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Part of proper Purim partying is the preparation and packaging (as presents) of triangular pocket pastries of poppy seeds or other pleasant puréed produce (jams; marmalades; honey and walnuts). You take a circle of cookie dough, drop a dollop of something sweet in the centre and fold in three sides to make this popular Purim delicacy. There are plenty of recipes available if you need more detail (but mum’s are the best).

As the Yiddish name “Hamentaschen” (hamentashen, hamantaschen, hamantashen, homentaschen, homentashen, hamentash, hamantasch, etc…) suggests, these are an exclusive tradition of European Ashkenazi Jewry, and yet they have been borrowed into Israeli (and thus international Jewish) culture as “אוזני המן” (Oznei Haman, “Haman’s ears”). It might seem predictable enough for something named after the infamous Book of Esther character Haman to become part of the Purim tradition, but it’s not quite so simple…

[ A survey, or: primary school's lasting impact. | "Hamentaschen", the word. | "Oznei Haman", the Israeli take. | Haman's ears? | Or his hat...? | ... And nursery rhymes... | Where are you, o sweet filling? | Trinity? Are you serious?! | Or fertility? | "It's a yummy snack!" | Poppy seeds (mmm... opium). ]

A survey, or: primary school’s lasting impact.

The best reason I remember being taught regarding the Hamentaschen’s connection to Purim was that it was modelled after Haman’s three-cornered hat. Knowing that was an unlikely story, and that (as shown below) the word doesn’t originally have to do with Haman, I decided to ask people why they thought the two were connected. Most respondents claimed their highest level of education on the subject was elementary or middle school.

• One answered by pointing to his own and saying “Haman’s ears”;
• Or that Haman wore a hat with three corners;
• Rachel K at first suggested that they have three sides, like the trinity;
• but because she was clearly kidding, then suggested it was a fertility symbol, basing her answer on the time of year and what the thing looks like (use your imagination);
• One Chasidic solution was offered, suggesting that the food represented the concealed and the revealed;
• Rachel G: “It’s a yummy snack, and we like to put it in our baskets”;
• Many decided it was pretty arbitrary, and some compared it to latkes. Allison thinks every holiday needs a special food, which was particularly evident when she sang a song with those words while acting as a latka (“I had the cutest costume”) in Grade 4.

But even latkas and doughnuts can be explained for Chanukkah as having plenty of oil, which play a major role in that festival. The Hamentaschen, on the other hand, is completely inexplicable… nearly.

“Hamentaschen”, the word.

It seems that everyone agrees on the origin of the word “Hamentaschen” having nothing to do with Haman (הָמָן) but rather “mon” (מאָן), the Yiddish word for poppy-seeds. “Tasch” is similarly a German word meaning “pocket”, a cognate of “task” and “tax” (see Balashon on the topic). If so, once it gained enough support as a recipe, the poppies were replaced by assorted other fillings, and, fortifying a relationship between the snack and the festival, “mon” became “Homon” (“Haman” in an Askhenazi pronunciation). [Balashon suggests the "ha-" added is the definite article in Hebrew, but this seems unlikely as Yiddish uses German determiners, and because that too is different to "ho" (הַ vs. הָ). I think it is more arbitrary.]

So we need to then ask: was the cookie invented, and someone said: “Hey! That sounds like Haman! We should call them ‘Hamentaschen’ and eat it on Purim!”, or was it first made as a Purim snack, and then attached to Haman? Either way, it seems the stories associating the pastry with Haman’s ears or hat must have come later. Or, according to 123holiday.net, it is just about eating Haman and has little to do with hats and ears: “It is a mitzvah to devour Haman with open mouth.” To my knowledge this mitzvah isn’t codified in any compendia of Halakha. I have a feeling this too is an apocryphal addition to the custom.

