[Avodah] Why is Chanuka not mentioned in the Mishna?

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 03:37:19PM +0000, rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote:
: Hanukkah with the fall of the state and the destruction of the mizbei'ach
: "went out of business" and was later revived

: I call this the Hanukkah I
: Hanukkah II hypothesis

Less radical variant... They didn't anull and reinstitute Chanukah
as much as not know what to say about it. The practice just persisted
because of a lack of BD gadol mimanu bechokhmah uveminyan.

Until the discussion in the gemara of "Mai Chanukah?" and Chanukah
was shifted in focus.

Thus, Chanukah I was about rabim me'ad me'atim, and that's when Al
haNissim was written. It never crossed their mind to make a holiday
about the oil, since we in general to not celebrate miracles that could
only have been witnessed by a few. (And thus, fakable.)

When the accomplishment of those me'atim was undone by the Romans,
Chazal asked "Mai Chanukah?" Since they didn't have the authority to
eliminate the din, they brought an incidental aspect of Chanukah to the
fore, the neis shemen, and reinvented the holiday as Chanukah II.

And now Chanukah was about the glimmer of hope represented by the shemen
in the middle of a defined BHMQ, a message that was very timely.

In Rebbe's day, Chanukah was an artifact with no focus. There wasn't much
to say about it. Admittedly, that's weak. Really this idea addresses the
other questions answered RRW's theory -- like the absence of neis shemen
in Al haNissim. I just proposed it because something about Chanukah and
Purim made them unique in Megillas Taanis. Purim made it into Tanakh. To
say that Chanukah was retired with the rest of the megillah *despite* the
mitzvah, eg R' Yochanan ben Zakkai's Sanhedrin was perhaps gadol mimenu
and able to, one needs to explain why there would be motive to revive it.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The mind is a wonderful organ
micha at aishdas.org        for justifying decisions
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