I mean this:

“And one may ask: why did they establish eight days? Since the oil in the flask contained enough to light for one night, it turns out that the miracle occurred only on the other seven nights.” (Beit Yosef there)

He understands that there was no miracle on the first day, because there was enough oil to light (there’s nothing here that would require commemoration); the miracle was only on the following 7 days.
And on this they piled up all kinds of strange and bizarre answers.

By the way, he himself answers it, but as I said, once again he answers it with a fact (and it’s hard to argue with facts).

I have not merited to grasp the full intent of the master. This is exactly the question I understood you to be referring to, and I answered it with an excellent explanation. What is difficult?

Apparently I also probably have not merited.

After all, where the Rabbi’s answer ends, the Beit Yosef’s question begins.
Why should one commemorate the first day, on which the oil they found burned?

If the Rabbi understands that there is no question here at all, that’s already a different matter.

Of course there isn’t. That is exactly what I wrote. Therefore I don’t understand your amazement at the various answers, as though this requires a master craftsman and the son of a master craftsman to solve it. The question was posed from the outset for the sake of casuistry, and the answers just continue the casuistry. That’s all.

With God’s help, 24 Kislev 5781

On the first day a great miracle occurred: not all the oil in the flask was used up, and some oil remained for the second day. As we see in Elisha’s miracle of the oil, even in a miracle there has to be something existing to which the miraculous blessing can apply. After the act of Creation there is no “creation from nothing out of the pantry,” and therefore in order for there to be a miracle on the following days, the oil had to not run out on the first day.

With blessings,
Yaron Fischel Korinaldi

With God’s help, 25 Kislev 5781

At any rate, it seems that the miracle of the flask of oil is not the only reason for the commandment of lighting the Hanukkah lamp. Rather, the primary institution of the lighting is for the miracle of deliverance from the decree of religious persecution and the purification of the Temple, which came as a result of the wondrous victory of the few over the many.

And seemingly there is proof of this from the reason for women’s obligation in the Hanukkah lamp, “for they too were part of that miracle.” After all, women are not included in the commandment to light and tend the Temple menorah.

It therefore seems that “that miracle,” which we publicize by lighting the Hanukkah candles, is the miracle of the victory of the few over the many. The miracle that happened with the flask of oil is only the reason why the miracle of victory, salvation, and the liberation of the Temple is publicized specifically through the lighting of a lamp.

With blessings,
Y.F.K.

There is no question at all, because apparently the miracle of the flask of oil never happened and is only a parable like the rest of the aggadot of the Talmud (and other historical stories mentioned by the Sages, most of which are plainly inaccurate—did Shimon the Righteous really meet Alexander of Macedon?).

From the historical sources it seems there were other reasons for celebrating eight days.
But the Sages wanted to teach us that the main point is the finding of the pure oil (interpret the aggadah as you wish—perhaps oil hints at pure wisdom that was not defiled by impure Greek thought, full of decadence…).
And another advantage the Sages gained through this aggadah is all the casuistry in the laws of impurity overridden in communal matters and other categories that were developed in attempts to answer a question that isn’t really a question.

A nice point I heard: Maimonides copied this Talmudic passage without mentioning the word “miracle.”
Today I saw a book with a thousand answers.

Happy holiday

Assumptions:
1. There was exactly enough oil for one day.
2. The oil lasted for eight days.
Assume for contradiction:
3. There was no miracle on the first day.
From 1 and 3 it follows: the oil ran out on the first day.
Contradicting 2.
Q.E.D.

10/12/2020

To Dvir—greetings,

The “historical sources” you rely on are the Books of the Maccabees. Josephus does not count as an independent source, since his account is based on 1 Maccabees and additional Hasmonean chronicles. And 2 Maccabees is full of miracle stories and wonders that belong in the realm of legend.

1 Maccabees is the work of a court historian of the Hasmoneans who is trying to glorify the name of his masters. The stories about a handful of rebels who managed to defeat the mighty Seleucid empire in battle are impossible fantasy. Such a victory is not documented in any Hellenistic or Roman source, and clearly never happened.

Likewise, the stories about decrees of religious persecution issued by the Seleucids are patently implausible. The pagan outlook was always tolerant toward other cults, and there is no logic in an enlightened cultured king like Antiochus issuing such decrees against his subjects.

The likely scenario is that the Hasmoneans seized the high priesthood by ousting the dynasty that preceded them. The central Seleucid regime did not care who ran the affairs of some remote province as long as he was loyal to the empire as a vassal and paid his taxes.

The stories about decrees of persecution do not fit a pagan regime. One may assume they were invented by the Hasmoneans, who were religious fanatics, in order to justify the acts of persecution and slaughter they carried out against the loyalists of the previous priestly dynasty, which had been more liberal and open to Hellenistic culture. In order to justify the massacre committed by the fanatical zealots against their enlightened predecessors, they invented absurd horror stories about “decrees of religious persecution.”

