A Hanukkah Lesson

Table of Contents

• The framework of the lecture and the topic: Hanukkah as the relationship between sacred and secular
• Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of Hanukkah and the meaning of “sovereignty returned to Israel”
• “The scepter shall not depart from Judah” between prophecy and commandment, and the examples of repentance and the sciatic nerve
• Nachmanides on the kingdom of Judah, royal authority, and ordination of judges through two channels
• Nachmanides on kings not from the house of David and the punishment of the Hasmonean dynasty
• The prohibition of priestly kingship in the Jerusalem Talmud: the honor of Judah versus a unique prohibition for priests
• The relationship between Maimonides and Nachmanides: giving thanks for sovereignty even if there is sin within that sovereignty
• The Hasmonean dynasty as an “imperialism of holiness”: God’s name in contracts and the question of greeting in God’s name
• Greece as an “imperialism of secularity”: breaching the barrier, defiling the Temple, and decrees against identity
• Dialectic: Greek thesis, Hasmonean antithesis, and a synthesis of a clearly bounded border
• The secular is not impurity: a conceptual distinction and its implications for serving God
• Application to our own time: the state between holiness and impurity, and the claim that it is secular
• A critique of the metaphysicization of politics and the question of how to relate to history

Summary

General overview

The speaker presents a standalone lecture on the meaning of Hanukkah in terms of the relationship between sacred and secular, and opens with Maimonides, who describes the Greek decrees and the Hasmonean deliverance, concluding with “and sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years until the second destruction.” He places this alongside Nachmanides on “The scepter shall not depart from Judah,” who interprets the verse as a binding norm and explains the destruction of the Hasmonean dynasty as punishment for taking the monarchy away from the house of David and for combining priesthood and kingship, while citing a dispute in the Jerusalem Talmud as to whether the prohibition stems from the honor of Judah or from a special prohibition on priests. The speaker argues that the Hasmoneans did not act out of a lust for power but out of an ideology of an “imperialism of holiness” that seeks to subordinate the secular to the sacred, whereas the Greeks represent an “imperialism of secularity” that seeks to erase holiness or breach its boundaries, and that the proper synthesis is a clear border between the realms. He applies this as a critique of modern religious views that see the state as either holy or impure, and argues that it should be seen as “secular” — an important necessity, but not an object of holiness — while strongly objecting to bringing symbols of civic sovereignty into sacred spaces and to turning politics into a metaphysical struggle.

The framework of the lecture and the topic: Hanukkah as the relationship between sacred and secular

The speaker explains that the lecture is “self-contained” and does not depend on the sequence of the series, so that people can miss sessions or join at a particular point. He says his aim is to talk about the meaning of Hanukkah from the standpoint of the relationship between sacred and secular, with some connection to a point in the series but not full dependence on it.

Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of Hanukkah and the meaning of “sovereignty returned to Israel”

The speaker reads Maimonides’ wording: during the Second Temple period the Greek kingdom imposed decrees, abolished religion, prevented Torah and commandments, harmed property and daughters, breached the Sanctuary and defiled pure things, until the God of our ancestors had mercy, the Hasmoneans prevailed and saved them, “and they established a king from among the priests, and sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years until the second destruction.” He emphasizes that Maimonides presents the return of sovereignty as one of the positive outcomes of the struggle, and links this to contemporary claims that see autonomy and independence themselves as a “deliverance,” even without depending on the religious quality of that kingship. He notes that the modern dispute between Religious Zionism and Haredi Judaism regarding holiness in a historical process sometimes rests on this point of departure, and says he wants to come back to it later.

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah” between prophecy and commandment, and the examples of repentance and the sciatic nerve

The speaker presents an interpretive tension between reading verses as future prophecy and reading them as commandment, and gives an example from Maimonides in the laws of repentance, chapter 7, who reads “and you shall return to the Lord your God” as a prophetic promise about the future, as opposed to Nachmanides, who sees it as a commandment. He explains the grammatical background in which future tense and imperative can resemble one another, and gives another example from “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve” as a verse describing a practice rather than a direct commandment, while mentioning Rashba’s comments in his novellae to the aggadic passages in tractate Berakhot and the difficulty of how a prohibition is derived from it. He concludes that in the case of “The scepter shall not depart from Judah,” the language of the verse seems prophetic within the framework of “and I will tell you what will befall you at the end of days,” but the sages and commentators also treated it as a normative verse.

Nachmanides on the kingdom of Judah, royal authority, and ordination of judges through two channels

The speaker cites Nachmanides on “The scepter shall not depart from Judah” as teaching that kingship should not be transferred to another tribe, and interprets “the ruler’s staff from between his feet” as meaning that the lawgiver depends on the king’s signet ring and royal authority. He presents a conception of ordaining judges through two channels: professional qualification from ordained sages, alongside governmental authority from the king or his replacement in periods without a king, and compares it to the difference between a law professor and a judge who requires governmental appointment. He connects this to the verse as a duality: the scepter of kingship is in Judah, and governmental authority is delegated from the king to the judges.

Nachmanides on kings not from the house of David and the punishment of the Hasmonean dynasty

The speaker quotes Nachmanides, according to whom kings from the other tribes after David “violate the will of their father and transfer an inheritance,” and emphasizes the cautious wording “the will of their father,” not necessarily as a Torah-level prohibition. He cites Nachmanides, who attributes the punishment of the Hasmoneans to the fact that they ruled in the Second Temple period even though they were “supremely pious,” and without them “Torah and commandments would have been forgotten from Israel,” yet “they were punished with a great punishment” and were cut off, to the point of the sages’ statement: “Whoever says, ‘I come from the house of the Hasmoneans,’ is a slave.” He emphasizes Nachmanides’ claim that the explanation is not merely the Sadducean tendency among the descendants of Shimon, because “the entire seed of Mattityahu the righteous the Hasmonean” was cut off “for this reason: that they ruled though they were not from the seed of Judah and from the house of David,” and the punishment was “measure for measure,” as their servants were made to rule over them.

The prohibition of priestly kingship in the Jerusalem Talmud: the honor of Judah versus a unique prohibition for priests

The speaker presents Nachmanides’ addition, “and it is also possible,” that the sin lay in the fact that they were priests, who had been commanded for service in the Temple and not for kingship, and cites the Jerusalem Talmud, Horayot: “Priestly kings are not anointed.” He presents the view of Rabbi Yehuda Antoria, “on account of ‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah,’” in the direction that the prohibition stems from the honor of Judah, to the point of the claim that priests were “fit for anointing,” and nevertheless were not anointed for kingship. He then presents the view of Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba, who derives it from “that he may prolong his days over his kingdom” alongside “the Levitical priests shall have no portion or inheritance,” meaning that priests are barred by the Torah from kingship, and Nachmanides concludes, “and this is fitting and proper,” indicating that he leans in that direction. He formulates the difference as a concept of separation of powers: the priest is responsible for the “realm of the sacred,” while the king is responsible for the “realm of the secular,” and therefore mixing priesthood and kingship is a violation of a basic boundary.

The relationship between Maimonides and Nachmanides: giving thanks for sovereignty even if there is sin within that sovereignty

The speaker suggests that at first glance there is a contradiction between Maimonides, who sees the return of sovereignty as a positive result, and Nachmanides, who sees it as a cause of punishment, but says there is no essential contradiction. He argues that Maimonides too recognizes the problem of taking kingship from the house of David, even though he does not count “The scepter shall not depart” as a prohibition derived from the verse, and therefore there is no need to see an actual dispute here. He applies this to his argument against a classic Haredi position that opposes giving thanks for a state that is not conducted according to Torah, and calls that position “completely unfounded,” because one should give thanks for a gift even if it has been used in a distorted way.

The Hasmonean dynasty as an “imperialism of holiness”: God’s name in contracts and the question of greeting in God’s name

The speaker argues that the Hasmoneans took kingship not out of a craving for power but out of a view that the secular should be subordinated to the sacred, and he brings examples for this. He quotes the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah about abolishing “the mention of God’s name in documents,” and about the Hasmonean ordinance to mention God’s name in contracts in the formula “In such-and-such a year of Yohanan the High Priest to the Most High God,” and how the sages abolished the ordinance out of concern for disgrace when “the document is thrown into the garbage,” making that day a holiday. He suggests that the holiday was established not only for a technical reason but as a celebration of the cancellation of a flawed conception that inserted God’s name into the marketplace and commerce. He cites the Mishnah in Berakhot, “They ordained that a person should greet his fellow in God’s name,” and Sefer HaMikhtam in the name of Raavad, who suggests that perhaps this was an ordinance from the Greek and Hasmonean period, and concludes that Raavad identifies this as something typical of the Hasmoneans, who sought to impose holiness on ordinary human relations.

Greece as an “imperialism of secularity”: breaching the barrier, defiling the Temple, and decrees against identity

The speaker describes the Greeks as trying to push holiness aside and breach the boundaries between sacred and secular, starting with the prohibition on mentioning God’s name and the slogan, “Write on the horn of an ox that we have no share in the God of Israel.” He connects the phrase “they breached the walls of my towers” from Maoz Tzur to the Mishnah in Middot about “thirteen breaches” made by “the kings of Greece” in the barrier, and to the explanation of Tosafot Yom Tov that the barrier separated idol worshippers from entering further in, so that breaching it was an attempt to erase distinction and bring the secular into the sacred. He mentions the decree that “a virgin married on the fourth day must first be violated by the governor,” and attributes it to the Greeks based on Rashi in tractate Shabbat, as another attempt to blur the boundaries of identity. He mentions the translation of the Torah into Greek in Megillat Ta’anit, with the “darkness” that descended upon the world, as an act of secularizing the Torah and turning it into just another book. He adds the defilement of the oils, the defilement of the Temple, and the decrees against circumcision, the new month, and the Sabbath as all directed against the signs of identity and the calendar.

Dialectic: Greek thesis, Hasmonean antithesis, and a synthesis of a clearly bounded border

The speaker offers a framework of thesis-antithesis-synthesis: the Greeks are the extreme of secularity that abolishes holiness, while the Hasmoneans are the opposite extreme of holiness conquering the secular. He relies on an idea from Maimonides in the laws of character traits, that a tilt toward the opposite extreme can restore a person to the middle path, and explains that the imperialism of holiness was an appropriate means in the hour of struggle but became destructive when it turned into a permanent ideology of priestly kingship. He interprets Nachmanides’ position to mean that “for the needs of the hour” one may appoint a ruler from another tribe, but not anoint him and perpetuate that arrangement, and concludes that the destruction of the Hasmonean dynasty was a divine “stop” against the ideology of mixing the realms of authority. He explains that holiness, by definition, means “that which is set apart,” and therefore “if everything is holy, then there is no such thing as holy,” bringing the example of the Sabbath — if it were every day, it would not be the Sabbath — and the example of “there are ten levels of holiness” in tractate Kelim as a bounded hierarchy.

