be the Mishnah in Middot (2:3):

Further in was a soreg, ten handbreadths high, and there were thirteen breaches there which the Greek kings had broken through. They later repaired them and ordained thirteen prostrations corresponding to them. Further in was the hel.

That is, the Greeks made thirteen breaches in the soreg, and the Hasmonean house repaired them.

What was the function of the soreg? This is not entirely clear, and several hypotheses have been proposed[4]. Tosafot Yom Tov there cites several possibilities and rejects them all:

'Ten handbreadths high': the Kesef Mishneh wrote, in chapter 5 of the laws of the Temple, in the name of the Rosh, that the soreg was made for carrying on the Sabbath, and therefore it was ten handbreadths high like any partition. The enclosure of the Temple Mount was ineffective, since it was enclosed and only afterward inhabited. But I am astonished, for at the end of chapter 5 of Pesachim we learned: the first group went out with their Passover offerings and sat on the Temple Mount, and the second in the hel. If the enclosure of the Temple Mount were ineffective, how did they carry their Passover offerings there? Therefore it seems to me that for carrying, no additional structure was needed, because by Torah law any area enclosed by four walls is a full private domain, as I wrote at the beginning of tractate Shabbat, and rabbinic restrictions were not decreed in the Temple. Moreover, since farther inside the Temple Mount there was a place for the Temple guards to stay, why would that not count as enclosed for dwelling from the outset? All the more so farther in, in the Temple court with its chambers for the priests and Levites who served the sacred service.'

As for the reason for the construction of the soreg, one might have said that it was an outside divider between one group and another in Pesachim, but it does not seem to me that this structure was built for that purpose. Granted, once the structure existed, they would divide themselves by means of these distinctions and separations; but to build it from the outset for that reason does not seem plausible. For what need was there for a distinction between one group and another?

After rejecting all the other possibilities, his conclusion is that the purpose of the soreg was to mark the boundary beyond which gentiles could not proceed within the Temple precincts:

But what seems correct to me regarding this structure of the soreg is what I already wrote, with God's help, in my book Tzurat HaBayit, section 52: that it was made to create a place of separation between the gentiles who entered to pray in the house of God and Israel; like what we learned in the first chapter of Kelim [1:8]: the hel is holier than it, for gentiles and those defiled by a corpse may not enter there.

From this Mishnah I raised an objection to Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, who wrote in his commentary to Ezekiel as follows: 'The first outer court. Our Sages said that in the Second Temple there was a women's court and that galleries were built there, and I have seen in the commentaries of Christian scholars that the first court was designated for gentiles to pray in the house of God, as Solomon said in his prayer, “And also concerning the foreigner” — and their view seems correct to me, for in the future the prophets foretold that many peoples would go to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob to receive His teaching, and therefore it was fitting that there be designated for them a special outer place, more distant from the sacred; and perhaps above that court there was, as they say, a gallery for women, who would see from above while the gentiles were in the court below…' But had he remembered the Mishnah in Kelim, he would not have written that this designated place was the women's court, for they were prevented from entering even the hel. And to say that these things applied only when their power was strong is impossible in every respect. If their power was strong, who would restrain them, and who would set boundaries for the peoples, assigning them a defined place and limit they could not cross? Moreover, the very implication of the Christian scholars' words is that they had a designated place granted with Israel's consent; and to say that some compromise was made with them while their power was strong also does not seem likely.

Rather, the main point is that even the Christian scholars meant only the Temple Mount up to the hel; that place was designated for them. The fact that they called it a 'court' was only a borrowed term. In any case, according to our Mishnah, which is reliable testimony, gentiles were not permitted to enter the hel, and therefore the soreg was made.

From here he explains why the Greeks breached the thirteen openings in the soreg:

In later editions of the aforementioned book I added a very good explanation for why the Greeks broke breaches in it: since it had been made to distinguish them from a more inward entry, the Greeks breached it. Therefore, when Israel later returned and merited to repair them, they ordained a prostration at each repaired breach in order to thank the Lord, for He is good.

