Hanukkah, the festival of judicial independence

“What is Hanukkah?” (B.T. Shabbat, 21b:10). The Talmud asks no comparable question about any other holiday, presumably because every other holiday to date was mentioned in the Bible. Some holidays, like Purim, even had a whole book about them. No books about Hanukkah are included in the Bible. Indeed, the surviving ancient books about Hanukkah are clearly too pro-Sadducee for the pharisee Rabbis of the Talmud.

The ancient books rejected by the Talmud, namely the two books of Maccabees and Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, present Hanukkah as a celebration of the Hasmonean military victory over the armies of Antiochus IV and the restoration of the Temple sacrifices. These texts, which survive only in Greek, describe an eight-day celebration of the Temple restoration filled with harps, lyres, songs, dances, sacrifices, bread, candle lighting, incense, and more. The second book of Maccabees (10:6-8) describes this eight-day celebration as a kind of Sukkot celebration (complete with waving palm fronds), making up for missing Sukkot earlier due to the war. Josephus describes how the Hasmoneans under the leadership of Judah the Maccabee made a law for future generations to keep what it called the festival of “lights” (φῶτα), a name which he derives from the somewhat metaphorical light shed on the regime’s power or authority (ἐξουσία) over the Temple ritual.

The Talmud, however, answers its question, “What is Hanukkah?” with a story not found in the earlier sources: the story of the single jar of oil. The Greeks had taken over the Temple, they rendered most of the oil impure. The Talmud relates how the newly victorious Hasmoneans found only one jar of oil with the “seal of the High Priest” still intact. Though only enough for one day, the jar miraculously supplied enough oil for eight days. Because of this miracle, says the Talmud, the Hanukkah celebration and prayers were instituted.

This story is remarkable for what is not being celebrated. There is no celebration of the Hasmonean victory, no recreation of Sukkot, no sacrifices, and no celebration of the Hasmonean regime’s authority. Instead, what is being celebrated is maintaining the purity of the Menorah’s oil. This is, in fact, not trivial and the Talmud elsewhere presents a fairly detailed discussion about how to determine which oil is suitable for Menorah lighting (B.T. Menaḥot 86a-b). This discussion assumes that it is the Rabbis, and ultimately the Sanhedrin court, who determine which oil meets the criterion of “refined pounded olive oil for illumination” of Leviticus 24:2. The High Priest may put his seal on it, but it is the rabbinical court that ultimately determines whether this oil is pure. The Rabbis who discuss this are not necessarily of priestly descent and are not necessarily qualified to be priests; their only qualification is their ability to read and interpret the laws of the Bible. Yet, the central principle of the Talmud is that the rabbinical court, i.e., the Sanhedrin, has the authority to determine the law that the priests and the high priest must follow. This is true, even if the high priest is a king, as indeed the Hasmonean high priests were also the kings.

So, Hanukkah, for the Talmud, is a celebration of the independence of the Sanhedrin and its authority to check the authority of the Hasmonean priest-kings. Most likely, the rabbinic view of Hanukkah that we find in the Talmud is an appropriation of the Sadducee, Hasmonean holiday. The Rabbis intentionally reject the glorification of the unified power and authority in the hands of the priest-kings and reject the ensuing violations of Jewish law (including celebrating Sukkot in the month of Kislev). What they are celebrating is a past in which the priestly and governmental authority submitted to the checks and balances of an independent court.

To be sure, the Sadducee Hasmonean priest-kings did not generally yield to the independent rabbinical courts. Instead, they strove to concentrate all power, both religious and political, in the hands of a small group, like Alexander Yannai and Herod. Hanukkah thus could not have originated as a celebration of effective judicial review or working checks on executive and priestly power. Rather, the Rabbis must have taken the small jar of oil and the authority of the Talmud to determine its purity as a symbol of hope for a future in which the rulers would submit to judicial authority. It was this hope with which the British thinker John Selden turned to studying the Talmud in order to construct his theory of balance of powers and the importance and use of law courts. This approach played a key role in the development of modern democracy, with its focus on separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary.

At the outset, then, Hanukkah meant different things to different groups. To the Sadducees it was a celebration of military power and governmental control over all religious matters. To the Rabbis it was and remains a celebration of judicial review and checks on governmental authority. Oddly enough, it was the rabbinical Hanukkah that was and remains the more democratic one.