Adar 15 – Shushan Purim – Today in the Bible

Adar 15, 5785; from sunset March 14, 2025, to sunset March 15, 2025

(The fifteenth day of the twelfth month)

Esther is the Persian name of a Hebrew girl named “Hadassah.” Hadassah originates in the Hebrew “hadas” which means “myrtle.” The name Esther could either be from the Persian word for star (setareh) or the Median word for myrtle (astra). The myrtle tree produces a star-shaped flower which may be the connection between these words.

Purim Victory Celebrated in Shushan

The battles fought between the Jews and their enemies, which took place on Adar 13 throughout the Persian Empire, continued for two days — Adar 13 and 14 — in the capital city of Shushan (aka Susa). Thus, the victory celebrations in Shushan were held on the 15th of Adar, and the observance of the festival of Purim was instituted for that day in Shushan and all walled cities.

But the Jews who were in Susa gathered on the thirteenth day and on the fourteenth, and rested on the fifteenth day, making that a day of feasting and gladness.

Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the open towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting and holiday-making, and a day on which they send choice portions to one another. And Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year, as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending choice portions to one another and gifts to the poor. – Esther 9:18-22 (RSV)

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