The Day of Mordecai Mardocheus

(2 Macc 15:36) — the fourteenth day of the month Adar, corresponding to our February-March, on which is celebrated the memory of the deliverance of the Jews from the wholesale destruction devised by the malice of Haman. This feast is called the feast of Purim, or of Lots, and by law it is ordained that all Jews keep it for two days, the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar. In more recent synagogue practice the feast is observed with the following rites. On the morning of the first day of the feast the Jews gather in the synagogue and read the book of Esther, and whenever, in the reading of it, the name of Haman occurs, a great commotion arises: everyone, young and old, beats with rattles or a hammer, stamps their feet, in representation of their enemy Haman, as though he were hanged on a gallows, and so on. The eve of this feast is kept by them as a fast, the so-called Fast of Esther, lasting from sunrise to sunset (Esth 9).