Adar // אֲדָר
About Adar
Adar is the sixth month of the civil year and the twelfth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar.
Adar comes around the same time as the secular month of March, in the spring!
Because falls in Adar II, Adar II is the happiest, most joyous month of the Hebrew calendar. Its motto is Mi-shenikhnas adar marbim be-simcha or “When Adar arrives, joy increases.” Tradition teaches that Adar is so full of joy that it is as if Adar were pregnant with happiness. Indeed, on leap years we need two Adars to contain all the joy of Adar.
Holidays in Adar
Adar History
circa 1393 BCE
Birth of Moshe Rabbenu
circa 1312 BCE
Mishkan assembled for the first time
circa 1273 BCE
Death of Moshe Rabbenu
598 BCE
Jerusalem falls to Nebuchadnezzar, beginning the Babylonian captivity.
515 BCE
Second Temple completed
474 BCE
The Purim Victory!
161 BCE
Yom Nicanor – The Maccabees defeated Greek Syrian general Nicanor.
1st Century
Academic dissension between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai erupted into a violent and destructive conflict over a vote on 18 legal matters leading to the death of 3,000 students.
Today, Pardes has reclaimed this Holiday as 9 Adar, the day for celebrating productive disagreement.
Circa 21
King Agrippa I began construction of a gate for the wall of Jerusalem.
1164 (or 1167?)
Death of Ibn Ezra.
1307
Maharam's (one of the tosafot) body ransomed 14 years after his death by Alexander ben Shlomo (Susskind) Wimpfen.
1524
The Jews of Cairo were saved from the plot of Ahmad Pasha.
1616
'Purim Vinz': downfall of Vinzenz Fettmilch and triumphant return of the Jews of Frankfurt under Imperial protection.
1817
The Blood Libel, the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children for their blood, declared false by Czar Alexander I. Nevertheless, nearly a hundred years later the accusation was officially leveled against Mendel Beilis in Kyiv.
1953
Death of Josef Stalin; brings to a stop the Doctors' Plot
Adar Zodiac
The mazal for Adar is Pisces, dagim / דָּגִים (fish). Jews have been compared to fish swimming in an ocean of Torah. In Adar, we splash happily in one of the most joyous stories of the Bible, the story of Purim.