Purim

Purim is the annual two-day feast instituted by the Jews of Persia to commemorate their deliverance from Haman's plot. The text places its origin in two written instructions from Mordecai and a confirming second letter from Esther, fixing the days, the manner of observance, and the name itself.

Mordecai's Letter

After the deliverance, Mordecai writes to all the Jews of the empire to fix the celebration in the calendar. The fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar are designated yearly: "to enjoin them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly, as the days in which the Jews had rest from their enemies, and the month which was turned to them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a good day; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor" (Es 9:21-22). The shape of observance is set in the same sentence — feasting, gladness, mutual gifts, and gifts to the poor.

The Name "Purim"

The name comes from the lot Haman cast against the Jews. The text gives the etymology directly: "because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them; but when [the matter] came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked plot, which he had plotted against the Jews, should return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. \\p Therefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur" (Es 9:24-26). The reversal — Haman's lot becoming the Jews' festival — is what the name encodes.

Adoption and Perpetuity

The Jews bind themselves and their seed to the observance: "the Jews appointed, and took on them, and on their seed, and on all such as joined themselves to them, so that it should not fail, that they would keep these two days according to its writing, and according to its appointed time, every year; and that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the remembrance of them perish from their seed" (Es 9:27-28). The scope is generational and territorial — every family, every province, every city, including those who join themselves to the community.

The Second Letter

A second confirming letter is sent over the joint authority of Esther and Mordecai: "Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote with all authority to confirm this second letter of Purim. And he sent letters to all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, [with] words of peace and truth, to confirm these days of Purim in their appointed times, according to as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had appointed for their souls and for their seed, in the matter of the fasts and their cry" (Es 9:29-31). Fasting and outcry sit alongside the feasting in the text's own description of the institution. The closing notice records the entry of the ruling itself into writing: "And the commandment of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book" (Es 9:32).