Lots of Strange Bedfellows: Toward a Plausible Translation for “Purim”

Abstract

T he Book of Esther famously describes the process by which Haman selected the date for implementation of his genocidal designs against the Jewish people: “A process of sortilege (pur)—that is, divination through the casting of lots—was conducted for Haman, so as to identify the most auspicious of all the days and all the months of the year, continuing all the way through the twelfth month, the month of Adar.”1 The import of this divination process is made explicit later in the biblical book: “For Haman, son of Hammedata the Agagite, persecutor of the Jews, had plotted the destruction of the Jews. He conducted a process of sortilege (pur)—that is, divination through the casting of lots—determining when best to attack and destroy them. . . . It is for this reason that these days are called ‘Purim’—in reference to the sortilege (pur).”2 Thus Purim is widely and familiarly known as “The Feast of Lots.” Evidence of the dubious quality of the etymological link between Purim and pur is inherent in the biblical text. Anticipating that the reader will be otherwise unfamiliar with the term, the Book of Esther twice finds it necessary to provide a more common synonym for pur—that is, goral. If the weak, purported etymology provided for Purim in Esther is less than persuasive, what exactly are the purim to which the name of the feast refers? The Aramaic word purya, in addition to signifying the festival observed on the fourteenth of Adar, appears in a number of rabbinic texts ostensibly