The Greek kings breached the soreg because they wanted to lower the barrier between Israel and the nations, and between the sacred and the mundane, and to bring the mundane inward into the sacred. In response, the Hasmonean rulers repaired them in order to rectify the Greek breach. Once again we see that the Greek ideology is one of breaching inward into the sacred and imposing the mundane upon it — an imperialism of the mundane. By contrast, the Hasmoneans, bearers of the opposite ideology, an imperialism of holiness, fight against them and repair what the Greeks ruined.

One should remember that the Greek conquest did not destroy the Temple. Rather, it left it standing while subordinating it to Greek purposes, by defiling it. Other conquerors destroyed the Temple, but the Greek aim was not opposition to Israel as such; it was to take it over while erasing the distinction between the mundane and the sacred. They did not want to destroy the sacred but to secularize it.

In the piyyut 'Maoz Tzur,' the Greeks are also associated with defiling the oils. That too is a profanation — a turning of the sacred into the mundane — as part of that same tendency of mundane imperialism.

Another Greek decree is the one cited at the beginning of tractate Ketubot (3b):

They said: a virgin married on Wednesday must first be violated by the governor.

And Rashi explains this there (Shabbat 23a, s.v. 'They too were included in that miracle'), in explaining the Talmud's ruling that women are obligated in Hanukkah lights:

They too were included in that miracle, for the Greeks decreed that all newly married virgins be first violated by the officer, and the miracle came about through a woman.

We see that the decree described in tractate Ketubot was issued in the days of the Greeks. The Greeks sought to insert their seed into Israel — again, to erase the boundary between themselves and Israel. So too in the words of Maimonides cited above: they laid hands on their daughters.

This also seems to be the root of the translation of the Torah into Greek, regarding which Megillat Ta'anit established three fast days, the eighth through the tenth of Tevet. There too, the goal was to secularize the sacred, that is, to turn the Torah into Greek wisdom.

If we wish to complete the triad — the people, the Torah, and the land — we should remember that the Greeks also conquered the Land of Israel, apparently as part of that same tendency. The conclusion is that on all planes alike, the Greeks sought to impose the mundane upon the sacred.

The Sages in Genesis Rabbah (2:4) describe the different exiles as follows:

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish interpreted the verse in relation to the exiles: 'And the earth was chaos' — this is the Babylonian exile, as it says, 'I looked at the earth, and behold, it was chaos' (Jeremiah 4:23); 'and void' — this is the exile of Media, as it says, 'They hurried to bring Haman' (Esther 6:14); 'and darkness' — this is the exile of Greece, which darkened the eyes of Israel with its decrees, for it would say to them: 'Write on the horn of the ox that you have no share in the God of Israel'; 'upon the face of the deep' — this is the exile of the wicked kingdom, which is unfathomable like the abyss.

What distinguishes the Greeks is the demand: 'Write for yourselves on the horn of an ox that you have no share in the God of Israel.' If so, the relationship to the Holy One, blessed be He, joins the previous triad. That too the Greeks wished to sever. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, author of Pahad Yitzhak, returns several times in his book on Hanukkah to the point that this was the first decree of religious persecution directed at Israel. All previous decrees, including Purim, were decrees to kill and destroy them or to exile them. The first time anyone went to war against faith and against the commandments themselves was in the Greek conflict. In earlier wars, the commandments could be the motive for killing the Jews, as in Purim: 'There is a certain people… and their laws are different from those of every people' (Esther 3:8), but the decree itself was to kill, not to forbid observance of the commandments.

We should remember that they decreed against circumcision, the new moon, and the Sabbath. Circumcision and Sabbath are two commandments that function as a sign distinguishing Israel. The new moon likewise symbolizes the moon, which is Israel's distinctive calendar, 'for that is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations' (Deuteronomy 4:6). All three are attempts to abolish Israel's distinctiveness.

