“For this reason, they called the days Purim, after the pur…” (Esther 9: 26)
It is the Jewish people themselves who named the holiday Purim, a singular name unlike any other in the roster of special days on the Hebrew calendar. Shabbat is called after an act of God, the cessation of creative acts after the Six Days of Creation. Pesach is similarly named after an act of God, the passing over the houses of the Israelites. Shavuot receives its name from the weeks counted by B’nai Yisrael between the Exodus and the Giving of the Torah. Sukkot refers to the protection afforded B’nai Yisrael in the wilderness by their beneficent God. The only special days that might be said to reflect the acts of Gentiles in their name, the four fasts, are actually Israel centric.
Purim, however, named by the Jews themselves, alludes to the act of their sworn enemy, the evil Haman: the casting of lots to identify an auspicious day for their destruction. In his important work R’sisei Layla, the holy R’ Tzadok haKohen of Lublin observes the central role of the evil Haman in the name of the holiday and hence an indication of the essential character of Purim itself. R’ Tzadok associates Purim with a folk saying cited by the Gemara: “from the forest itself comes the handle of the ax” (Sanhedrin 39b). In other words, the forest produces the very tool of its own destruction, the wooden handle of the ax used to cut down its trees.
The Lamdan 