The story of the flask of oil, specifically, fits the religious fanatics very well, since of course they disqualified any oil produced by their enlightened predecessors. And when they found a flask of oil sealed with the stamp of one of the earlier high priests, the fanatics made a big holiday out of it, aside from the fact that it had been an ancient agricultural holiday marking the olive harvest season.

The Jews never defeated empires in battle. Every time they tried to fight forces stronger than themselves, they suffered a crushing defeat. What Jews do know how to do is intrigue and scheming among their various factions, where marginal matters like the “fitness” of this or that high priest are the likely cause for a national holiday for generations.

Regards,
Dr. Shatsius von Livinhausen,
Yigal Ben-Nun Institute for Objective History
Patrice Lumumba University

Paragraph 5, line 3
…which had been liberal and enlightened…

“The Jews’ Delusions,” is this sarcasm?
In any case, it seems you wrote a lot of nice conspiracy theories. But they have no basis at all. I’ve definitely heard many rabbis say that the Greeks didn’t tell the Jews to stop being Jews, but rather to stop attributing holiness to it, which fits exactly with the “enlightened” Greek approach. By the way, against the Greeks too, the Jews ultimately ended in failure—you should read the story to the end.

With God’s help, 25 Kislev 5781

To Yishai—greetings,

What I wrote to Dvir belongs to the genre of “parody.” I took the method common in scholarship (which he used)—distrust of miracle stories and rejection of rabbinic traditions because they are not mentioned in other “historical sources”—and on the basis of this method I built a “glorious theory” 🙂 that also rejects the reliability of the Book of Maccabees, both because of the story of the wondrous victory of the few over the many and because that victory is not mentioned in Hellenistic and Roman sources. In short: the method is problematic…

After the amusement of parody, it is worth saying a few serious things.

The miracle of the flask of oil is not mentioned in the Books of the Maccabees, but in tannaitic sources, which are based on ancient traditions transmitted orally. And in my humble opinion this is very understandable.

The main miracle for which Hanukkah is celebrated “with praise and thanksgiving” is the heroic victory over the Greeks, which secured both the liberation and purification of the Temple, and the cancellation of the decrees of religious persecution that had forbidden Sabbath observance and circumcision under penalty of death. These two goals were already achieved in the days of Judah Maccabee, even though he himself was killed in his wars against the Greeks. There was no longer any Greek threat either to the Temple or to the religious freedom of the Jews.

Jonathan his brother, who took leadership after his fall, succeeded in strengthening Judah’s autonomy by becoming a central force in the Seleucid kingdom, serving as a decisive “swing factor” in the struggles for power within the Seleucid empire. After Jonathan was murdered, his brother Simon arose and won de facto recognition from the Seleucid kingdom of Judah’s independence.

Judah’s existence as an independent state continued in the days of his son Yohanan and his grandsons Judah Aristobulus and Alexander Yannai, in whose days Judah became a “regional power.” But the political and military flourishing was accompanied by spiritual decline. The increase of Hellenistic influence and internal wars between Pharisees and Sadducees, and between Yannai’s heirs—Hyrcanus and Aristobulus—led them to bring in Pompey the Roman to arbitrate between them, and he eliminated Judah’s independence and subjected it to Roman rule.

Even though the Hasmonean kingdom ceased to exist, and later the Temple was destroyed, the scheme of Antiochus and his Hellenizing allies “to make them forget Your Torah and violate the laws of Your will”—to eliminate Judaism—failed. Not only did Judaism remain alive and well; during the Second Temple period and for decades afterward, Judaism became a force of strong cultural and religious influence on the Greco-Roman world. Many among the “high society” converted or drew close to Judaism. This powerful Jewish influence eventually led, in the longer term, to the collapse of paganism in the Roman Empire and the acceptance of monotheism (albeit in the distorted form of Christianity).

The victory over the Greeks paved the way for the Jews to political and spiritual independence. The political independence was destroyed because of the baseless hatred among Yannai’s heirs, but the spiritual independence remained for generations.

——–

Alongside the miracle of victory, which secured the spiritual independence of the Jewish people and for which we offer praise and thanks and light candles to publicize the miracle, there was also the miracle of the flask of oil, which occurred for the sake of zeal and beautification in purity. After all, they could have waited with lighting the Temple lamps until its purification, restoration, and festive reopening, and they could also have lit for a short time even with impure oil (for “impurity is overridden in communal matters”).

Even so, there were zealous people who wanted to begin lighting immediately, and even though there was no menorah, they fashioned iron spits and lit with them. For those zealous and meticulous people, the Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle: they found a flask of pure oil, and an additional miracle, that the small amount of oil lasted eight days, until pure oil arrived from the Galilee.