The secular is not impurity: a conceptual distinction and its implications for serving God

The speaker states that the secular is not impurity but rather “the absence of holiness,” and formulates this as a scale in which holiness is “plus one,” impurity is “minus one,” and the secular is “zero.” He uses a philosophical image of “opposite by contrast” versus “opposite by privation” to explain that impurity is opposed to holiness, whereas the secular is simply an absence, and warns against seeing the world in black-and-white terms of holy versus impure. He argues against a common Hasidic outlook that seeks holiness everywhere and tries to “extract sparks,” and says that in the secular realm one should conduct oneself “with the purity of holiness” through blessings and commandment-based norms, without turning the secular itself into holiness. He distinguishes between “objects of holiness,” which require burial, and “objects used for a commandment,” which may be discarded, and formulates the point that the category of holiness is a distinct halakhic and metaphysical category that must not be emptied of meaning by expanding it to all of reality.

Application to our own time: the state between holiness and impurity, and the claim that it is secular

The speaker describes contemporary religious discourse as split between those who see the state as the “other side,” as impurity, and those who see it as holy, to the point of statements like “IDF uniforms are the garments of the High Priest,” which he calls “shocking.” He proposes a third ideological alternative: the state is secular, a vital necessity like other basic necessities, without being an object of holiness, and one must fight for it to be run properly but without the ecstasy of holiness. He describes his discomfort with bringing flags into the synagogue and with dancing to “Lift up your heads, O gates” in front of governmental figures, and defines this as directing religious passion toward secular realms and as a danger of “dangerous fascism.” He emphasizes that the prime minister is “my senior clerk,” not a sacred object, and that when state institutions commit wrongs, those wrongs are still wrongs and desecration of God’s name is certainly possible, but this does not mean there is “an idol in the Sanctuary,” because “there is no Sanctuary here and no idol.”

A critique of the metaphysicization of politics and the question of how to relate to history

The speaker argues that the debate about the state remains stuck as though it had not yet been established, and criticizes the focus on whether to recite Hallel on Independence Day as a marginal issue. He suggests that the real fracture should have been over questions of how to relate to modernity and external culture, rather than over the existence of the state itself. He opposes the search for “demons” and for a holy side versus an impure side behind political and historical events, and instead proposes describing interests, proper or improper governance, and refraining from attributing metaphysical meanings as the driving force. He concludes that the tendency to see everything as either holiness or impurity, while ignoring the secular realm, is itself the problem, and that an educational ideal of “sanctifying the secular” is “a distorted education” that should give way to a proper life of the secular alongside clearly bounded holiness.

Let’s begin. I’m sharing the file here so we can read from it the relevant sources. As I said, today I want to deal with an independent topic, self-contained, not according to the sequence of the whole series, so that people can either be absent—whoever wants to be absent, because today it’s not obligatory—or someone who wanted to join in order to make up hours or things like that can join without feeling that he’s coming in in the middle. So I want to talk a bit about the meaning of Hanukkah in terms of the relationship between sacred and secular. In a way this will actually connect to the point we’re at in our series, but really only at one particular point.

I’ll start perhaps with Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of Hanukkah. Chapter 3 is really the beginning of Hanukkah; chapters 1 and 2 are Purim. So Maimonides writes as follows: “During the Second Temple period, when the Greek kingdom issued decrees against Israel and abolished their religion, and did not allow them to engage in Torah and commandments, and stretched out their hands against their property and their daughters, and entered the Sanctuary and breached its walls and defiled the pure things, Israel suffered greatly because of them and they oppressed them with great pressure. Until the God of our fathers had mercy upon them and saved them from their hand, and the Hasmonean high priests prevailed and killed them, and saved Israel from their hand, and appointed a king from among the priests, and sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years until the second destruction.”

So let’s maybe begin with the last sentence. The last sentence—the restoration of sovereignty to Israel—is described by Maimonides as one of the advantages, or one of the positive outcomes, that emerged from the struggle between the Hasmoneans and the Greeks. In this context there is of course an obvious connection to contemporary issues, when people basically argue, among other things on the basis of this Maimonides, that the restoration of sovereignty—yes, of autonomy, of self-rule, of independence—to Israel is itself some kind of salvation, regardless of the question of what kind of kingdom that sovereignty is. Meaning: is that kingdom good, bad, God-fearing, not God-fearing, working with Jewish law, not working with Jewish law? The very fact that sovereignty returned to Israel is itself some kind of positive result worth celebrating, yes, worth thanking God for and celebrating.

And of course this spills over into seeing that process as some kind of expression of holiness and a manifestation of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world, and other aspects over which there is a dispute between Religious Zionism and the Haredi world. I’ll want to touch on that later, but that is the point of departure.

Against this Maimonides—or seemingly against this Maimonides, though I don’t think it’s really against him—there is the well-known Nachmanides. Yes, the verse in the portion of Vayechi: “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 the peoples.” In the wording of the verse, it looks like a prophecy. Yes, Jacob is prophesying to his sons that the tribe—the tribe of course being the royal tribe—that kingship will not depart from the tribe of Judah or from the house of David. Fine. So here we basically have some kind of prophecy and not necessarily a commandment.

We see similar phenomena, by the way, elsewhere in the Torah and afterward in the sages. For example, it says, “And it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you… and you shall return to the Lord your God,” and so on—yes, what is written in the verse in the portion of Nitzavim, I think—“and you shall return to the Lord your God.” What does “and you shall return to the Lord your God” mean? Maimonides in chapter 7 of the laws of repentance writes: “The Torah has already promised that Israel will in the future repent, as it says, ‘and you shall return to the Lord your God.’” Meaning, when he reads the verse “and you shall return to the Lord your God,” for him it is a prophecy, not a commandment. It is a prophecy that in the future the people of Israel will return to the Lord their God.

Nachmanides, by contrast, writes there that it is a commandment to repent. So there too there is a tension between reading the verse as a prophecy about the future and seeing it as a commandment. By the way, that’s the beginning of Maimonides’ eighth root, which I discussed at the beginning of the year in this series. Maimonides notes there a phenomenon everyone knows, of course: that there is a connection, or linguistic similarity, between a command and the future tense. When I say something to someone in the imperative, it sounds very similar, and sometimes identical, to a verb in the future tense. So many times people get confused and say to someone “you will do” something as a command. In truth you should say “do,” not “you will do.” “You will do” is a description of a future event: you will do something. “Do” is a command. But there are verbs and forms in which the imperative and the future are exactly the same. Even though these are two different grammatical tenses—they treat the imperative as a tense. There are three tenses: past, present, and future, and a fourth, the imperative.

In any case, here too, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet” can be read as a prophecy—that the royal scepter, the royal tribe, will not depart from Judah. And it can be read as a command: do not remove the royal scepter from Judah.

Where else is there an example? Another example we saw not long ago in one of the recent Sabbaths: the sciatic nerve. “Therefore the children of Israel shall not eat…” There it is not even a double meaning. “Therefore the children of Israel shall not eat the sciatic nerve to this day.” What is that verse? It is not a verse forbidding us to eat the sciatic nerve. It describes a custom that the people of Israel practiced, not eating the sciatic nerve to this day—meaning until the writing of the Torah. How do we derive from here that there is a prohibition against eating the sciatic nerve? A very difficult question. Because this verse doesn’t even have a double meaning. This verse clearly describes, not commands: “Therefore the children of Israel shall not eat the sciatic nerve.” Rashba in his novellae on aggadah in tractate Berakhot already raises this. I didn’t find there a satisfactory answer.

In any case, we see that there are verses that can be read as a prophecy of the future, as a factual description of a future reality, and they can also be seen as a commandment. In this case, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” on the face of it this looks like a prophecy, because Jacob there is not dealing with commandments. Jacob, when he speaks with his sons, is prophesying to them: “Gather, and I will tell you what will happen to you at the end of days.” “Gather, sons, and I will tell you what will happen to you at the end of days.” So Jacob is describing future events; he is not commanding. So seemingly this is a description.

But already in the sages and the commentators, you can see that they understood this verse as some kind of command, as a normative verse and not merely a factual one. Nachmanides on this verse writes as follows: “But its meaning is that the scepter shall not depart from Judah to one of his brothers.” You see? “That the scepter shall not depart from Judah to one of his brothers” means it’s a command. Do not transfer the royal scepter from Judah, from the house of David, to another tribe. “For the kingdom of Israel, the ruler over them, will come from him, and one of his brothers shall not rule over him. And likewise the ruler’s staff 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 not the seal of kingship until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of all the peoples, to do with them all according to his will. And this is the Messiah. For the scepter hints to David, who is the first king who possessed the royal scepter, and Shiloh is his son, the King Messiah, to whom the peoples will obey.”

So he understands that there is here some kind of prohibition. By the way, perhaps we’ll get to this later: “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet”—what is the connection between the scepter and the lawgiver? In order to ordain lawgivers, judges, they receive ordination. You know that when a judge receives ordination, he has to receive it through two channels simultaneously. One channel: he has to receive from ordained sages the professional track, meaning that they ordain him in the sense that he is a professional, that he is a judge who can sit and adjudicate, that he knows the material. At the same time he also has to receive ordination from the king, or from the king’s replacement—the president of the Sanhedrin in a period when there was no king—who gave him the authority to judge in the sense of governmental authority.

Think, for example, of a professor of law versus a judge. A professor of law received certification—or a doctor of law received certification—from the university, from the law department, and that certification basically means he is an expert and a professional. That does not make him a judge. How does a professional become a judge? Or what is the difference between a professional and a judge? A professional gives a professional opinion. A judge is also a governmental institution. Meaning he has authority. The judge is not only right because he is a good jurist; a judge must be obeyed. There is an obligation to obey him; he has authority. We discussed concepts of authority in previous lessons for those who were there. He has authority. Where does he get that authority from? Since this is governmental authority, he has to receive it from a governmental institution. Therefore the fact that three ordained men ordain him still does not make him a judge; it makes him qualified to be a judge. Meaning he passed the professional test; he is a doctor of law. But now someone has to come from the governmental branch who does not examine his professionalism—well, he may examine other aspects too, but in terms of professionalism he simply checks that he has approval from the professional authorities. That person turns him into a judge as a governmental institution. He says to him: I am giving you public authority, so that people are obligated to obey you, that whoever comes before you is obligated to carry out what you decide. Therefore ordination to judge is done through two channels: one is the channel of the king who gives the governmental authorization, and the other is the ordained sages who ordain him as a professional.

