names of Esther
At a glance
In short
Both are names of one woman. Hadassah appears only once, at Esther 2:7, where hi Esther says the two are one woman; everywhere else the Megillah calls her Esther. Which of the two was her real name is a dispute among the Tannaim. Hadassah is read from hadas, the myrtle; Esther from nistar, hidden, or from Istahar, the name the gentiles gave her.
Distinctions
Esther (אסתר) and Hadassah (הדסה)
Esther 2:7 is the single occurrence of Hadassah, and it carries its own gloss, hi Esther. Chullin 139b asks where Esther is hinted in the Torah and answers with haster astir, "I shall surely hide My face" (Devarim 31:18). Targum Sheini (to Esther 2:7) calls Hadassah her "Hebrew name," because a myrtle gives the world a good fragrance as her good deeds did, and because the righteous are compared to a myrtle; and Megillah 10b has Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani read "instead of the thorn-bush will arise a myrtle-tree" (Yeshayahu 55:13) of Esther the myrtle replacing Vashti the thorn-bush.
Beyond the myrtle of the righteous, there are several further explanations of the name Hadassah.
- Megillah 13a, as Rashi reads Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karcha, implies a greenish complexion the color of a myrtle leaf (Rabbi Klein notes that Venus was anciently taken for a green planet, which may fit the Istahar connection), and Ben Azzai there gives her average stature, neither tall as a lulav nor stout as an esrog.
- Rabbi Refael Berdugo cites an unknown source that Herod's daughter had an especially pleasant body odor, put down to her mother's eating esrogim while carrying her, and on that basis speculates that Esther was called Hadassah because her body likewise gave off a pleasant fragrance.
- Rabbi Dovid Oppenheim points to Berachos 57a, that one who sees a myrtle in a dream will prosper in property, and if he owns none will come into property unexpectedly: Esther was called Hadassah because she unexpectedly inherited Haman's estate (Esther 8:1).
- Other sources find in the name an allusion to her age when she was taken to the palace, the gematria of Hadassah being 74 and a rabbinic tradition putting her at exactly 74 (Midrash Panim Acheirim version 2 §2; Ibn Ezra to Esther 2:7; see also Bereishis Rabbah 39:13); and Targum to Esther 2:7 has her called Esther, from hiding, for the modesty she kept through the seven and a half decades in Mordechai's house.
Istahar's etymological cognates include the English star, astrology, astronomy, asterisk, asteroid, disaster, stellar, estrogen and Easter, the name Stella, the Languedocien Astruc, and the German Stern, a common Jewish surname; some have argued that the given name Estori, borne by Rabbi Estori HaParchi, belongs here too. The Pri Megadim writes in one of his letters that the Yiddish woman's name Sterna, or Shterna, derives from Esther, and weighs whether that should bear on how it is written in gittin, with sin and tes like a foreign name or with samech and tav like the Hebrew Esther. On the Nogah side, that perceived force was worshipped as goddess of love and fertility under various pagan names: the Canaanite Ashtoreth, Sumerian Inanna, Babylonian Ishtar or Astarte, Greek Aphrodite, Latin Venus and Germanic Eostre.
Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin reads the two names as the lesson of Purim: when Hashem's face is hidden (Esther), Israel still holds fast and does His will (Hadassah).
Melechet Shlomo (to Mishnah Pesachim 2:6) records a bitter herb customarily called Esther HaMalkah, and Rabbi Yitzchak Epstein cites some who speculate that it was so called because of a tradition that, besides the seeds Esther ate in Achashverosh's palace (Megillah 13a), she ate this herb as well; and Dr. Herbert C. Dobrinsky records that in some Sephardic communities women named Esther are especially careful to keep Taanis Esther.
Where the authorities disagree
Which was her real name. Megillah 13a gives three Tannaim.
- Rabbi Meir: her name was Esther, and Hadassah is a description, the righteous being likened to a hadas (Zecharyah 1:8).
- Rabbi Yehuda: her name was Hadassah, and Esther is from nistar, since she hid her people (Esther 2:20); Rabbi Avigdor Katz adds that Mordechai hid her from the king's men.
- Rabbi Nechemiah: Hadassah was her name, and the nations called her Esther after Istahar.
The Vilna Gaon follows Rabbi Nechemiah, the Chachmei Tzarfas commentary seemingly Rabbi Meir; Ralbag leaves it open; Rabbi Tanchum HaYerushalmi and Rabbi Yitzchak Arama hold Hadassah was the birth name, Esther the name of the court.
What Istahar is.
- Rashi (to Megillah 13a) and Sefer HeAruch: the moon, from Aramaic sihara.