Another interesting feature of this name is that most English (Yinglish) speakers will call the biscuits “Hamentaschen”, even in singular, when it would be grammatically correct in Yiddish to call them “Hamentasch”. I checked with someone whose mame loshen (“mother tongue”) is Yiddish, and they confirmed that they would only ever refer to “Hamentasch” if singular and “Hamentaschen” for plural. This “-en” for plurals is also used in some older English words, such as ox >> oxen. But clearly English speakers don’t see that; I have come to usually use the plural in both cases. Others have claimed to hear “Hamentaschens” which is just going too far for me.

“Oznei Haman”, the Israeli take.

The decision to make the translation into Hebrew as “Haman’s ears” is curious. I tried looking it up in Klein’s etymological dictionary to no avail. But why didn’t they name them “Haman’s pockets” (כיסי המן) in translation of the Yiddish? It’s possible—following a short comment on Wikipedia, but not confirmed by anyone I’ve spoken to—that an alternative Yiddish name was “Hamanohren”, and that the Hebrew name was taken from this Yiddish tradition. Even so, I guess the affinity to ears instead of pockets could be taken from how the pastries look: a little like ears, with flaps coming up on three sides. Still, if anyone can explain how Modern Hebrew chose this name, I would appreciate knowing!

Haman’s ears?

Had it not been for the Israeli term probably being earlier, I would have expected the “it looks like Haman’s pointy ears” excuse to be an effect of Star-Trek, and even then Spock is a good character. Did the name come first, describing how the pastries looked, and only then the attachment as Haman’s ears, or the other way around? I have failed to find any portraits of a Haman with pointy or three-cornered ears.

And assuming that this reason was correct, is that apricot jam filling meant to be ear-wax? After all, Haman didn’t have Q-tips (thanks Avraham).

I’m not so sure how I feel about sending my friends some evil guy’s ears to eat. After we hang him and his sons, do we lop off his ears for a little cannibalistic fun? One web site nearly seems to think so. According to one uncited midrash, Haman entered the king’s chambers, bent forward, with head uncovered and his ears “מקוטפות” — plucked? (I have a feeling I haven’t read this quite right). The same site provides another explanation: that Haman’s ears were chopped off before his hanging! A little cruel and unusual, and again with no source given.

There is another uncited midrash that a friend told me, that Mordecai and Haman looked alike (a strange theme of Purim regards equating the chief personalities of good and evil present in the story of Esther). If so, why would we be representing Haman’s ears (or hat) and not the good guy’s?

Or his hat…?

Nearly everyone—Orthodox, Reform and Conservative—seems to think that we eat Hamentaschen because they look like Haman’s hat. Finally we all agree on something. If only it made an iota of sense.

I thought I would see what historical artists had to say about this suggestion. Within the world of biblical art, we get three major portrayals of Haman: (a) leading Mordecai on the king’s horse; (b) being accused by Esther; (c) hanging on gallows (with or without his ten sons). Illuminated manuscripts may carry many more scenes. Let’s take a walk through history and see what we find:

• Dura Europos: Some of the earliest known Jewish paintings (3rd century) include a depiction of a bare-headed Haman leading Mordecai. (a)
• Numerous German manuscripts from the 12th and 13th century (in Hourihane, ed., Between the picture and the word) depict the hanging of Haman and his sons—some bare-headed, some blindfolded, some indeed with hats, but no triangles. (c)
• A French-Christian 13-14th century mss. has Haman either hanging bare-headed or with a cloth covering, but certainly a blindfold. (c)
• One from 14th Century England also has him bare-headed. (c)
• Michaelangelo’s 16th century depiction has him on the gallows, not only bare-headed but bare-bodied. (c)
• A 1616 illuminated manuscript has Haman wearing something a little turban-like, although it seems as if the artist did not have much experience depicting turbans. It has a feather in it, no less.
• The 1660 Dutch work of Jan Steen seems to have Haman in a three-cornered woollen/fur hat. (b)
• Rembrandt (1665) has Haman honouring Modrecai (a) in a large wrapped turban, as he is in another Rembrandt work. (b)
• In a 1673 illuminated scroll offered to a Romanian hierarch, Haman and all his sons wear turbans.
• An 18th century Jewish French picture shows, indeed, a tricorn hat on Haman. But so has Mordecai. Sort of. His hat is a little overblown. (a)
• A late 18th century Grace After Meals manuscript has Haman with a feather in his hat, which seems to be round, but could possibly be three-cornered. (a)
• I would love to see the 18th century manuscript mentioned here but held in Tel Aviv in which “There are scenes of baroque buildings and genteel characters in typical 18th-c. dress; even Haman’s sons hang in droll positions from the gallows,” but it would cost me $3995 to order a copy in from London.
• Gustave Doré of 19th century France shows a turban. (b)
• English painter Ernest Normand (1859-1923) shows bearded Haman with cloth wrapped around his forehead. (b)
• An artist whose name I can’t identify shows most of the headwear metal and jewelled. (b)