Even on the broader cultural plane, there is the phenomenon of the Hellenizers that developed during the Greek conquest. This is exceptional in our history. We do not find in our tradition references to 'Egyptianizers,' 'Babylonianizers,' and the like. This was a result of Alexander of Macedon's effort to conquer the world culturally. He was a student of Aristotle, and one of his goals was to spread his teacher's philosophy. Therefore the struggle between the Greeks and Israel takes place on the cultural platform as well, not only on the plane of force and political control. That is why specifically during this conquest Hellenizers arose.

The overall picture and its implications

The overall picture that emerges here is that the Greeks are understood by the Sages as trying to impose the mundane on the sacred: to insert their seed into the Jewish people; to conquer the Land of Israel; to bring gentiles into the Temple; to translate the Torah into Greek; to defile the oils and the Temple; to erase the commandments and Jewish culture through Hellenization; and to sever the bond with the God of Israel. In essence, the tendency is to erase the boundary between the mundane and the sacred, and thus to turn the sacred into the mundane. It is worth seeing again the wording of Maimonides cited above:

In the Second Temple period, when Greece ruled, they decreed decrees against Israel, nullified their religion, did not allow them to engage in Torah and commandments, laid hands on their property and their daughters, entered the Sanctuary, breached it, defiled what had been pure, and caused Israel terrible distress and oppression…

This is exactly our description in concise form.

By contrast, as we have seen, the Hasmoneans sought to impose the sacred on the mundane, as an antithesis. This follows Maimonides' statement in the laws of character (2:2), that in order to correct a distortion one must sometimes apply force toward the opposite extreme, in order to bend things back toward the middle path. They sought to repair by closing breaches, writing God's Name on documents, greeting one's fellow with the Name, and imposing priesthood upon kingship — that is, to conquer the mundane by means of the sacred. This was not a policy of merely restoring the state that the Greeks had corrupted, namely restoring the sacred to stand alongside the mundane. It was an extreme reversal in the opposite direction: the imposition of the sacred upon all areas of life.

As stated, such an approach has a place as part of the struggle against the Greeks. Restoring the middle path sometimes requires an opposite extremism. But after the victory, the Hasmoneans were required to return the situation to normality, that is, to a state in which the sacred functions alongside the mundane. Yet the Hasmoneans fell in love with their extreme ideology. They continued as an alternative royal dynasty, did not restore the house of David, and did not themselves return to Temple service — let us remember that they were the sons of Mattathias the High Priest. They continued to enact ordinances that ostensibly corrected the Greek corruptions, but those ordinances were destructive. They sought to change even the state that had existed before the Greek conquest, and to move it toward the opposite extreme. There was here an exploitation of the opportunity created by the war against the Greeks in order also to fight the moderates and impose their own extreme ideology.

At first glance, this seems to be a blessed ideology — extremism and holy audacity. Yet when the Sages abolished the Hasmonean enactment to write God's Name on legal documents, the Talmud says (Rosh Hashanah 18b) that they established a festival for that abolition. Here too, Nachmanides' remarks fit in: he explains that as a punishment for this sin, despite all the merits of the Hasmonean house, not a single one of them remained. They were completely exterminated, and therefore the Talmud says: 'Anyone who says: I am from the house of Hasmonean, it is known that he is a slave.'

Initial conclusion: a separation between the sacred and the mundane

The conclusion is that, surprisingly, the Torah sees as the ideal model precisely a state in which the sacred functions alongside the mundane. The approach of an imperialism of holiness is not recommended, though it may be quite attractive to many. It is possible as an intermediate state whose purpose is to battle the opposite polar approach, but not as a permanent and enduring state. One who tries to impose this tendency upon our reality commits a very grave transgression.

The balanced and correct picture is a clear separation between the mundane and the sacred. One must not impose the mundane on the sacred, as the Greeks did, and one must not impose the sacred on the mundane, as the Hasmoneans did. They must function side by side, with a clear division of roles. This does not mean that the Torah has nothing to say about the mundane. Even the mundane can and should be conducted in the purity of the sacred. There are commandments and prohibitions that relate to the conduct of ordinary life, but commandments and prohibitions are not holiness.