Nachmanides says: therefore, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” What does that mean? “The scepter shall not depart from Judah” means that the royal scepter is entrusted to Judah forever; it is forbidden to take it from him to another tribe or another family. And “the ruler’s staff from between his feet” means that the lawgiver, the ordained judge, must receive his authorization from the king—which again is the tribe of Judah. Therefore “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet”: not that he himself will be the lawgiver, but the lawgiver receives his power from Judah, meaning Judah ordains the lawgiver, the judge, to adjudicate.

I’ll mute for a moment so there won’t be any noise. So this promise—“the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet”—actually these two promises are directed to the king: one, you will be the king, the scepter will be in your hand, authority will be in your hand. Two, the ordination of judges, their governmental ordination—not their professional ordination—their governmental ordination is also entrusted to you as king, and therefore it is “from between his feet”: he himself will not be the judge, but he will delegate the power and appoint, give authority to the judge.

Now later on he discusses there: so what happens with the kings who ruled over Israel not from the house of David? Because if indeed there is an obligation that only descendants of David may rule, then how can it be that we find kings not from the house of David? “And in my opinion, the kings who ruled over Israel from the other tribes after David were violating their father’s intent and transferring an inheritance.” Meaning, whoever ruled not from the house of David after David—this is an allusion to Saul, yes, after David—he violates the will of their father; this is transferring an inheritance, because they transferred the scepter from Judah. “And they relied on the words of Ahijah the Shilonite, the prophet, who anointed Jeroboam”—notice, this is the king of Israel, not the king of Judah—“and said, ‘And I will afflict the seed of David because of this, but not forever.’ And when Israel prolonged the practice of crowning over themselves, from the other tribes, one king after another, and did not return to the kingdom of Judah, they transgressed the command of the elder and were punished through them, as Hosea said: ‘They made kings, but not from Me.’”

Notice there are a few interesting points here. First, he argues that all the kings after David were essentially violating “the scepter shall not depart from Judah.” It is a prohibition. But notice his language for the prohibition is a qualified one. Basically there is here a violation of their father’s intent, not of the Holy One, blessed be He, and they were transferring an inheritance. What does “transferring an inheritance” mean? It means harming the law of inheritance, yes? Jacob commanded, as an inheritance, that kingship pass to the house of David, and they are taking the inheritance elsewhere; they are violating their father’s will. It somewhat emerges from Nachmanides here that this is not really a direct prohibition—not a commandment that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, but rather the will of Jacob. Yet since Jacob bequeathed the monarchy to the house of David, we are forbidden to take it because this is a transfer of inheritance. So on the one hand it is forbidden, but on the other hand it is not some explicit Torah prohibition to crown someone in place of the house of David. It is some obligation to obey the order of inheritance of our father Jacob.

And now he comes—we come—to the topic. Until now, this was the introduction.

“And this was the punishment of the Hasmoneans, who ruled in the Second Temple period, for they were pious saints, and were it not for them Torah and commandments would have been forgotten from Israel. And nevertheless they were punished with a great punishment, for the four sons of the elder Hasmonean, the pious ones who ruled one after another, despite all their valor and success, fell by the sword into the hands of their enemies. And in the end the punishment reached what our rabbis of blessed memory said: ‘Whoever says, I come from the house of Hasmonea, is a slave.’” This is from the Talmud in Bava Batra. Whoever says he is from the house of Hasmonea, it is known that he is a slave, because no one remained from the house of Hasmonea; they were all cut off because of this sin. “And although in the seed of Shimon there was punishment because of the Sadducees, all the seed of Mattathias the righteous Hasmonean were punished only because of this—that they ruled though they were not from the seed of Judah and the house of David, and they removed the scepter and the ruler’s staff entirely. And their punishment was measure for measure, for the Holy One, blessed be He, set their servants over them, and they destroyed them.” The servants of the Hasmonean house in fact ruled later on—Herod and others—and cut them off. That is measure for measure. You crowned yourselves over the house of David, so the Holy One, blessed be He, crowned your servants over you.

What is actually written here? Nachmanides says it is very difficult to understand how it could be that all the Hasmoneans were cut off, all their descendants. “Whoever says he is from the house of Hasmonea is a slave.” Meaning, no trace remained of them. How can that be? They were pious saints, they gave their lives for the sanctification of God’s name, for Torah and commandment, against the decrees on Torah and commandment, for the purification of the Temple. How can it be that without them Torah and commandments would have been forgotten from Israel, as Nachmanides says—how can it be that they were punished with such a severe punishment? So he says: it is because of this matter. Because they crowned themselves as kings and took the kingship from the house of David, therefore they deserved this terrible punishment, that they be cut off completely, with nothing left. And he notes: “And although in the seed of Shimon there was punishment because of the Sadducees”—what does that mean? You might attribute this punishment also to sins they committed. We know that the kings who ruled after Shimon already leaned toward the Sadducees, and perhaps because of that the entire seed of the Hasmonean house was cut off, and not because they violated the command of the elder. So Nachmanides says that cannot be. Why? Because I understand the seed of Shimon, but why was all the seed of Mattathias cut off? Why did nothing remain of him? Not all of them were Sadducees. Therefore it is clear that there was something more basic here, not only the specific sins of those individuals who leaned toward Sadduceeism, but that the very transgression of making themselves kings is itself the basis of the whole matter.

Now Nachmanides continues and says this: “And it is also possible that they sinned in their kingship because they were priests, and were commanded, ‘You and your sons with you shall keep your priesthood for everything pertaining to the altar and within the veil, and you shall serve; I give your priesthood as a service of gift.’ And they should not have ruled, but only served the service of God.” What does this mean? Nachmanides says: the punishment of the Hasmoneans may have come because they violated “the scepter shall not depart from Judah.” Meaning, from what tribe were the Hasmoneans? The tribe of Levi, right—they were priests. And they made themselves kings, so they effectively crowned someone not from the house of David. For that they deserve punishment. That is the first explanation.

Nachmanides says: I have another explanation. An additional explanation is because they were kings who were priests. And priests—the verse he cites here in Numbers—the priests are supposed to dedicate themselves to the Temple service. They are not supposed to go and serve as kings; they are not supposed to function as kings but only to serve the service of God. And therefore perhaps that is why the punishment was imposed on them.

Now he brings that this is actually a dispute between Amoraim in the Jerusalem Talmud. “And I saw in the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Horayot: kings are not anointed from among priests.” Meaning, priests may not be anointed as kings. “Rabbi Yehuda Antoria said: because of ‘the scepter shall not depart from Judah.’” Why indeed don’t we do that? Because “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” and priests are from the tribe of Levi, so there is nothing special about priests here—the point is that any person not from the house of David may not be crowned king. That is one possibility.

A second possibility: then another Amora comes and says, “Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said: ‘That he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.’” So the verse says in Deuteronomy. What is written immediately afterward? “The Levitical priests shall have no portion or inheritance…” and so on. “Thus they taught here”—meaning, he says that this juxtaposition of the section of the king, “that he may prolong his days in his kingdom,” and then immediately juxtaposing it to “the Levitical priests shall have no portion or inheritance,” is a comparison. This, of course, is possibly an additional prohibition beyond “the scepter shall not depart from Judah.” Meaning, one who crowns a priest as king, first of all violates “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” because the priest is not from the house of David. Second, he also violates this prohibition, which is a specific prohibition regarding priests. Meaning, to appoint a king from the tribe of Zebulun is one prohibition; to appoint a king from the tribe of the priests is two prohibitions.

Okay, that is basically the argument of Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba. “And behold, they taught here,” I continue in Nachmanides, “that kings are not anointed from among the priests, the sons of Aaron. And he first explained that this is for the honor of Judah, that dominion should not depart from that tribe. Therefore even though Israel may appoint over themselves a king from the other tribes according to the needs of the hour, they do not anoint them.” You can appoint a king temporarily, for a fixed time, but it is forbidden to anoint him so that he not have the splendor of kingship over them, and of course also not to perpetuate that kingship, but rather they should be like judges and officers—rulers for a period, as long as they are needed. “And he mentioned the priests, that even though they themselves are fit for anointing, they are not anointed for kingship, and certainly not the other tribes. As they said in the Talmud, only kings of the house of David are anointed.” This is Rabbi Yehuda Antoria.

Rabbi Yehuda Antoria argues that in fact priests are more fitting to be kings than the other tribes. Therefore there might have been a thought that the verse “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” does not apply to priests; it applies only to the other tribes, but priests you could appoint as kings. The teaching comes and says: no, kings are not anointed even from the tribe of priests, even from the tribe of priests. Meaning, priests are actually more fitting to rule, but nevertheless, because of the honor of Judah, we are careful not to appoint priests as kings. That is Rabbi Yehuda Antoria’s position.

But Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba explained—I continue reading the second-to-last line—“that it is prohibited by the Torah, that the Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance in kingship, and this is a proper and fitting thing.” What does Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba say? Exactly the opposite of Rabbi Yehuda Antoria. Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba argues that appointing a priest as king is more problematic than appointing someone from another tribe as king. Here there is a double problem: one, taking the kingship from the house of David. Two, there is a problem in appointing a priest as king. Beyond any other non-Davidic person, there is an additional problem in appointing a priest as king. You see that this is exactly the reverse of Rabbi Yehuda Antoria, because Rabbi Yehuda Antoria argues that on the contrary, priests are more suitable to be kings, and therefore the novelty is that even them we do not appoint as kings, even though they are more fitting. By contrast Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba argues that priests are less fitting to be kings. There is a double problem if you appoint a priest as king. Besides the fact that he is not from the house of David, there is also a problem in the fact that he is a priest. Two problems. Meaning, being a priest is itself an essential problem in appointing him as king.

What is the basic idea behind this? So maybe before I say what that idea is, first of all regarding the relation to the words of Maimonides that I brought at the beginning. Maimonides at the start says that “sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years”—yes, that is one of the things for which the thanksgiving of Hanukkah was established. So seemingly, according to Maimonides, that kingship is a blessed thing. Nachmanides claims that this restoration of kingship by the Hasmoneans was a reason for a catastrophic punishment that wiped out the entire Hasmonean house. Meaning, this thing—that sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years—is basically a tragedy for generations.

