Commenting on the first clause in this verse, Ramban cites the Yërushalmi as saying that Kohanim should not be appointed kings. To the best of my knowledge, this occurs in two places in the Yërushalmi (הוריות פ"ג ה"ב וסוטה פ"ח ה"ג). Rather than quoting Ramban’s paraphrase, this is the language of the Yërushalmi (both citations are essentially the same): אין מושחין כהנים מלכים אמר רבי יודן ענתונדרי' על שם "לא יסור שבט מיהודה". אמר ר' חיי' בר אדא על שם "למען יאריך ימים על ממלכתו הוא ובניו בקרב ישראל". מה כתי' בתרי'? "לא יהי' לכהנים הלויים." (“One does not anoint kohanim kings. Said Rabbi Yudan, 'Its explanation is according to "The staff shall not depart from Yëhuda...."’ Said Rabbi Hiyya bar Ada, 'According to "...in order that he and his sons have length of days over his kingdom amongst Israel" [Deuteronomy XVII, 20]. What is written after it? "The kohanim, Lëviyyim shall not have...." [ibid., XVIII, 1]'”). In order to remove all doubt concerning the meaning of the passage, both the Pënei Moshe and the Qorban ha-‘Éda, the two major commentaries on the Yërushalmi, tell us that it means (in the Pënei Moshe’s words): אין מעמידין מהם מלכים (“One does not raise up from them kings”).
Which would seem to call into question the whole Hashmona’i enterprise which we have just finished memorialising over Hannukka.
B.
If we peruse the Mishna carefully, particularly Séder Mo‘ed, which deals with the Sabbath and all of the Jewish holidays, we notice a rather glaring lack: There is no Massecheth Hannukka. Moreover, there is not a single mishna (save one brief mention, which will be dealt with infra) anywhere which deals with any aspect of this most quintessentially rabbinic of all holidays (since even Purim is mentioned in the Book of Esther).
There is a well-known explanation of this omission which is attributed to the Hatham Sofér. So far as I know, this explanation does not occur anywhere in the voluminous writings of the Hatham Sofér himself, but is known from secondary sources, in particular a rather controversial biography published by one of his grandsons fifty-odd years after his death (which was sharply criticized by the Minhath El‘azar, the Munkácser rebbe, shortly after it came out), then somewhat later, encyclopædic Séfer Ta‘amei ha-Minhagim u-Mëqorei ha-Dinum, first published in 1891 by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhaq Sperling ז"ל, and in a responsum written by Rabbi Yëhoshua‘ Aharon Tzëvi Weinberger (ספר שו"ת מהריא"ץ סי' ע"ח), a student of the Hatham Sofér’s in his famous yëshiva in Pressburg (modern Bratislava, Slovakia). In complete fairness to Rabbi Weinberger ז"ל, he does not attribute it directly to his rebbe, but he does defend it.
For the sake of brevity, let us quote Rabbi Sperling’s language: טעם שנס חנוכה לא נזכר כלל במשנה, לפי שרבינו הקדוש מסדר המשנה הי' מזרע דוד המלך ע"ה, ונס חנוכה נעשה ע"י בית החשמונאים שתפסו המלוכה ולא היו מזרע דוד, וזה הרע לרבינו הקדוש. ובכתבו המשנה ע"פ רוח הקדש נשמט הנס מחיבורו(“The reason why the miracle of Hannukka is not mentioned in the Mishna, is because our holy teacher [Rabbi Yëhuda ha-Nasi’] was of the line of King David, upon him peace, and the miracle of Hannukka was done through the House of the Hashmo-na’im who seized the kingship, and were not of the line of David, and this seemed bad to our holy teacher. And when he wrote down the Mishna with the [aid of] the spirit of sanc-tity, the miracle was left out of his composition” (ספר טעמי המנהגים ומקורי הדינים עניני חנוכה סי' תתמ"ז).
There are numerous problems with this thesis, as a bit of reflection will reveal:
If the Hashmona’i state which resulted from the events celebrated on Hannukka was in fact a violation of halacha, what would Rabbi Yëhuda ha-Nasi’s ancestry have to do with the omission? The whole incident would simply be illegitimate, and that surely would be reason enough to leave it out of the Mishna.
But if this is so, why should it occur later in the Talmud (שבת כ"א:) at all, and why should we engage in reciting the ‘Al ha-Nissim, whose words relate solely to the miraculous victory won by the Hashmona’im, over the Græco-Syrian forces, or kindle the lights and say Ha-Néroth Halalu in commemoration of the miracle of the oil? To quote the Ram-bam: בבית שני כשמלכי יון גזרו גזרות על ישראל ובטלו דתם ולא הניחו אותם לעסוק בתורה ובמצות כו' עד שריחם עליהם אלקי אבותינו והושיעם מידם והצילם וגברו בני חשמונאי הכהנים הגדולים והרגום והושיעו מידם כו' וכשגברו ישראל על אויביהם ואבדום בחמישה ועשרים בחדש כסלו הי' ונכנסו להיכל ולא מצאו שמן טהור במקדש אלא פך אחד ולא הי' בו להדליק אלא יום אחד בלבד והדליקו ממנו נרות המערכה שמונה ימים כו' ומפני זה התקינו חכמים שבאותו הדור שיהיו שמונת הימים האלו כו' ימי שמחה והלל וגו' (“During the Second Temple, when the kings of Greece decreed decrees upon Israel and nullified their religion and did not allow them to be occupied in Torah and mitzvoth...until the G-d of our fathers had mercy on them and saved them from their hands and rescued them, and the Hashmona’im, the great kohanim, overcame [them] and killed them and rescued [Israel] from their hands....When Israel overcame their enemies and destroyed them it was the 25th of the month of Kislév, and they entered the Temple and did not find pure oil in the Sanctuary save one can, and there was only enough in it to light one day, and they lit from it the lights of the array eight days....And because of this, the Rabbis of that gene-ration established that these eight days would be...days of rejoicing and praise....”; הלכות חנוכה פ"ג ה"א-ג). The Hashmona’im did not establish the holiday, the Rabbis (surely stick-lers for halacha) did; why did they raise no objection?