The category of 'holiness' underwent a cheapening in the eyes of the Hasmoneans, when they thought that everything connected with Torah had to be holy, and had to be done in the Name of God. In this way they damaged the very nature of the created world. The world was created in order to be conducted as ordinary life, in contrast to the Holy One, blessed be He, whose very essence is holy. All our daily needs are carried out according to the Torah, and yet they are not holy. Breakfast, or using the bathroom, are done according to Jewish law. That does not turn the bathroom or the food into holy objects. The commandments are meant to teach us how to conduct our ordinary lives, and for that purpose the world was created.

The world was created so that it would be conducted in the sphere of the mundane, not in the sphere of holiness. True, it is mundane conducted in the purity of the sacred, but mundane conducted in the purity of the sacred is not holiness. This ideological confusion was the terrible sin of the Hasmoneans, and despite their noble intentions they were wiped out. Such a path cannot exist in our world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, decides to destroy it while it is still in its beginnings. This resolves the first difficulty as well, where we asked what exactly the sin is in imposing the sacred upon the mundane.

A halakhic perspective: holiness, impurity, and the mundane

The Talmud in Megillah (26b) distinguishes between accessories of a commandment and accessories of holiness, with respect to the laws of genizah:

Our Rabbis taught: accessories of a commandment may be discarded, whereas accessories of holiness must be placed in genizah. The following are accessories of a commandment: a sukkah, lulav, shofar, and tzitzit. And the following are accessories of holiness: book-bags, tefillin and mezuzot, a Torah-scroll case, and a tefillin case and their straps.

After that, a detailed discussion begins regarding exactly where the boundary lies, see also Menachot 35b. That is, Jewish law is careful to distinguish the category of holiness from the category of commandment. They must not be confused, and therefore the attitude toward holy objects differs from the attitude toward objects used for a commandment.

Between holiness and impurity there is a domain of the mundane. The mundane is meant to be conducted according to the sacred — mundane in the purity of the sacred — but not conquered by the sacred. The separation must be preserved. What is relevant to the mundane realm is commandment, not holiness. There are commandments that teach us how to live our ordinary lives, but a commandment is not holiness.

An interesting example that illustrates this is also found in Tosafot, s.v. 'ein miktsat shilya,' in Bava Kamma 11a. The Talmud there discusses the impurity of a woman after childbirth, and distinguishes between a case of doubt whether a fetus emerged and a case of double doubt.

'For there is no partial placenta without a fetus.' And if you would say: according to Rabbi Elazar, who says we are concerned because there is no partial placenta without a fetus, but if there were a partial placenta without a fetus she would not need to be concerned — what case would that be? If in the public domain, even in a single doubt we rule pure; and if in the private domain, even a double doubt is impure, for we learned: any doubts that can be multiplied in the private domain, even a double doubt, are impure. One may answer that our discussion concerns forbidding her to her husband.

Tosafot say that the laws of doubt in impurity differ from the laws of doubt in prohibition. A doubt of impurity in the public domain is pure, and in the private domain it is impure. The Mishnah in Taharot (6:4) states: 'All cases in which one can multiply doubts and even double doubts — in the private domain they are impure, in the public domain they are pure.' That is, in impurity there is no difference between an ordinary doubt and a double doubt. Tosafot therefore ask: how can the Talmud in Bava Kamma distinguish between doubt and double doubt? If the case is in the private domain, both should be impure, and if it is in the public domain, both should be pure.

Tosafot answer that the discussion here is about forbidding her to her husband, not about impurity. This contains a major novelty: the prohibition of a woman after childbirth to her husband is not necessarily tied to her impurity, and the later authorities have indeed discussed this. But some of the later authorities raised a very strong objection to Tosafot. After all, the entire law of doubtful impurity is learned from the sotah, and there the issue is precisely her prohibition to her husband. So how can one say that when the discussion concerns forbidding a woman to her husband, the rules of doubtful impurity do not apply?