So some people want to argue that there is a dispute here between Maimonides and Nachmanides: Maimonides says there is no problem with it and Nachmanides says there is. But the truth is that Maimonides himself writes that there is a problem with it. Maimonides writes—though he does not see it as a Torah prohibition; there is prohibition number 362, I think—Maimonides writes there… wait… yes, in negative commandment 362, he says that what is clear from tradition is that no one may take kingship from the house of David. But he does not count “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” from the verse itself as a prohibition. He does not see that verse as a commandment but perhaps indeed, like Nachmanides, as some kind of transfer of inheritance. Meaning, if Jacob promised this to Judah, then we are not supposed to take it—not because there is a prohibition, but because one should obey Jacob’s command, not a command of the Holy One, blessed be He.

Now. The point is that therefore it is unlikely that there is a disagreement between Maimonides and Nachmanides on this matter. All in all it seems that they understand it in quite a similar way. Therefore, as I noted at the beginning when we read Maimonides, anyone who sees a disagreement here is, I think, seeing his own thoughts. Because what Maimonides says is that there is joy over the fact that sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years. He is not claiming that this was a positive kingship. The very fact that there is kingship is itself a cause for thanksgiving. The question whether the kingship is positive or not—perhaps the kingship was not positive, and that indeed was the reason to punish those kings and all that follows from it. There is no contradiction.

Just as—in disputes, and this really brings us into our own time—just as in the classic, somewhat stale disputes between Haredim and Religious Zionists: what is there to celebrate on Independence Day? After all, look at what this state looks like in terms of its commitment to Torah and commandments and Judaism, and so on. This is a classic Haredi claim, very common. In my opinion it is entirely absurd. It is entirely absurd because it means not thanking the Holy One, blessed be He, because of a sin that we committed. It sounds absurd. He gave us sovereignty, sovereignty returned. We chose to run it in a warped way, in a crooked way. So because of that we should not thank Him? It’s like someone gives me a hundred shekels, I throw them in the trash, and now I won’t thank him for giving me a hundred shekels because I threw it in the trash. What connection is there? The fact that I betrayed the trust and did not make proper use of the gift I received—does that exempt me from thanking him for the gift? It is a completely absurd excuse.

So therefore, going back to Maimonides and Nachmanides, the fact that sovereignty returned to Israel for more than two hundred years is definitely something worth thanking for and celebrating. The fact that we did not do it properly, did not run that kingship properly—that, says Nachmanides, was the reason for the punishment the Hasmoneans received. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Again, did someone comment? No. Okay.

In any case, that is the point. Now, I want to look a bit at the meaning of this dispute that Nachmanides brings, the dispute in the Jerusalem Talmud, the two possibilities Nachmanides brought. What is the conceptual difference between Rabbi Yehuda Antoria and Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba?

Rabbi Yehuda Antoria basically argues that the priests are more fitting for kingship than the other tribes. There is only the command of the elder, and therefore we do not take the scepter from Judah. But in principle, essentially, kingship could have been entrusted also to a priest. A priest too comes from an important family, he knows royal etiquette, he got a good education, he is generally a Torah scholar. Such a person is certainly fit to be king in the intrinsic sense. But we have some issue not to take the scepter from Judah. That is Rabbi Yehuda Antoria.

Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba says no. The priest is in a worse position than the other tribes in terms of his suitability for kingship. Why? Because he must dedicate himself to the Temple service. What does that mean? The claim is really a kind of separation of powers argument. They are basically telling us: the priest is responsible for the sacred sphere; the king is responsible for the secular sphere; and one must not mix priesthood with kingship. One has to insist on a separation between the secular and the sacred. That is basically what Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba is saying. Therefore one who appoints a priest as king runs into a double problem: not only does he take the scepter from Judah, he also mixes sacred and secular, and that must not be done. That itself is the claim.

Now, there are very far-reaching conclusions here, because the claim is not only that it is problematic to mix sacred and secular, but that it is so severe that one who did this—even though he is righteous and has many merits—is cut off from the world, no trace remains of him. The Holy One, blessed be He, is that angry about this mixing of sacred and secular. After all, Nachmanides brings all this in order to explain why all the Hasmoneans, the whole Hasmonean house, were cut off. So basically you see that it is not just that this is not recommended and that separation of powers is advisable; there is a very, very fundamental transgression here. There is something here that arouses very great anger.

This separation of powers I mentioned earlier is indeed an interesting point, because we are not really used to separation of powers in the halakhic context. For example, we know that in a modern state it is customary to distinguish between three powers—some people add a few more. There is separation between the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. And it is very important to separate them. By the way, we don’t have such a separation, at least not between the legislature and the executive—it’s a fiction. It’s the same authority. A defective system in the State of Israel; the Knesset has no significance. In any case, in principle there should have been separation of powers.

In Jewish law it isn’t like that. In Jewish law the legislative authority and the executive authority and the judicial authority are all the same institution: the Sanhedrin. All of them are the Sanhedrin. I’ll give you an example from the Mishnah, tractate Moed Katan—actually in tractate Shekalim; it appears in the Talmud in Moed Katan. “On the first of Adar they make announcements concerning the shekels and concerning mixed crops. On the fifteenth of the month they read the Megillah in the walled cities, and they go out to repair the roads and the streets and to measure the ritual baths and do all public needs and mark the graves and go out concerning mixed crops.” In short, the court is supposed on the first of Adar to carry out all kinds of actions, some of them actions of halakhic significance, some of them basically the Transportation Ministry—repairing the roads, organizing matters, making announcements about the shekels, collecting money, things of that sort, completely administrative actions. Actions of a king, of secular government. And these actions are entrusted to the court; the court is told when to do them and what to do. There are, as it were, also governmental secular actions entrusted to the court.

So ostensibly we are used to thinking that in Jewish law there is no separation of powers. But the truth is that that is not correct. In Jewish law there is separation of powers, at least between the executive and the legislative and judicial powers. The legislative power is primarily the Holy One, blessed be He; you could say that is also a third authority. But there are rabbinic laws where the sages can legislate new laws. So the legislative and perhaps the judicial—and perhaps partly legislative too—belong to the Sanhedrin. But the executive is the king, not the Sanhedrin.

What happens is that we, in the world of the Oral Torah—the period of the Talmud and the Mishnah—are already used to sources written in a world where there is no king anymore. Kingship already disappeared. What happens when there is no king? When there is no king, the powers flow into the president of the Sanhedrin. Why does the president of the Sanhedrin have to be from the house of David? Right? Rabban Gamliel, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Rabbi, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, Rabban Gamliel II—all that dynasty is from the house of David. Why does it have to be from the house of David? Because they also functioned as kings. Not only as the judiciary, but also as the executive. Why? Simply because there was no king.

But in the original system that the Torah is talking about, there is a king and beside him there is a Sanhedrin. The king is the government and the Sanhedrin is the parliament and the court. Okay? So there is separation of powers, at the principled level, also in the halakhic picture. It’s just that when we draw our nourishment from the Mishnah and the Talmud, that is no longer there, because the king is gone, and therefore the remaining authority absorbs all powers into itself.

Think of a situation in which a miracle happens—and one should say Hallel for this—and a plane crashes carrying the entire Knesset and government, and nothing remains. Only the Supreme Court remains. So after the Hallel, the question is what we would do with that. We would probably have to hand over executive and legislative power to the Supreme Court, because otherwise there would be anarchy. And then gradually build two more branches and separate the powers again. Right? In a place where one branch does not function, does not exist, disappears, it is obvious that the remaining branch will take the powers for itself. Otherwise—by the way, some time ago there was such a story in Poland, if you remember. A plane crashed there with the entire Polish government. In a situation like that, clearly the remaining branches take on the powers of the branches that disappeared.

And they took nothing—I don’t accept that remark, by the way, Dvir. Our judiciary did not take any authority that was not given to it. If the Knesset stood its ground, no one would take anything from it. That is nonsense. The Knesset is unwilling to pass laws that determine precisely what the judiciary may and may not do. And it itself does not function. I do not accept those claims.

Anyway, back to our subject. So the claim is that in the halakhic world too there is importance to separation of powers. And if that is so, I’ll add one more thing on top of it. Besides the separation of powers between king and Sanhedrin—judicial and legislative branch versus executive branch—there is also the branch of holiness, which we have not yet merited to have among us. The branch of holiness in Jewish law is the priest, or the priests; they are responsible for the fourth branch. Okay, in the case of Jewish law it’s a third branch, because legislative and judicial are the same branch. So there too there are three branches, but not the same three that are common in our system.

So there is separation of powers, and that is Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba’s claim. Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba basically says: one must not give up on separation of powers. The question now is twofold. First, why is this sin really so severe that Nachmanides says one has to erase the Hasmonean house from the map and from the land? One must remember that Nachmanides concludes, “and this is a proper and fitting thing,” meaning he inclines to the second opinion, the opinion that says there is a specific problem in appointing priests as kings. It is not only “the scepter shall not depart from Judah”; there is a problem in breaking separation of powers, and it is so severe that the entire Hasmonean house is destroyed because of this issue.

A second question: if this is really so severe, then why did the Hasmonean house—who were such righteous people and fought so much for Torah and commandments and for purifying the Temple and all that—how can it be that they did not insist on this important principle? If it is really so important, how did they fail here? People who gave their lives for Torah.

Here I want to make the following claim. The difficulty basically arises because we assume that what we have here is some pursuit of honor or pursuit of power. Basically the Hasmoneans took over the monarchy by force, and since they were seekers of honor and power, they were not willing to return kingship to the house of David and kept kingship for themselves. And to that I ask: how can it be that on the one hand they were so low, and on the other hand people to whom Torah and commandments mattered so deeply and who gave their lives for this? Something here doesn’t quite fit. It is natural to think that this is probably not the point.

Meaning, the Hasmoneans took kingship for themselves not because of a pursuit of power and honor, but because this was probably an ideology. Their ideology was that kingship should belong to the priests, meaning that the secular realm should be subordinated to the authority of the sacred. That was the principled approach of the Hasmoneans. There was a principled dispute here; it was not a question of pursuit of power.

