Marc Ashley Hanukkah Lecture
The Separation of Shul and State: Hanukkah’s Political Legacy
Wednesday, Dec. 9, 7:00 pm (Zoom only; click HERE to join Zoom)
(with pre-lecture candlelighting)
The essence of Hannukah is famously ambiguous. Is its primary miracle our military victory or the long-lasting menorah lights?
The Talmudic Rabbis purposefully diminished the significance of the astounding Hasmonean victory over the Syrian Greeks. The Rabbis instead spiritually featured the more confined miracle of the resilient Temple lights, absent from earlier accounts of the Hannukah narrative. The Rabbis also distanced themselves from the grandiose claims of the Hasmonean dynasty, which oversaw a century of newfound Jewish sovereignty. The relevance of Hanukkah’s heroic first family thus gradually dwindled over time.
Why did this gap emerge between earlier Hasmonean reality and later Rabbinic reimagination? The answer lies in the aftermath of the military victory, when Hasmonean kings brazenly secured the mantles of both political and religious leadership — which the Rabbis considered an objectionable power grab. That troubling concentration of power still resonates in today’s Jewish world.
Please join congregant Marc Ashley on the sixth night of Hannukah as we explore the holiday’s consequential backstory and fallout, and the resulting repercussions for the delicate interplay of politics and religion. Through this conceptual prism, Hannukah may be seen as a pragmatic inflection point in Jewish intellectual and political history.