Now in Sefer Nefesh Yehonatan on the portion of Chukat, the publisher, Rabbi Jacob Orner, in Tziyon LaNefesh, section Heh, notes in the name of his great-uncle, who was the nephew of the author of Avnei Nezer, a solution to this difficulty. His claim is that holiness is relevant only where impurity is relevant — and he cites a source for this from the Kuzari. Why, indeed, is the law of doubtful impurity learned from the sotah? The source is the verse (Numbers 5:12): 'Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: if any man's wife goes astray and commits a trespass against him.' We see that an injury to the marital bond is described as a trespass, that is, as an injury to holiness. Hence as well the use of the language of kiddushin to describe the bond between husband and wife. The same may also be learned from the sugya in Kiddushin (6a), which compares the law of one who betroths half a woman to one who consecrates part of an animal as a burnt offering, see there[5].

A sotah harms the marital bond, which is a kind of holiness, and that is why she is described in the language of trespass. One may therefore learn that the prohibition of a woman to her husband is, in its essence, impurity, because it is an injury to the bond between them, which belongs to the realm of holiness.

Avnei Nezer now explains that there is no difficulty at all with the Tosafot in Bava Kamma just cited. The prohibition of a woman after childbirth is like the prohibition of a niddah. In such a case the woman is forbidden to the entire world, not only to her husband. The practical relevance is of course to her husband, but this is a prohibition unrelated to an injury to the marital bond. Therefore the prohibition of a woman after childbirth to her husband, although accompanied by impurity, is not itself impurity but a prohibition. Hence the relevant rules of doubt are the rules of doubtful prohibition, which do distinguish between an ordinary doubt and a double doubt. By contrast, the prohibition of a sotah to her husband is rooted in a damage to the marital bond itself. This is an injury to holiness, and therefore its category is like that of impurity.

We thus learn that between holiness and impurity there is a domain of the mundane, which is governed by different rules. Impurity and holiness are extremes, but they do not exhaust our entire backdrop. In between lies a broad and important realm, the realm of the mundane. One must not blur this realm and allow the extremes to take it over — neither the extreme of impurity nor the extreme of holiness.

Jewish law has a great deal to say about the realm of the mundane. This is not a realm of sheer permission, but it is also not a realm of holiness or impurity. Both of those are wholly distinct from the realm of the mundane, which is governed by other categories. There the one who rules is the king, not the priest — and not the Greek either.

On kingship and the realm of the mundane in our time and in general

Among many people today there is a tendency to see holiness everywhere. The basis of this tendency is apparently found in Hasidism. Eating is seen as nothing but the extraction of sparks of holiness from the food and the sanctification of the food as part of a project of sanctifying the mundane. This conception also characterizes broad parts of Religious Zionism, which attempts to apply categories of holiness to all the areas of our ordinary life, and especially to the Jewish people as a whole, the State of Israel, and its institutions. Already at the beginning of this essay I mentioned that some bring a source for this from Maimonides' remarks about the restoration of kingship to Israel.

However, kingship is part of the realm of the mundane. The king acts in that realm and rules over it, but that does not turn it into holiness. As we have seen, it is very important that these realms remain mundane and that one not try to impose holiness upon them. Again, this does not mean that Jewish law and the Torah have nothing to say about them, for even mundane matters ought to be conducted in the purity of the sacred. But it is incorrect to see all this as holiness, except perhaps in a borrowed and distant sense.

On the other side stand opposite anti-Zionist approaches, which see the entire Zionist enterprise as an expression of the sitra achra, the 'other side,' that is, impurity. In their view, everything not connected with holiness becomes impure. What both of these poles have in common is that they are unwilling to recognize the existence of a realm of mundane life conducted in the purity of the sacred. For them, the world is divided into holiness and impurity, with no middle ground between them. Therefore the dispute is waged over whether the phenomena belong to this side or to the other. The alternative according to which the Zionist act and the State of Israel belong to the realm of the mundane hardly even arises as an option on the table of discussion. From here derive the intense emotions that accompany this debate. Holiness and impurity are realms in which passions run high. One cannot conduct a calm and tranquil discussion when holiness is being profaned and defiled. By contrast, the realm of the mundane allows a quieter argument and discussion about the correct way to conduct it.