Let me give you a few examples to convince you that this really characterizes the Hasmonean house. The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 18 brings a passage from Megillat Ta’anit—I’m sharing the file. It brings a passage from Megillat Ta’anit: “Rav Aha bar Huna objected: On the third of Tishrei mention of God’s name was abolished from documents, because the Greek kingdom had decreed persecution that God’s name should not be mentioned from their mouths. And when the Hasmonean kingdom prevailed and defeated them, they instituted that God’s name should be mentioned even in documents. And thus they would write”—documents meaning commercial documents, yes? You write some contract or give someone a promissory note, and on the document you write: “In such-and-such year of Yohanan the High Priest to the Most High God.” God’s name, on the document. “And when the sages heard of the matter they said: tomorrow this one pays his debt and the document is found thrown in the trash, so they abolished it. And they made that day a holiday.”

The Hasmonean house—basically the Greeks decreed that God’s name should not be mentioned; “write on the horn of the ox that you have no share in the God of Israel.” It is forbidden to mention God’s name. The Hasmonean reaction was: not only will we mention God’s name, we will take God’s name out of the synagogue and put it in the middle of the marketplace. We will write it on documents, on our commerce. “In God we trust,” as our American cousins say. They write God’s name on bills, even on documents as written here. This was of course an antithesis to the Greeks: the Hasmoneans wanted to conduct commerce too under God’s name. Once again you see the policy: to manage the secular under the authority of the sacred.

Now the sages saw that tomorrow the person would pay his debt and the document would be thrown in the trash, so they abolished that enactment and made it a holiday. Ostensibly this is only some technical explanation, because it might lead to disgrace of the documents. But I sense there is something deeper here. They made it a holiday because they abolished the harmful approach of the Hasmonean house. It is an approach that is fundamentally wrong. If all you did was save documents from being thrown in the trash, why celebrate a holiday? What does that have to do with a holiday? Okay, you removed the problem, solved the problem, everything is fine, you can continue. Why are you making a holiday here? You make a holiday because you are abolishing a flawed approach or a distorted approach that prevailed until power came into the hands of the sages and they abolished the enactment of the Hasmonean house. This was probably after the Hasmoneans no longer ruled. The sages abolished it and made a holiday. They made a holiday over abolishing the distorted conception of the Hasmonean house, that the secular should be conducted in the purity of the sacred. Not so. The sages say: the secular by itself and the sacred by itself. And once they succeeded in restoring the crown to its former glory—the crown of distinction between sacred and secular—they established a holiday. Because that is what should be. There is another example I’ll show you.

There is a Mishnah in tractate Berakhot: “And they instituted that a person should greet his fellow with God’s name, as it is stated: ‘And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers: The Lord be with you; and they answered him: The Lord bless you.’ And it says: ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.’ And it says: ‘Do not despise your mother when she is old,’” and so on. Fine? So what does this mean? They instituted that a person should greet his fellow with God’s name. Who is “they instituted”? Who were those who instituted it? It is not clear from the Mishnah. One could perhaps say that it was in the time of Boaz, Boaz’s court, because the verse they bring is a verse about Boaz. Okay, so that is from the period of the Judges. There are various suggestions; some attribute it to Gideon or to other sources.

But in Sefer HaMikhtam he writes as follows in the name of the Ra’avad: “And they instituted that a person should greet his fellow in peace. I do not know when this enactment was made, for this enactment was only because they were devoted to idolatry and would say that one should not mention the name of God. And the pious among them would mention it even in greeting.” Yes, you meet the guys and say to them: peace be upon you, in God’s name. And you mention God’s name in the management of your social relations, your secular relations, between man and his fellow. Okay? Again you see the conception: subordinating the secular—human relations—to the sacred. Everything is done in God’s name. On documents they put God’s name, in the marketplace, in commerce, and also in interpersonal relations. You simply meet someone in the street and want to say hello, so you say it in God’s name. Okay? That is what they did, what they mentioned.

“And in the Second Temple period there was no devotion to idolatry, and perhaps this enactment was in the days of Boaz, even though it is mentioned later in the Mishnah”—the Mishnah is only recording it, but it was in the days of Boaz—“or perhaps”—notice what he says—“or perhaps it was in the days of the Greeks, who were decreeing against Israel, and when the Hasmonean house prevailed, they enacted this. And they learned it from the earlier ones, as it is stated: ‘And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem.’ And from the Jerusalem Talmud it appears that Boaz enacted it,” and so on.

Where did he invent the idea that this is an enactment of the Hasmonean house? There is not the slightest hint of it. Where did he get it from? Boaz you see from the verses; I don’t know, you can bring this or that indication from elsewhere. Suddenly he says maybe it was in the days of the Greeks. What? Where did that fall from? Why not in the days of the Assyrians? Or the Romans? Or anyone you like. Why suddenly jump on the Greeks and the Hasmoneans? Precisely because there is no hint for it, and yet he still chooses the Greeks and the Hasmoneans. It is perfectly clear that he understands that this is the kind of enactment typical of the Hasmoneans. Just as they enacted writing God’s name on documents, the same type of enactment we find here: greeting one’s fellow with God’s name. The Ra’avad simply understands that this enactment suits the Hasmonean house. The Hasmonean house were those who wanted to subordinate the secular to holiness. So just as they say, let’s write God’s name on documents, they probably also enacted greeting one’s fellow with God’s name.

So there is some conception here that says the Hasmonean house are characterized by this. They are characterized by being imperialists of holiness. They basically hold that one must impose the sacred upon the secular and run the secular by means of holiness. If this really is the consistent worldview of the Hasmonean house, then it seems to me no wonder they also take over the kingship. When they take over the kingship, they are doing so not out of pursuit of power and honor, but because of a principled ideology. They take the sphere of holiness—which is the priest—and appoint him king so that the secular conduct, yes, the conduct of ordinary life, of the people, will also be run by the priest. That is the continuation of the same consistent worldview of the Hasmonean house.

So it wasn’t that they had self-sacrifice for Jewish law and in addition were power- and honor-hungry. No. This was part of the same self-sacrifice they had. That self-sacrifice stemmed from a fundamentalist conception saying that everything should be run by holiness. There is no place for the secular. But Nachmanides says that this conception is so mistaken and harmful that even though they probably did it with good intentions—or at least it began with good intentions—no trace remained of them. Since this is so harmful, one must not leave any trace of that conception. Therefore the sages also made a holiday when they abolished the enactment to write God’s name on documents. You see how they relate to this approach of subordinating the secular to the sacred as though it were a violation of a very, very fundamental principle in the service of God. It is not some accidental side-sin or another. Therefore even though they were holy and self-sacrificing and did it with good intentions, they were all annihilated. Because one cannot leave such a conception alive. That conception is destructive. It cannot be left alive. Therefore they were all destroyed. That is my claim.

Now so that we can take a three-minute break, refresh ourselves a bit, and then return and continue. Okay? Okay, let’s come back. Whoever can, please turn on cameras.

Wait, Rabbi, what you’re basically saying is that according to Nachmanides and according to the Jerusalem Talmud there is a value in separating religion and state?

Separating sacred from secular. Religion and state is something a bit more extreme. Today I’m in favor of separating religion from state, but not as an ideal model; rather in today’s state I personally favor separation. But Nachmanides is talking about separation between sacred and secular, not between religion and state. That’s not the same thing. I’ll talk about that a bit later.

It reminds me a little of the separation of religion and state in the United States, actually. A very religious country, religious symbolism, but essential separation legislatively.

No, no, no. I mean, the state isn’t very religious; its residents are very religious. The symbolism there—again, Moses and Jesus on the House of Representatives and the symbolism—and in the conduct of the state there are no religious features. The fact that people speak in a certain way, including the president, whatever—that’s fine, because the people are religious, their culture may be religious, but the state is indeed detached from it.

Okay, but I’ll comment on that a bit later.

So basically until now I described one side of this struggle, the Hasmoneans. What about the wicked Greeks? The Greeks represent the opposite conception. First of all, we’ve already seen that the Greeks forbade mentioning God’s name, and perhaps if the Ra’avad is right then maybe even greeting one’s fellow with God’s name—they forbade mentioning God’s name anywhere. Meaning, they tried to push holiness entirely out of the world. They were basically imperialists of the secular. They wanted to impose the secular even on the sacred, meaning to erase the sacred.

Beyond the fact that one may not mention God’s name and the rabbinic description “write on the horn of the ox that we have no share in the God of Israel,” beyond that you can see, for example, in “Maoz Tzur”—yes, “Maoz Tzur” is the song of the oppressors, right? You know what a Jewish holiday is? A Jewish holiday is: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat. Right? That’s the Jewish holiday. So the full list of oppressors appears in “Maoz Tzur.” Now the Greeks in this context are mentioned as those who “breached the walls of my towers.” Right? That’s what distinguishes the Greek oppressor. What does that mean there?

It seems to me the issue lies in the Mishnah in tractate Middot, where it says as follows: “Inside it was the soreg, ten handbreadths high.” There is the cheil and there is the soreg. The soreg is a kind of fence ten handbreadths high. “And there were thirteen breaches there, which the kings of Greece made. They came back and repaired them and enacted corresponding to them thirteen prostrations. Inside it was the cheil,” and so on. So the kings of Greece made thirteen breaches in the soreg. And when the kings of the Hasmonean house took over, they repaired the breaches. Corresponding to those breaches, in order to remember the victory, they enacted that one should make thirteen prostrations near each such gate before entering.

By the way, this is interesting, because the holiday of Hanukkah does not appear in the Mishnah. Purim has a tractate, and Hanukkah does not; it doesn’t appear in the Mishnah. The only place it appears in the Mishnah—two places, actually—is here in tractate Middot, and the other is the Hanukkah lamp that caused damage in Bava Kamma; there too there is some such Mishnah. But that’s it. So it’s interesting that here the main reference in the Mishnah is this point. No wonder that in “Maoz Tzur” the Greeks are characterized as those who “breached the walls of my towers,” because here too what is mentioned about the Greeks is that they made thirteen breaches in the soreg.

Now what is the meaning of this matter? What is the function of the soreg? That is not very clear; there are various different suggestions. I brought here the comments of Tosafot Yom Tov, who expands on this Mishnah in Middot. He says: “The Kesef Mishneh wrote that the soreg was made for carrying on Sabbath”—all these things he says don’t sound plausible to him, he rejects them, and I’ll move on. “But what seems to me in this matter is what I already wrote, with Heaven’s help, in the book Tzurat HaBayit, section 52, that the construction of the soreg was to provide a place and a distinction between idolaters who entered to pray in the house of God and Israel. For we learned in the first chapter of Kelim that the cheil is holier than it, for idolaters and those defiled by a corpse do not enter there.” Yes, an idolater and one defiled by a corpse may enter up to the cheil. The cheil is inside the soreg. Okay? So he says: the soreg basically marks for the idolaters how far they are allowed to come.