- Rabbi Yaakov Emden: Venus, since Targum to Iyov 31:26 lists Istahar as a light beside the moon; so too Yalkut Shimoni (Esther §1053), whose version of Rabbi Nechemiah's statement reads explicitly that the idolaters called her after Venus, which they called Istahar, and Targum Sheini, which explains the name by the astrological force of Nogah, Venus.
- Rabbi Yosef Nechemias (to Esther 2:7) has Istahar as the sun; Rabbi Klein says outright that this is incorrect, though in some pagan mythologies the counterpart of Istahar may have been the wife or consort of the sun god.
Foreign name or Hebrew in disguise.
- Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (Manos HaLevi) and Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi (Yosef Lekach), with Ibn Ezra: she took Esther when Mordechai wanted her origin concealed, the Aramaic for hadas being assa, which is close enough to Esther.
- Maharsha (to Chullin 139b) and Rabbi Meir Mazuz (Sansan L'Yair): against Rabbi Ashkenazi's Aramaic, they assume it was Persian.
- The Maskilic scholar Yitzchak Ber Levinsohn (Shorashei Levanon) argues that Esther is a portmanteau of asa, myrtle, and ter, "fresh" (possibly by tav/tes interchange), making the name an exact translation of the phrase hadas ra'anan used by Sefer HeAruch. (As an aside, a king of Yehudah named Asa, a great-grandson of Shlomo, has his name spelled exactly like the Aramaic for myrtle, aleph samech aleph, but Rabbi Klein has found no source that ties King Asa to Queen Esther or to the myrtle.)
- Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam: her family Judaized Istahar into Esther, while Mordechai, who let no loanwords into his Hebrew, kept calling her Hadassah.
Also discussed in
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ה-ד-ס
The myrtle; of its sense he says only ידוע, it is known.
The whole entry
וַהֲדַס וְעֵץ שָׁמֶן (Yeshayahu 41:19), myrtle and oil tree; יַעֲלֶה הֲדַס (Yeshayahu 55:13), a myrtle will come up; עֹמֵד בֵּין הַהֲדַסִּים (Zecharyah 1:8), standing among the myrtles. Of these he says only ידוע, it is known.
וַֽהֲדַס וְעֵץ שָׁמֶן (ישעיה מא, יט), תְַחַת [וְתַחַת] הַסִּרְפָּד יַֽעֲלֶה הֲדַ֑ס (ישעיה נה, יג), פתח באתנח, וְהוּא עֹמֵד בֵּין הַֽהֲדַסִּים אֲשֶׁר בַּמְּצֻלָה (זכריה א, ח), ידוע.
ס-ת-ר
To be hidden, and to hide; the noun סֵתֶר, a hiding place or secrecy.
Being hidden
נִסְתְּרָה דַרְכִּי (Yeshayahu 40:27), my way is hidden, and אִם יִסָּתֵר אִישׁ בַּמִּסְתָּרִים (Yirmiyahu 23:24), if a man hide himself in secret places.
Hiding
אַסְתִּירָה פָנַי מֵהֶם (Devarim 32:20), I will hide My face from them, and בְּאַשְׁפָּתוֹ הִסְתִּירָנִי (Yeshayahu 49:2), in His quiver He hid me. On וְחַטֹּאותֵיכֶם הִסְתִּירוּ פָנִים מִכֶּם מִשְּׁמוֹעַ (Yeshayahu 59:2), and your sins have hidden the face from you, from hearing, he notes that the verb there carries two objects.
The hiding place
אַתָּה סֵתֶר לִי מִצַּר (Tehillim 32:7), You are a hiding place for me from trouble; אֶעֶנְךָ בְּסֵתֶר רַעַם (Tehillim 81:8), I answered you in the hiding place of thunder, is in sense like Hashem's answering Iyov out of the storm (Iyov 38:1); and בַּמִּסְתָּרִים יַהֲרֹג נָקִי (Tehillim 10:8), in the hiding places he kills the innocent.
A word written with a sin
וַיִּשָּׂתְרוּ לָהֶם (Shmuel I 5:9), and they were hidden on them: though it is written with a sin, he says it is all one sense, and explains that the tumours were covered over within them.
A reading he leaves open
וְסֵתֶר מַיִם יִשְׁטֹפוּ (Yeshayahu 28:17) stands among the nouns: waters will sweep away the hiding place. Or סתר may stand in construct with the water, and be taken in the sense Chazal use often, of pulling down, as הסותר את כותלו (Bava Kamma 30a, 6b), one who pulls down his wall, and many other words of theirs in this sense.