Indeed, even if someone thought that there was a halachic reason to object to the Hash-mona’i state, does not the miraculous event in the Temple, all by itself, merit celebration? Does it not validate the equally miraculous victory of the few and the weak against the many and the strong (as the ‘Al ha-Nissim has it) which made it possible?
I submit that we have here a case in which somebody misunderstood a point made by the Hatham Sofér, one of the greatest and subtlest thinkers of modern Jewry. Is it possible to find what he might really have meant, in noting the obvious and otherwise inexplicable omission of Hannukka from the Mishna?
C.
I believe that we can, by reference to the voluminous writings mentioned above.
In his novellæ on the Talmud, the Hatham Sofér takes note of the Mishna’s total omission of all of the halachically valid expressions to be used in granting a divorce, and says: ואל תתמה שהרי בשום מקום במשנה לא נזכר שיניח אדם תפילין ושבגד של ד' כנפות חייב בציצית כו' ולא תנן חייב אדם להדליק נר חנוכה אלא גץ שיצא [וכו' הניח חנוני נרו מבחוץ החנוני חייב] ר' יהודה אומר בנר חנוכה פטור ונר חנוכה גופא היכי הוזכר במשנה אלא רגילים היו בכך וגו' (“And be not surprised, for in no place in the Mishna is it mentioned that a man should lay tëfillin, or that a garment with four corners requires tzitzith... And we do not learn that a person is required to light the Hannukka light, but rather ‘[if] a spark has gone out [from a blacksmith’s shop and started a load of flax on fire...[or] a shopkeeper placed his candle outside, the shopkeeper is liable], Rabbi Yëhuda says, "Concerning a Hannukka light he is exempt" [since the one transporting the flax should have known it would be there; בבא קמא ס"ב: במשנה הראשונה],' but [the obligation] of the Hannukka light itself, where is it mentioned in the Mishna? Rather [everyone] was thoroughly familiar with the matter....” חדושי חתם סופר, גטין ע"ח. דה"מ ואל, וע"ע רמב"ם פירוש המשניות למנחות פ"ד שגם הוא כתב כעין זה גבי כמה ענינים וקצת תמוה שלא הביא חתם סופר את דברי הרמב"ם בחבורו).
Here we see the actual reasoning of the Hatham Sofér regarding the omission of Hannukka from the Mishna, an explanation which applies to many other things which ought to be second nature to any normal Jewish person raised in a Jewish community, and are therefore not explicitly discussed in the Mishna. Indeed, Rambam himself seems to hint at this view when he writes later on in Hilchoth Hannukka: מצות נר חנוכה מצות חביבה היא מאד וגו' (“The mitzva of the Hannukka light is a very beloved mitzva....”; פ"ד הי"ב), and as such should be thoroughly familiar to everyone and stringently observed.
D.
We have, however, not yet dealt with the matter of that puzzling Yërushalmi prohibiting kohanim from being kings and the Hashmona’im. To understand it, we need a bit of background.
The miracles of Hannukka occurred in 3622, according to our calendar; in quick succession, each of the three surviving Hashmona’i brothers became head of state: Yëhuda (3622-3628), Yonathan (3628-3634), and Shim‘on (3634-3642), followed by Shim‘on’s son, Yohanan Hyrkanós (usually called in the Talmud Yohanan kohén gadol), who ruled from 3642-3668. His title tells the story: None of them called themselves kings. They ran the government, to be sure, and were anointed, but they were each anointed in turn as kohén gadol, a post for which, of course, they were perfectly suited by their ancestry.
It was Yohanan kohén gadol’s son, Alexander Yannai, under the baleful influence of the heterodox Tzëduqi sect, who became the first of the Hashmona’im to call himself a king (as Josephus testifies in the Jewish Antiquities).
And so the Torah Tëmima comments on this Yërushalmi: ביאור הענין, כי לכתחילה אין ממנים לעולם מלך בישראל אלא מזרע בית דוד, שכן נאמר בו "כסאך יהי' נכון עד עולם", ורק כשאין לשעתו מלך ראוי מזרע בית דוד כו' אז ממנין משאר השבטים וגו' (“The clarification of the matter is that à priori one may never name a king in Israel save from the line of the House of David, for so is it said of him, ‘Your throne will be established forever’ [II Samuel VII, 16], and only when there is at the moment no proper king of the line of the House of David... then may one appoint from the rest of the tribes”; פרשתנו סי' י"ג).
For most of the last 50 years of the Hashmona’i state, things did not go well; the last of the Hashmona’i rulers, Mattithyahu Antígonos, who ousted his uncle Hyrkanós II in 3721, again claimed only the title kohén gadol (to judge from the coins which he issued during his brief rule, at least), but it was by then too late; the Romans replaced him with the infamous foreigner Herod in 3724.
For only the line of the House of David, father to son, lineal descendants of Yëhuda, can reign in Israel forever.
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