Now if that is indeed so, then what is the meaning of these breaches made by the Greeks? He says: “And in the later editions of that book I added a good reason why the Greeks breached it, since it was made to distinguish them from entering further inward. Therefore when Israel returned and merited to repair them, they instituted at each repair a prostration to thank God, for He is good.” In other words, the Greeks basically wanted to erase holiness, to bring the secular into the sacred, and the fence that marks the boundary between sacred and secular was breached by them. But it was breached by them in order to bring the secular into the sacred, not in order to bring the sacred outward. Okay? This is part of the same Greek policy trying to impose the secular on all of reality.

Maybe if you want more examples: for instance there is the decree in tractate Ketubot. The Talmud says there was a decree: “A virgin who marries on Wednesday shall first be taken by the governor.” There was such a decree—the decree of the first night. Historically this was known in many places; among others it existed among the Greeks. Rashi—this is in tractate Ketubot 3a—Rashi in tractate Shabbat 23a explains that this decree was by the Greeks, who decreed that all marrying virgins be first taken by the commander. What does this mean? This is also what Maimonides wrote above: “they stretched out their hands against their daughters.” What does that mean? It means this decree, yes, that they wanted to insert their seed into Israel. Again, to blur the boundary existing between sacred and secular, between Israel and the nations.

The same goes for translating the Torah into Greek. In Megillat Ta’anit it says that they established three days of fasting, the 8th, 9th, and 10th of Tevet, because they decreed to translate the Torah into Greek, and that darkness descended upon the earth when the Torah was translated into Greek. What was the idea? The idea was to secularize the Torah, to turn it into one more book in the library, and in that sense translating it into Greek was a continuation of the same policy of secularizing the sacred.

Okay, that was basically the claim. Of course they also conquered the Land of Israel; more than that, they also defiled the oil. Again, secularization of the sacred. Of course they defiled the Temple, “write on the horn of the ox that you have no share in the God of Israel,” everything we talked about earlier.

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner writes in Pachad Yitzchak on Hanukkah that what distinguishes the Greeks is that for the first time there was actually a struggle over the Torah. All the struggles until then were national struggles, power struggles, over territory, over interests; there had been plenty of oppressors before that. But the first time there were decrees not to observe commandments and a war was launched against the Torah, that was with the Greeks. That is basically his claim.

And by the way, therefore there is—well, I heard this from someone else actually, perhaps a student of his—Rabbi Moshe Shapira, of blessed memory. I once heard him say that only in the Greek period do we find Hellenizers. There are no Egyptianizers, Babylonianizers, Assyrianizers—there are Hellenizers. What’s the idea? If you know a little history, the Greek empire basically began with Alexander the Great, then came the division of the Diadochi, and the whole struggle of the Hasmoneans was of course much later than Alexander; it was already against the Seleucid house. But the point is that the whole empire basically—yes, his father Philip brought Aristotle to be his teacher in the palace in Macedonia. And Alexander, who went out—in a certain sense this is a bit like Napoleon—they were conquerors with a cultural agenda. They wanted to spread a certain kind of culture, not merely to dominate and unleash their lust for power. Therefore in a certain sense they also succeeded, because Hellenizers arose. Hellenizers are those who adopted that culture. And against that, the Hasmoneans went out to war, because the Greeks were trying to impose their culture on the whole world, including on the sacred—meaning, to turn the whole thing into secular life.

This is basically why they decreed against circumcision, the new month, and Sabbath. What are circumcision, the new month, and Sabbath? The moon is of course the distinctive calendar of the people of Israel, and therefore they wanted to abolish it. And circumcision and Sabbath are two commandments that are called a sign. Right? Both circumcision and Sabbath are called a sign, which is what marks Israel. In short, we see in a very consistent way that the Greeks had a very systematic policy to impose the secular on the sacred. Imperialism of the secular.

If that is indeed so, then it seems to me we can describe this picture in terms of a kind of dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. What do I mean? The Greeks come with a mentality of imperialism of the secular and conquer the land and defile the Temple, insert their seed through the daughters of Israel, try to abolish God’s name, defile the oils, breach the fences between sacred and secular—in short, turn everything into the secular. That was the Greek mentality, at least in the rabbinic description. Perhaps the historical description is more complex, but in the rabbinic view of the Greeks, “Greeks” basically means imperialism of the secular.

Okay. By contrast, who can contend with such a conception? Maimonides already teaches us in his laws of character traits—you surely know his statement about the middle path—that if someone inclines to one extreme, in order to return him to the middle path you need to activate the opposite extreme, so that ultimately he will stabilize somewhere in the middle. When there is an imperialism of the secular, the way to contend with it is someone who believes in an imperialism of holiness, the opposite extreme. Therefore the Hasmoneans are the ones who lead the struggle against the Greeks, because they truly hold the path of imperialism of holiness.

Now for the time being, that is perfectly fine. In order to return the pendulum to the center from the left side, you need to swing it with full force to the right. The problem is that the Hasmoneans, even after they removed the Greeks, continued on and remained kings who were priests. Meaning, they fell in love with the idea—or not fell in love; they probably truly believed in it—the idea that everything should be run according to holiness, that there is no secular. At that point the Holy One, blessed be He, said stop. That no longer works. Why? You can use this as a temporary measure for an interim period, in order to swing the pendulum back to the center. But as a permanent worldview, this is a harmful distortion that has no place whatsoever. It must be eradicated if it appears.

Nachmanides, by the way, when speaking of “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” says that for the moment and for a time, it is possible, as long as you do not anoint the king and do not perpetuate a new dynasty not from the house of David. If for a certain time you need to take some ruler to deal with a problem, fine. Then you can do what you need to do for that moment. But do not turn it into an ideology. You must understand that it is a means to deal with a local problem. One who turns imperialism of holiness into an ideology will be cut off from the world. It cannot work. Such a thing cannot endure.

By the way, I think this is somewhat connected to Rashi at the beginning of Genesis, where God’s name appears differently in chapter 1 and chapter 2. “God” appears in chapter 1 and “the Lord God” in chapter 2. So Rashi brings there that the Holy One, blessed be He, initially thought to create the world with the attribute of justice, and saw that it could not endure, so He joined to it the attribute of mercy. Sometimes there are things that seem to us very, very positive, very, very good, and we want to carry them out to the limit. Justice is a good thing; it’s good that there is justice. But one who would establish the whole world on justice destroys it. Jerusalem was destroyed, yes, because they insisted on strict law alone. Pure justice, without combining it also with kindness, cannot endure. Even though justice is something important—it hardly needs saying in the Jewish world how fundamental Jewish law is, how important it is, certainly not in our series this year which is more or less devoted to that. In any case, the claim is that holiness is of course central and important, but imperialism of holiness is a distortion. Just as imperialism of the secular is a distortion. Neither of them has any place; neither can endure.

So if you do it temporarily in order to bring the pendulum back to the center, fine. But if you grasp it as an ideology, then the Holy One, blessed be He, destroys the whole Hasmonean house. When they abolish the enactment to write God’s name on documents, they establish a holiday. To abolish God’s name on documents, to push holiness back to its place, to its own four cubits, to take it out of the street, out of the market—on that they establish a holiday. Not on the fact that we cannot endure and cannot succeed in living all ordinary life in holiness, in purity of holiness. No, they establish a holiday for this. Why? Because that is the ideal, not an after-the-fact concession. On the contrary, imperialism of holiness is the after-the-fact concession. The ideal is when there is a boundary between the secular and holiness.

And that is the synthesis. If the thesis was the Greek one—imperialism of the secular—and the antithesis was the Hasmoneans—imperialism of holiness—then what is truly correct is neither this nor that. Both are distortions. What is truly correct is the synthesis, namely: the secular alongside holiness, with a closed soreg and no breaches between them. Therefore the lamp is also placed at the entrance of the house—yes, you bring the lamp outward toward the street, but you don’t light it like Chabad does; you light it in a way that faces the street. Fine? It has to remain in the house.

Can I ask something?

Yes.

The synthesis sounds to me more like the secular within the holy, holiness within the secular. I mean, why this very clear separation? Shouldn’t the demand be: let’s really live life—documents really should be part of our life—but not painted in holiness, though also not with this separation?

That is the separation—what do you mean? That is the separation. What do you want? There is a very clear soreg between them, a path in the middle. That’s what I call separation. What do you want the documents to have, if not God’s name, then what yes? What are you suggesting should be there?

I don’t know. At least I grew up—and this is what I hear around me—that when you go to university and study physics, that belongs to the secular, and then when you sit in the study hall that’s holiness. Right, I hear here something else. I hear that the synthesis is that inside the study hall there can also be physics.

No, on the contrary, what I’m saying is the opposite. I thought you were making a claim. From holiness I hear the opposite, but from the Hanukkah story I hear this, and I ask because of the fact that they were wiped out and Nachmanides says this. I’m making the opposite claim: each thing has its place, and they need to dwell side by side without mixing.

Okay, I thought the conclusion was going to be that they need to be together in peace.

No, together in peace. Do you know how peace is made? Peace is made by separating well in the middle. That’s how peace is made. Anyone who wants to make peace by living together—that isn’t peace, that’s erasure. Peace is made—peace exists between enemies, though in a much deeper sense than people usually use among us.

No, peace is between enemy and enemy. And personally—personally is this how you see things? Meaning, physics definitely isn’t part of holiness?

Of course.

Yes. But I’ll explain in a moment. I’ll get to that.

Okay, that’s not clear to me.

I’ll get to it.

In any case, that is basically the claim. Now, what does this actually mean? It means that imperialism of holiness actually cheapens holiness. Because if everything is holy, then there is no such thing as holy. “You shall be holy”—at the beginning there is Rashi and Nachmanides—what does “holy” mean? Holy means separate. Right? In the literal meaning. “Holy” means separate, distinguished. Excellent. Meaning, not here but there, set apart. That is what is called holy. So holiness by definition has to be bounded with a very specific border and not go out beyond it. Because if it goes out beyond it, that is not holiness. Holiness is always something distinguished from other life, from ordinary secular life. Therefore this is not technical; it is essential.