One should remember that the institution of kingship as a whole is governed by a system of rules different from the ordinary halakhic rules. In a certain sense, the king is a secular institution in essence. This emerges clearly from the conception of the author of Derashot HaRan (Derush 11), who sees kingship as a system parallel to that of the religious court and Jewish law. But even in Maimonides, where some see a different approach, one can find a sharp expression of this conception. See the laws of Sanhedrin (18:6):

It is a scriptural decree that a religious court does not execute or flog a person on the basis of his own confession, but only on the testimony of two witnesses. The fact that Joshua killed Achan, and David the Amalekite convert, on the basis of their own confession — that was either a temporary ruling or the law of kingship. But the Sanhedrin does not execute or flog one who confesses to an offense, lest his mind have become deranged in this matter, or lest he be one of the embittered who long for death, who are always stabbing swords into their bellies and throwing themselves from rooftops. So too, such a person may come and say something he did not do in order to be killed. In short, it is a decree of the King.

We see here that a king may rely on self-incrimination, unlike the religious court, for Joshua and David killed on the basis of the accused person's own confession[6].

Now in Sefer Hemdat Yisrael (Kuntres Ner Mitzvah, sec. 72, p. 100), by Rabbi Meir Dan Plotzki, author of Kli Hemdah, he discusses the question whether the laws of the Noahides accept self-incrimination. He cites these words of Maimonides and writes:

We have written to prove that Maimonides too agrees with the view of Sefer HaChinukh, namely that a Noahide may be executed on the basis of his own confession. This is inferred from what he wrote in the laws of Sanhedrin cited above, that Joshua's execution of Achan on his own confession was by virtue of the law of a king. And we clarified there that a king has no greater authority to judge than the laws of the Noahides; therefore one who is not liable under Noahide law cannot be punished by the king either…

That is, he proves from Maimonides' words that necessarily even in Noahide law self-incrimination is accepted, since the law of a king is no broader than Noahide law. There is here a comparison between the law of the king and the laws that apply to the Noahides, because kingship is a universal concept[7].

These matters are connected to broader questions concerning the existence of discretionary acts, or a discretionary sphere, in the Torah-halakhic world[8]. Are there acts that the Torah permits but does not regard as either a merit or a flaw, that is, neutral acts? Does the choice of one kind of bread rather than another for breakfast necessarily have Torah and value-laden aspects? Does the choice whether to eat at 8:00 or at 9:00 necessarily involve such aspects? One can sharpen this further and speak of a 'discretionary matter,' in the sense that there is no absolute halakhic determination regarding it. But as Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein already noted in his article[9], a discretionary matter is not necessarily something neutral. Sometimes the Torah does not lay down final rules, but that does not mean that it is unimportant in its eyes what will be done in these realms. In our terms, even the mundane can be conducted in the purity of the sacred.

The doctrine of tzimtzum

In this section I will conclude my remarks with a few words about the deeper roots of the problem I have discussed here. It seems that the deeper root of the tendency to ignore the realm of the mundane, from both sides, is probably rooted in the conception of tzimtzum, divine contraction. At the beginning of the Ari's central work, Etz Chaim (Gate 1, Branch 2), the process of tzimtzum is described. At first the light of the Infinite, Ein Sof, filled all reality. After that, it began to withdraw toward the sides from a certain point in the middle; it vacated the place and left a round empty space in its stead. The light of Ein Sof is divinity, or holiness, and in that empty void, which is emptied of holiness, we act. There the mundane rules. True, there is a reshimu, that is, a residual trace from the surrounding Infinite light that remained in that empty space. This is essentially the expression of the influence of holiness upon that realm of the mundane, and that is apparently the purpose of creation as a whole.

In Hasidism, tzimtzum is generally understood non-literally, that is, to see Ein Sof, which represents holiness, as though even after the tzimtzum it still exists throughout all regions of being. However, at least in our approach — and to the best of my understanding, following the author of Leshem, one of the greatest Lithuanian kabbalists, this is also true in reality — tzimtzum should indeed be understood literally. The meaning of this is that the empty void is a realm of the mundane. Holiness guides it and influences it from outside, but is not actually present within it.

