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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Rabbi YY Jacobson argues that Chanukah has no Mishnah tractate because Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi did not need to write it down, since the story was still vivid and widely remembered. He rejects the popular claim that Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi deleted Chanukah out of bias against the Hasmoneans. The explanation is that the Mishnah only recorded laws at risk of being forgotten, and Chanukah felt recent and alive to Jews of that era.
Key Points
- The popular answer, attributed to the Chatam Sofer, says Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi resented the Hasmoneans, who became kings despite being from the tribe of Levi rather than Yehuda, and so omitted Chanukah. Jacobson rejects this as inconsistent with the sages' commitment to truth and neutral law.
- Jacobson presents the Lubavitcher Rebbe's explanation: the Oral Torah was not supposed to be written down, and the Mishnah only recorded traditions that were in danger of being forgotten.
- Practices like Kiddush, tefillin, and tzitzit are absent from the Mishnah's explicit law because they were so ingrained in daily Jewish life that they would never be forgotten.
- Purim's story is over 500 years older than the Mishnah's editing, so it needed to be written down, which is why Megillah exists as a tractate.
- Chanukah happened about 164 BCE, roughly two centuries before the Temple's destruction, and was still felt as recent and vivid, passed down family to family.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: No step-by-step instructions are given in the transcript. The speaker only lists questions Jews need answered about Chanukah observance (whether to say Hallel and which part, whether to light a menorah or candles, how many candles, the blessings, what to do if one forgets, and what time to light), noting these laws are recorded only in the Talmud, finalized in the fifth century CE.
- Tractate Berachot, chapter 8, contains a Shammai–Hillel debate about which Kiddush blessing to say first, but the Mishnah does not state that Kiddush must be made.
- Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi came from the Davidic dynasty and led the Sanhedrin, both before and after the Temple's destruction.
- The speaker says the Oral Torah's prohibition on writing was broken by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi around the end of the second century CE, when the Jewish people were scattered.
- The speaker frames the Mishnah as a book of laws rather than history or sentimentality.
Bottom Line
Chanukah is absent from the Mishnah not because of bias, but because its story was still alive in Jewish memory, so its laws did not need written preservation.