If everything is holy, then there is no holiness. If everything is holy, there is no holiness. Holiness always has to be something specially bounded within the world of the secular. If every day were Sabbath, then it would not be Sabbath. So “why isn’t every day Sabbath,” as the songwriter says? If every day were Sabbath, then it would not be Sabbath. There wouldn’t be seven Sabbaths; there simply wouldn’t be Sabbath at all. There is something about holiness—Sabbath is holiness in time. There is a sanctuary in space and a sanctuary in time, as I think Heschel is responsible for that phrase. There is a sanctuary in space and a sanctuary in time. But it is a sanctuary by definition; it is bounded to a certain place and time. Because if it were in every place, then it would not be a sanctuary. Therefore too the Mishnah in Kelim says: “There are ten degrees of holiness.” “There are ten degrees of holiness,” one above another; there is a very clear hierarchy of how far each level of holiness extends. One must not mix. One must not mix; each thing in its place. Every level of holiness in its place.

Now I want to make clear, so there won’t be misunderstandings: the secular is not impurity. The secular is absence of holiness. Let’s say if holiness is one, impurity is minus one, the secular is zero. Fine? Meaning, you know that in Greek philosophy they distinguish between two kinds of opposite: contrary opposition and privative opposition. The contrary opposite of one is minus one. Of minus one, it’s one. The privative opposite of one is zero. For example, cold and hot are a contrary opposition. Light and darkness are a privative opposition. How do I know? Mix cold liquid with hot liquid and you get lukewarm—they cancel each other, right? But mix light with darkness, what do you get? Light. There is no cancellation. Why is there no cancellation? Because darkness is the absence of light. It is not minus one, it is zero. Okay, one plus zero is one. One plus minus one cancels; that’s zero. But one plus zero remains one.

Therefore in our context too, when I talk about the secular I do not mean impurity. There is also impurity; that is minus one. The secular means non-holiness, that’s all. It’s zero. Fine? Not minus one. And it is very important to understand that between holiness and impurity there is a middle area, the gray area between black and white, which is the realm of the secular. And one who sees the world in black and white, first of all does not see it correctly, and second, sees it in a harmful and distorted way. And that is destructive. When you turn everything into holy or impure, that is destructive. And I’ll get to that in a moment, to implications closer to us.

Therefore the lesson that, in my opinion, one can learn from this whole story is that contrary to the common Hasidic conception that tries to see holiness everywhere—even when you eat an apple you’re supposed to extract sparks of holiness from it—I don’t know. I eat an apple because I’m hungry and because the apple tastes good to me; that’s why I eat it. But in order to eat the apple properly, I make a blessing before and after. Meaning, that is called conducting the secular in the purity of holiness. But it is not holy. It is the secular done properly.

By the way, in halakhic categories there is a Talmud in Megillah that distinguishes there between objects used for a commandment and objects of holiness. Objects of holiness require genizah; objects used for a commandment may be discarded. You do not have to bury worn-out tzitzit, for example. People do that, but according to strict law it is not required. What is the difference? There is holiness and there is commandment. They are not the same thing. Holiness is very, very specific things: the Temple, sacrifices, the laws of holiness, sacred offerings. The order Kodashim in the Talmud deals with holiness. Orach Chayim does not deal with holiness. Orach Chayim deals with Jewish law, not holiness—with commandment. Yoreh De’ah also does not deal with holiness, most of Yoreh De’ah; it deals with Jewish law, with permitted and forbidden. Holy is holy and impure, not forbidden and permitted. Forbidden and permitted are not holy.

What? Orach Chayim deals with tefillin. Isn’t that holy? A Torah scroll isn’t holy?

The question is what we do with them, not the objects themselves.

No, the objects themselves—don’t they require genizah?

The objects themselves are holy, but what we do with them is a commandment. Those are two different things. Orach Chayim determines what to do with them; putting on tefillin is a commandment, not holiness. The tefillin themselves are an object of holiness. That is something else.

The category of holiness is a category that, if you cheapen it and spread it over the whole world, you empty it of content. That does not mean that in the realm of the secular the Torah has nothing to say. How to do and how not to do, positive commandments, prohibitions—of course. Most of the Torah deals with the secular realm. Therefore it is a common mistake: when I say something is secular, that does not mean it is neutral, that there are no values regarding it, that there is no right and wrong regarding it. Of course there is. But it is not holiness. Holiness is something else. It is a distinct halakhic category, both halakhic and apparently metaphysical, and it is not right to impose it on all of reality.

Sanctifying the secular is, in my opinion, a terrible distortion. It’s a slogan by which many people and young people are educated and so on; in my opinion it is a terrible distortion. One must not sanctify the secular in any way. What one should do is conduct the secular in the purity of holiness, meaning conduct the secular in the proper way.

Now if I also return to our own time—I’ve already used most of the time—but I’ll come back a bit to where this applies. What happens in the debate around Zionism and the state and one’s relation to them and so on? Basically the ideological world—in practice it’s more complex—but the ideological world is divided into two parts within the religious world, of course. One part sees the state as the sitra achra, impurity. Yes, the Haredi side. Again, when I say this, there is of course Meah Shearim and Satmar and all that, but even the non-extreme Haredim, even the mainstream ideologically, basically see it that way. They just live differently in practice. It is worth reading Rabbi Shach’s eulogy for the Satmar Rebbe; you can see there how much the Satmar Rebbe was perceived by him as someone who truly held the truth, he just behaved incorrectly at the pragmatic level.

Opposed to that stands a conception that says: what are you talking about? The state is holiness. Yes, the state is holiness, IDF uniforms are the garments of the High Priest. There is some statement attributed to Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda—I once heard something like that—that IDF uniforms are the garments of the High Priest. That statement horrifies me. The argument here is conducted between two sides, one of which sees the state as impurity and the other sees the state as holiness. And I think what is very missing—and I’m speaking at the ideological level, because in practice I think most people are there—is a more balanced way of seeing this: that the state is secular. I need a state just as I need breakfast. It’s part of a person’s needs. He needs to live among his people, with the people he is connected to, in a culture he can influence and that speaks to him. Therefore it is something very important to me; it is a need. But the need does not make it holy. Breakfast is also a need. Going to the bathroom is also a need. That does not turn going to the bathroom into a holy act.

Isn’t a holy act an act through which I serve the Holy One, blessed be He?

No, no. An act through which you serve the Holy One, blessed be He, is a commandment. Holiness is a well-defined category. That’s what I’m saying. Therefore it does not mean there is no right and wrong in how to run the state. There is right and wrong, certainly there is, but that does not mean it is holiness.

Now you can think to yourselves: okay, this is semantics, what difference does it make? Practically you’re basically telling me that we need to run it properly—call it holy or don’t call it holy. There is something very deep here and it also has implications. The implications are how you actually relate to institutions. That reverent awe—like the dancing, Jerusalem Day at Mercaz HaRav always horrified me every time anew, in the flag dancing. I can’t bear those situations, because they treat—when I see a flag inside a synagogue I get a fever. Because I don’t think that is where it belongs. A flag is a symbol of the secular; it has no business being in a synagogue. Not because I don’t identify with what the flag represents, but because it has nothing to do with the synagogue. These are two different things; don’t bring that into the synagogue.

And don’t dance before the chief of staff singing “Lift up your heads, O gates,” as if the High Priest has just entered the yeshiva on Jerusalem Day. Meaning, no. Or the flag dance, or all kinds of events of that sort. I think there is some conception there—it’s hard even to define where the line is beyond which it becomes problematic—but there is a problematic statement there, some dangerous fascism. Something that sees the state and its institutions as an object of holiness.

And again I say: ostensibly this is only semantics, because I too say that there is a right and wrong way to run this, and certainly one should fight for it to be run properly. But there is a difference between that and seeing holiness here. In holiness there is always a storm, a spiritual storm, and there are casualties and wars, no compromises, because holiness is something that arouses our adrenaline, our spiritual adrenaline too, not only the physical kind. And I think it is very problematic to direct those mental resources toward secular spheres. Yes, one should struggle for things to be done properly, all of that is true, but it is not correct that if El Al flies on Sabbath that is impurity because it is a state company, and if it does something against Jewish law then it is horrifying. It is horrifying like any other transgression, but there is nothing in the kingdom beyond the sins of this or that person. Maybe the impact, the desecration of God’s name, is greater—perhaps, I don’t know. But there is always some conception here: people see this as some kind of violation of holiness, as if impurity has entered here, as if an idol has entered the sanctuary. Running the state in such a way is not an idol in the sanctuary. There is neither sanctuary nor idol here.

The state is a secular state, and I would be very happy if it were run properly, but that does not make it holy. The Israel Defense Forces is not holy; it is a useful means so that we can survive here, that’s all.

What is the definition of holiness according to the Rabbi?

I said: there are halakhic definitions. “There are ten degrees of holiness” in tractate Kelim. You can read there; the definitions are there.

This is a very Leibowitzian approach, what you’re presenting here.

And therefore? Leibowitzian, Aristotelian—call it whatever name you like. This is what I think; why should I care what it’s called?

The claim is basically that this attitude in terms of holiness, even though seemingly it is only semantics, says something very deep. There are major implications to this. You relate to it in a much calmer and more balanced way when you see things as a need. The state is a need. I do not serve the prime minister; the prime minister serves me. There is nothing holy here at all. He is simply my senior official, that’s all. He works for me, period. Nothing beyond that. And I owe him no honor except what is needed in order to run this business properly. It is not a question of harming holiness or who knows what, the people of Israel, all kinds of slogans of that kind.

There is something in our tendency—and I’m returning for a moment to the opening—that refuses to see the dimensions of the secular in the reality around us. Therefore we tend to see everything as either holy or impure. And the struggles are whether the state is holy or impure, whereas the obvious middle option is that the state is secular, a normal need like anything else. That option is simply not on the table. I think many people, once this is presented to them, would agree. It’s just that this option is not presented. Some people are educated that it is holy; others are educated that it is impure. But there is also the secular between holy and impure.

But I think what’s really missing—maybe that’s another lesson—is to speak about the fact that okay, it’s secular. But where—it sounds like in impurity there’s a drive to come and erase it and remove it from the world, and in holiness there’s the opposite drive. And the secular is good: I eat an apple because I’m hungry, breakfast because I don’t know, I get dressed because I’m cold, etc. But where in the secular, for example—and I’ll raise a question I think occupies me a lot—where in the whole issue of environmental pollution, yes, in recent years, and technology, where as a religious person do I see a drive there? It’s not holy, it’s secular, but the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world and I want to preserve it.