In this miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, showed how precious to Him are zeal and beautification in the meticulous details of the commandments—details that are essential for preserving purity of spirit. And for that reason the Sages instructed that the miracle of victory and salvation be publicized specifically through the lighting of candles, which also contains a remembrance of the miracle of the flask of oil.

And in summary:
The courage and self-sacrifice of the Hasmonean fighters brought about the great miracle of victory over the Greeks and the annulment of their decrees. And devotion to care and precision in the commandments—whose preciousness the Holy One, blessed be He, showed in the miracle of the flask of oil—is what guarantees the preservation of the spiritual independence of the Jewish people and the purity of its spirit.

With blessings,
Amihutz Yaron Shnitzel”r

S.v. “Judah’s existence as…”, line 1
…and his grandsons Judah Aristobulus…

There, line 3
…and internal wars…

Yaron, is the Hasmonean story really not mentioned in Greek historical literature? That really does sound a bit puzzling.

With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, Vayeshev, 5781

To Yishai—greetings,

For Hellenistic or Roman historians, we were just some marginal ethnic group sitting in a peripheral province of the Seleucid kingdom. Internal wars and battles with rebels were endless in that empire, so it’s hard to expect them to make a big deal out of us.

Just to give you some perspective: Herodotus, who wrote a systematic history of the Persian Empire, only knows how to say that in “Coele-Syria” [= the Land of Israel] there is a people who practice circumcision because of their connection to Egypt, from whom they received circumcision. That’s all he knew about us—that we were “a branch of Egypt” 🙂

With blessings, Amihutz Yaron Shnitzel”r

Once I suggested that Antiochus’ decrees against circumcision were intended to sever the Egyptians in Coele-Syria from their ties with Egypt, which was under Ptolemaic rule. When the Egyptians of Coele-Syria stubbornly refused to abolish circumcision, Antiochus sent Moses to plant in the minds of the Egyptians of Coele-Syria a Torah that would create hostility between them and Egyptian culture.

Moses, Antiochus’ representative, conjured up an ancient people called Israel, which had been destroyed hundreds of years earlier, as is well known from the testimony of Merneptah, who wrote “Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more,” and so too Mesha king of Moab wrote: “And Israel has perished, perished forever.” The people of Israel, extinct from the world, Moses raised up as a ghost and implanted in the minds of the Egyptians of Coele-Syria that they were descendants of that same “Israel” 🙂

The Romans also conquered lots of empires, yet the Jewish revolt is very well documented by Roman historians as though it were an enormous battle. If you’re claiming Greek historians were known for dishonesty and erasing history, that already explains more.

With God’s help, the fifth light of Hanukkah, 5781

To Yishai—greetings.

The Roman victory over the Jewish rebels, both in the Great Revolt and in the Bar Kokhba revolt, was clear and unequivocal, and therefore deserved Roman documentation.

By contrast, the Hasmonean war against the Seleucids was full of ups and downs, victories and defeats. Only in historical perspective can one see the progress of Hasmonean Judah’s autonomy.

The purification of the Temple was achieved after Judah’s victory over Lysias at Beth-zur, but a year and several months later Lysias returned with a huge force, won the battle of Beth-zechariah, and laid siege to Jerusalem. Only because of a revolt in Antioch was Lysias forced to end the siege and reach an agreement with Judah in which he canceled Antiochus’ decrees of religious persecution.

Because of changes of government in Antioch, a talented general named Bacchides arrived, who won the battle of Elasa in which Judah was killed. But a few years later he was defeated in the battle of Beth-basi, and reached a “ceasefire” agreement with Jonathan. From then on the Hasmoneans became a significant force in the Seleucid kingdom, a “swing factor” in the internal quarrels over power. Judah received its de facto independence in the days of Simon, about 15 years after the outbreak of the revolt.

This is not an unequivocal victory on the battlefield. It is a religious and political victory achieved in stages and gradually, after ups and downs—partly on the battlefield and partly at the negotiating table. As Beit Hillel defined it: “increasing and going onward” 🙂

With blessings, Yaron Fischel Ordner

For the Greek version, see the podcast “The Hasmoneans — the Greek Version,” on “Time Tunnel” (on the Kan website).

Paragraph 4, line 5
…about 25 years after the outbreak of the revolt.

Paragraph 4, line 5
…about 25 years after the outbreak of the revolt (in the year 142).

[Note:
And even this recognition was not the final word, for after Simon’s death (in 134), Antiochus VII arose and besieged Jerusalem, and Yohanan Hyrcanus was forced to agree to harsh terms for lifting the siege: payment of a heavy tax, withdrawal from some of the cities Simon had conquered, and the destruction of Jerusalem’s walls. Only after Antiochus’ death did Yohanan rebuild Jerusalem’s walls, and only in 127 did Yohanan begin minting coins that expressed his independence.]

With blessings, Yaron Fischel Ordner