We have moved away from Hanukkah, and now we return to Hanukkah. Or, to put it differently: we have finished laying out the straight line, and now we move to a tour through the circles. The days of Hanukkah are days of Hallel and thanksgiving. The kabbalists teach us that thanksgiving has its root in the sefirah of Hod. This sefirah is located on the left side, with Netzach on its right. The left is the line of judgment, that is, the constricting principle, while the right line expresses kindness and expansion. Rabbi Kook, in his famous interpretation of 'Modeh Ani' in Olat Re'iyah (vol. 1, p. 1), explains that the term hoda'ah has two meanings: thanking for something, and acknowledging something as true.

Rabbi Kook explains there that these two meanings share a common core, and that is why they are described by the same word. It is hard for us to thank someone who has done us good, because such thanks obligates us to acknowledge that we needed him, that we could not manage without him. We must recognize our limited worth. Gratitude obligates us to perceive our boundaries and limitations, and to contract ourselves before the other. That is precisely the contraction present in the attribute of Hod, and in the thanksgiving and acknowledgment that characterize Hanukkah.

The mundane stands in acknowledgment before the sacred, but it is distinct as a separate sphere, conducted under the inspiration of holiness but not as part of it. The explanation in terms of sefirot and contractions indeed lies at the root of the ideological phenomena we described above. But the way of coping with them, and with the tension between them, should not take place on that esoteric plane, which belongs to holiness and is not itself part of our world but only guides it. Rather, it should take place on the ideological plane, which is the expression of holiness within the world of the mundane, as described in the first part of my remarks. And that is Hanukkah…

[1] Nachmanides himself, in his commentary to Genesis 32:4, offers an additional explanation for the punishment of the Hasmoneans, namely that they cooperated with the Romans. For our purposes here, that is not important.

[2] Here these matters touch directly on our own time. The fact that the government of the State of Israel is not committed to Jewish law does not mean that there is no positive value in its return. On the other hand, seeing positive value in its return does not mean the absence of criticism regarding the way it conducts itself.

[3] See HaTakanot BeYisrael, by Rabbi Israel Shpansky, vol. 2, pp. 161-168.

[4] After completing this essay, I was referred to Rabbi Azaria Ariel's article, 'Responsa of the Hasmonean House,' in Be'Orekha Nireh Or, Jerusalem 2004. There he notes (pp. 56-57) that, like Tosafot Yom Tov, the Vilna Gaon on that Mishnah and Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano in his responsa, sec. 98, hold the same view. He also notes that on a surviving historical remnant of the soreg there is an inscription in several languages stating that gentiles are forbidden to enter.

[5] So too in the language of the Talmud (Kiddushin 2b): 'for he forbids her to all the world like consecrated property.' See also Tosafot s.v. 'de-asar' there.

[6] See also Sefer HaChinukh (commandments 26, 192), Or Sameach (Laws of Kings 9:9), who likewise derives this from the Jerusalem Talmud Kiddushin (1:1 [1b]), and Midrash Rabbah Genesis (34:14).

[7] See also my article 'Is Jewish Law Hebrew Law?' in Akdamot 15.

[8] See a brief discussion of this in the appendix to my article 'Between Time and Leisure,' in The Home Front, edited by Sharel Weinberger and Amichai Bitner, Beit El Library, 2007.

[9] 'In All Your Ways Know Him — Two Models in the Service of God,' in BeOr Panecha Yehallechun, Yediot Aharonot – Herzog College, 2012. See also Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, 'The Chief Rabbinate of Israel — A Halakhic Perspective,' in The Chief Rabbinate of Israel: Seventy Years Since Its Founding, Heikhal Shlomo, 2002.

Rabbi Lichtenstein himself applies these categories to the State of Israel and its institutions in an interview he gave on the 'Realistic Religious Zionism' website: http://www.tzionut.org/oldsite/tzionut/tzionut.org/articles_details2fc6.html?id=61.

[10] Leshem Shevo VeAhlamah, explanations to Etz Chaim, discourses on Iggulim VeYosher, beginning of the introduction to branch 2.