And the struggle should be like any value-based struggle. One should try to advance it, invest efforts in that matter, but not take things out of proportion into metaphysical dimensions. You know, part of the problem—

No, but the question is whether—okay, so is it not a commandment, say, if it isn’t explicitly defined in the 613 commandments?

It is a commandment. It is a commandment. It’s not because it’s not a commandment. It is a commandment, but it is not holiness. Those are two completely different things.

Regarding the state—because this is really about the Hasmoneans, yes, sovereignty returned to Israel—regarding the state there is some tendency to see in the events that happen to us the handiwork of some demons up there playing around in the world and in us too. So some see in this a move of the side of holiness, others see it as a move of the side of impurity, and there are some insane metaphysical battles here that we can’t seem to detach ourselves from, when really it’s all foolish inventions and I have no idea where they came from. There is nothing here. There is some political process. You can agree with it, you can oppose it, you can try to shape it this way or that. What are we fighting over? Why? Why to this day—the state has existed for what, seventy years, more than seventy years—and to this day the religious public is divided between Religious Zionists and Haredim. Why is that the issue that cuts the public? Why is that an important issue? Why does it matter whether you say Hallel on Independence Day or not? My grandmother might care about that. Why should I? Is that the important question? It’s simply irrelevant.

There are questions much more important, such as the attitude to modernity, the attitude to fields that are not holiness or not Torah in the traditional sense. In my opinion that is a far more important question. Attitudes toward cultures, general culture, and so on—far more important. I would have expected the watershed line to pass there, and not in relation to the state. We’re arguing about the state as if we were living a hundred years ago. The state has already been established, hello! It has been here for seventy-two years. We argue as though the question is whether it is worthwhile to establish it or not. We are fighting over ideas that died more than seventy years ago. Why? Because it is clear to us that there are some demons up there—either that side or this side—and the question is who will win. We live in these holy worlds, and in my opinion this need for a metaphysics of holiness and impurity is a very problematic need. And this is part of the problematic side that I tried to describe here with the Hasmoneans and the Greeks.

Not everything is holiness and impurity; there is also the secular. One can live with the secular.

Rabbi, but if we can serve God through commandments that are not holiness, what is the purpose of holiness in the world?

I don’t know what “the purpose of holiness” means. Holy places are usually places—or objects related to those places—where there is a stronger presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, than in other places. That probably radiates in some way also to the other dimensions of existence, but the other dimensions of existence are secular. They are not holiness.

But I can see the Holy One, blessed be He, for example in a miracle I see. Does the miracle become holy?

If you ask me specifically about that, I don’t see the Holy One, blessed be He, there, but there can be arguments about that. And that’s a different argument; it’s not connected. The miracle does not become holy because of that. The Holy One, blessed be He, also created my bodily orifices in the same way. So are my orifices holy too?

But I feel it more when I see an open miracle. I see, for example, the ingathering of exiles after two thousand years—I more strongly see the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, in history.

Then take a pill. That’s a psychological phenomenon. What does that have to do with what you feel? For me, holiness is a factual phenomenon. It is a reality. People feel holiness toward things that are not holy—that is the distortion I’m talking about.

So why according to the Rabbi would tefillin be holy? I mean, here too it’s a psychological phenomenon that I feel the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He.

Because Jewish law says there is holiness there. Again, that has nothing to do with feeling. If you have some kind of holiness-meter that allows you to sense that holiness, I don’t know—I’m not trying to mock it. I don’t have that, but maybe some people do. One just has to be careful, because there are people who think they have it but don’t. And for them it rings in the wrong places. They see holiness in places where it isn’t.

Another question on this topic: okay, this doesn’t necessarily contradict what you’re saying, but how are we supposed to understand, basically, the Torah’s view? Most of the books of the Prophets describe things that are supposedly completely secular, like actions of the king, but they also assign theological meaning to why things happen. The split of the kingdom because of the sin of…?

What is the question? I didn’t understand.

I’m asking: according to the worldview you just presented, how can those things be understood? Because okay, I understand it isn’t holiness, but what is it? Because there is a theological meaning here.

Forbidden and permitted. What do you mean by theological meanings? The Torah says what is forbidden and what is permitted, how things should be done and how they should not be done. That’s all.

But for example in Samuel I and Samuel II the political transitions from Saul to David are described because he sinned, because of things like that. It’s again a theological justification, not necessarily a political one. For example the split of the kingdoms—the political explanation is raising taxes.

Right. You can find theological explanations for whatever you want. So what? But why does that make it holy?

I’m not claiming it makes it holy. I’m asking what the relation of this worldview is to what you said.

And I’m saying there is no tension; it fits perfectly well. I don’t see what tension you see here.

So I don’t understand the distinction. Again, to see the world in theological terms, to give a theological interpretation to things—

Giving a theological interpretation is yet another thing, and that too I object to, but that’s not what I’m discussing here. I’m talking about giving metaphysical interpretations, not theological ones. Meaning, seeing in things some realities clashing in the world, of which we are only expressions.

You know that the Talmud in Nedarim says that vows are law in the object and oaths are law in the person. The source for law in the object is holiness, like the inherent holiness of a sacrifice. Basically what distinguishes holiness is that it is law in the object. There is some reality from which the laws derive. By contrast, in the forbidden and permitted the basic idea is that these are forbidden and permitted—that is, norms. It is not a reality. The norms are what begin the matter. What I am trying to say is that one should not see demons behind every single thing. There are also things that simply are what they are, without seeing demons behind them.

There are people who look at every event that happens around us and look for which demon caused it. Who caused the Holocaust, who caused the state, who caused—I don’t know who caused what. Everyone chooses for himself which demons manage which event. And I say: no demon manages any event. Things happen here in the ordinary way of the world, and one should try to run things properly and not improperly, and that’s all. Without seeing all kinds of metaphysics behind things.

But again, beyond the fact that a prophet came and told us—I support Zionism and the State of Israel not because it is the foundation of God’s throne in the world and it will bring the Messiah and it comes from the side of holiness, but because I have an interest in there being a state, and maybe it will also help me fulfill commandments or maybe it won’t, everyone can decide for himself. Fine, there are interests, and I will advance that. There is simply my interest in wanting a state, just as a Belgian also wants a state. That’s perfectly fine. You do not need to see in the State of Israel anything more than that. You can be a Zionist and religious in a perfectly kosher way even without the hyphen between Zionist and religious.

Again, I’m not asking about that. I’m not sure my question is getting across. I mean, beyond the fact that a prophet told me that the reason a kingdom split was because of his sin and his sin, is there—how do we understand that? Because the prophet does describe a situation of “because of his sin and his sin.”

So I’m saying: if I understood correctly, the demons you’re describing are really the attempt by people to do that same kind of thinking without prophetic guidance. They say: the state arose, here’s a sign, it’s a miracle, it happened, there it is.

If you call it a miracle, I don’t mind that you call it a miracle. I don’t agree, but that’s not what I’m arguing against here now. The issue is not whether it is a miracle or not. I’m only asking whether it necessarily expresses metaphysical processes or not. These are processes happening here, even if by miracle, I don’t care. So the Holy One, blessed be He, supplied my needs miraculously, okay, and I’ll thank Him for that too. But that does not mean the state should now become holy, and anyone who doesn’t cooperate with it is impure from the side of impurity. The attitude should be more balanced, that’s all—see things as they are.

If, say, the New Israel Fund or the European Union or I don’t know who, the Fellowship—take examples—you can discuss it halakhically: yes, good, no, not good; ideologically: yes, it’s worthwhile to cooperate with it, no, it isn’t. But don’t draw the demons behind it moving the thing. Which devil stands behind each thing and what his metaphysical aims are—there aren’t any. There are people here who think this way or that way, and one can agree or disagree. But people have a tendency to see demons behind everything, metaphysics, and that is basically a projection of our tendency to see everything in terms of impure and holy while ignoring the fact of the secular—simply life. That’s all, simply to live.

And I’m saying this as an ideal ideology, meaning that one who says everything is holiness is a harmful distortion and deserves to be cut off, as Nachmanides says. That is a very strong statement: that the education on which seemingly we all grew up—that one has to sanctify the secular and things like that—is distorted education. It is education that should disappear from the world. Not that one should not do worthwhile things wherever one is—of course one should. But that is not called sanctifying the secular. That is called living the secular the way it should be lived. One cannot turn the secular into holiness. Holy is what is holy, period. What is not holy is not holy—it is not in your hands. The Holy One, blessed be He, can make things holy, not you.

Why can’t I make something holy?

You can consecrate an animal, of course, because the Torah says that you have the ability to consecrate an animal. That’s it.

I’m still not sure I grasp the distinction again between the worldview—again, to see the world with theological eyes, to give theological interpretation to things—

Rabbi, but the very Nachmanides you bring as a source for this view of understanding that there is the secular as secular—that same Nachmanides also explains “you shall be holy” as a person who really should care as much as possible about his relation to the secular.

“You shall be holy” means “you shall be separate,” that’s all. What’s the problem? That’s how he explains it and that’s how everyone explains it.

Yes, so you see that holiness is expressed through a person’s actions.

Right, but holiness in that sense is not an object of holiness. Holiness in that sense means perform commandments. Look at Maimonides in the fourth root. Maimonides in the fourth root brings “you shall be holy”—what does it mean? Perform the commandments. Meaning holiness is not only objects; rather, attaching oneself to holiness can be done by fulfilling commandments. You become holier in a personal sense, but that is not a reality of holiness. There is an extended use of the term holiness; that’s not what I’m speaking about. There is an extended use of the phrase “engage in holy things,” meaning study Torah. I have no problem with that expression. To engage in holy things means to study Torah, to do commandments—that is called engaging in holiness or, if you want, engaging in spirit, whatever. But it’s a borrowed expression. The concept of holiness has definitions.

So what comes to say that engaging in Zionism and the Land of Israel and the State of Israel is also holiness because it is the will of God? But those statements aren’t really saying only that—they’re saying more than that. If they only said that, I wouldn’t have a problem. It wouldn’t bring people to ecstasy around the flag in the Temple—in the synagogue, sorry—or statements of that sort.

It’ll also be in the Temple, Rabbi.

There too I hope there won’t be a flag. Or there—no, not there too.

All right, friends, have a happy Hanukkah. Maybe a short break, but may you have a Hanukkah of righteousness.

Thank you very much, Rabbi. Happy holiday.

Thank you very much, Rabbi. Happy holiday.