Praise Without Feasting: Chanukah's Joy of the Soul

1“The following year they established them and made them festive days with Hallel and thanksgiving.”¹ Rashi explains that they were established only for reciting Hallel and saying Al HaNissim, the prayer “For the miracles,” in thanksgiving. On this basis the Tur writes in the name of the Maharam, R' Meir of Rothenburg, that the extra feasting people do on these days is only optional. The days were established only for praise and thanksgiving, not for “feasting and rejoicing.”² The Shulchan Aruch rules the same way.³ The Taz, in his classic commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, sets out to explain why no obligation of rejoicing was established here as on Purim.⁴ On Chanukah, he answers, the decree was not against the body but against the soul, for the Greeks set out to abolish the Torah of Hashem. So Chazal established only praise and thanksgiving, which belong to the soul. Still, a question remains. We know that when the body is kept alive, the soul is able to remain within it, and through this a person can serve the Creator. Why, then, did Chazal not institute feasting and rejoicing for the body, so that through them the soul would grow stronger?

2Perhaps the question the Taz took up can be answered in another way. On Purim, the sin began with eating. As Chazal said, the Jews of that generation deserved destruction because they partook of the feast of that wicked man.⁵ So Chazal instituted feasting and rejoicing, which come through eating, to rectify the blemish caused at Achashverosh's feast. Chanukah is different. There the blemish was neglect of Torah, in the spirit of Al HaNissim's words “to make them forget Your Torah,” and the Hellenists, the Jews who took on Greek ways, threw off the yoke of Torah. So, against this, Chazal instituted only praise and thanksgiving.

3This lets us explain the words of the Rambam: “And because of this, the sages of that generation instituted that these eight days, beginning from the night of the twenty-fifth of Kislev, be days of rejoicing and Hallel, and that the lamps be kindled on them in the evening at the entrances of the houses, on each of the eight nights, to show and reveal the miracle.” So far his words.⁶ Notice that he opens with “days of rejoicing” and at once adds “and that the lamps be kindled on them.” This makes clear that the rejoicing is the kindling of the lamps, for the rejoicing takes a form like the event it celebrates. That is, the holy service we do on these days, kindling the lamps and saying Hallel and thanksgiving, must be done with joy and vitality. But the Rambam does not mean that they are days of rejoicing in the sense of feasting and rejoicing, as on Purim. This explains well why the Beis Yosef, R' Yosef Karo's commentary on the Tur, did not write that the Rambam disagrees with the Tur, who holds in the name of the Maharam that there is no mitzvah in making a feast on Chanukah. The Rambam agrees with this too, for his “rejoicing” is the joyful kindling of the lamps.

4May Hashem grant that we be privileged to serve Him with joy. Amen, may it be His will.