נִסְתְּרָה דַרְכִּי מֵֽי"י (ישעיה מ, כז), וּמִפָּנֶיךָ אֶסָּתֵר (בראשית ד, יד), הַנִּשְׁאָרִים וְהַנִּסְתָּרִים מִפָּנֶֽיךָ (דברים ז, כ), הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַֽי"י אֱלֹהֵינוּ (דברים כט, כח), אִם־יִסָּתֵר אִישׁ בַּמִּסְתָּרִים (ירמיה כג, כד), וְאֵין נִסְתָּר מֵֽחַמָּתֽוֹ (תהלים יט, ז). ומענין זה וַיִּשָּֽׂתְרוּ לָהֶם עֲפֹלִֽים [טְחֹרִֽים] (שמואל א' ה, ט), ואף על פי שהוא בשֹי"ן הכל ענין אחד פירושו כי היו הטחורים מכוסים להם מבפנים. והכבד [הִפְעִיל] יַסְתִּרֵֽנִי בְּסֵתֶר אָהֳלוֹ (תהלים כז, ה), וְיַסְתֵּר פָּנִים וּמִי יְשׁוּרֶנּוּ (איוב לד, כט), אַסְתִּירָה פָנַי מֵהֶם (דברים לב, כ), וַיַּסְתִּרֵם י"י (ירמיה לו, כו), בְּאַשְׁפָּתוֹ הִסְתִּירָֽנִי (ישעיה מט, ב). לַסְתִּר עֵצָה (ישעיה כט, טו), כמו לְהַסְתִּיר. וְחַטֹּֽאותֵיכֶם הִסְתִּירוּ פָנִים מִכֶּם מִשְּׁמֽוֹעַ (ישעיה נט, ב), הוא יוצא לשנים פעולים. והכבד הדגוש [פִּעֵל] סַתְּרִי נִדָּחִים (ישעיה טז, ד), מֵֽאַֽהֲבָה מְסֻתָּֽרֶת (משלי כז, ה). ופירשנו הפסוק בשרש יָכַח. וההתפעל הֲלוֹא דָוִד מִסְתַּתֵּר עִמָּנוּ (שמואל א' כג, יט), וּבִינַת נְבֹנָיו תִּסְתַּתָּֽר (ישעיה כט, יד). והשם אַתָּה סֵתֶר לִי מִצַּר (תהלים לב, ז), הֱוִי־סֵתֶר לָמוֹ מִפְּנֵי שׁוֹדֵד (ישעיה טז, ד), בחמש נקודות. בְּסֵתֶר הַמַּדְרֵגָה (שיר השירים ב, יד), אֶעֶנְךָ בְּסֵתֶר רַעַם (תהלים פא, ח), ענין פירושו כענין וַיַּֽעַן־י"י אֶת־אִיּוֹב מִנ [מִן] ׀ הַסְּעָרָה (איוב לח, א), בְּסֵתֶר אָהֳלוֹ (תהלים כז, ה). ובה"א הנקבה יְהִי עֲלֵיכֶם סִתְרָֽה (דברים לב, לח). ובתוספת מ"ם יֶאֱרֹב בַּמִּסְתָּר (תהלים י, ט), בַּמִּסְתָּרִים יַֽהֲרֹג נָקִי (תהלים י, ח). ומשקל אחר וּכְמַסְתֵּר פָּנִים מִמֶּנּוּ (ישעיה נג, ג). ומשקל אחר וּלְמַחְסֶה וּלְמִסְתּוֹר (ישעיה ד, ו). וְסֵתֶר מַיִם יִשְׁטֹֽפוּ (ישעיה כח, יז). או יהיה סתר סמוך למים ויהיה פירושו מענין שנשתמשו בו רבותינו ז"ל הרבה באמרם (בבא קמא ל, ע"א. ו ,ע"ב) הסותר את כותלו ואחרים רבים בדבריהם בזה הענין.ואשר הם בני ארבע אותיות
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayakhel: Myrrh & Myrtle (Part 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 March 2024.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vayakhel: Myrrh & Myrtle (Part 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 March 2024.
Cited in the essay: Devarim 31:18; Yeshayahu 55:13; Zecharyah 1:8; Iyov 31:26; Esther 2:7, 2:20, 3:7, 8:1, 9:24; Berachos 57a; Megillah 10b, 13a; Chullin 139b; Mishnah Pesachim 2:6; Bereishis Rabbah 39:13; Midrash Panim Acheirim version 2 §2; Yalkut Shimoni Esther §1053; Targum Sheini, Targum and Biur HaGra to Esther 2:7; Ibn Ezra to Esther 2:7; Manos HaLevi; Yosef Lekach; Maharsha to Chullin 139b; Sansan L'Yair; Shorashei Levanon; Sefer HeAruch; Melechet Shlomo.