Admittedly, the cases where Haman is being hanged could be excluded, as I know little about the headwear policies on the gallows of ancient Persia; the 1997 copy of a 1616 manuscript in McGill’s Rare Books collection gave Haman a hat but removed it when hanging. Maybe it would also be correct to exclude the Christian depictions for this study, but in all fairness, both support my hypothesis equally well:

The tricorn hat (which the Hamentaschen does resemble) is a feature of late-17th to 18th century Europe, worn as military as well as civilian dress. Among the artwork reviewed, the only clear tricorn hats appear unsurprisingly in this period, with one more ambiguous case also falling out in the late 18th century. It is definitely not a common depiction of Haman’s hat, and logically it shouldn’t be, as if I am not mistaken, those of the East (including Persia) have long preferred cloth over hard, brimmed or fur hats.

And so we see that essentially all the illustrations portray their characters either in the familiar outfits of the artist’s time and place (three-corners, feathered-hats, etc.), or attempt to provide an appropriate cultural frame by making assumptions about dress in the Persian empire (turbans).

What about how Haman is depicted in more recent illustrations? I looked up a few online Hamans, and found that some take the turban approach (shemayisrael, Aish, and possibly holidays.net although their picture is just strange). Others clearly give his hat three points: chagim.org.il/amit.org.ail, Chabad.org, and possibly Artscroll whose hat shape in the samples is ambiguous, but adds a feather. Torah Tots has something a little strange on their Haman’s head: they seem to have gotten the whole idea of a triangular hat confused and stood it upwards, looking appropriate for an early kibbutz. And one feminist Purim Spiel masquerades Haman in mercenary outfit complete with tricorn headwear.

So how did this late 17th—early 18th century hat make it into our primary schools? I have not yet found a source that identifies when Hamentaschen were invented, but to someone who lived in the company of tricorn hats, folding up three sides of a round pastry may bear strong resemblance. Drawing the same connection at a later period may even have been possible.

One Israeli web site suggests another reason: the hats, once worn by feared army officers in Eastern Europe (were they?), later became a symbol of anti-Semitism. As such, it was only a logical step to connect the hat, the lookalike cookie with Haman’s name (or something like it), and Haman the primeval anti-Semite.

It is still strange to stick sweet stuff inside this guy’s hat and give it to my friend to eat on the holiday… Not as strange as ears, but getting there.

… And nursery rhymes…

For some reason I always associated this supposed three-pointed hat with the song Hakova sheli shalosh pinot (“My hat has three corners”) which we were also taught in primary school. I don’t know whether they were taught together, or whether it was just an intricate and inseverable connection forged in my own mind. But we find it as a German nursery rhyme too (but a different tune)! Indeed, all of the following have been sung by children:

English	French	German	Welsh	Hebrew
My hat has three corners, Three corners has my hat, Had it not three corners, It wouldn’t be my hat.	Mon chapeau a trois coins Trois coins a mon chapeau S’il n’avait pas trois coins Ce ne serait pas mon chapeau.	Mein Hut, der hat drei Ecken, Drei Ecken hat mein Hut, Und hätt er nicht drei Ecken, So wär es nicht mein Hut.	Mae gen i het tricornel, Tri cornel sydd i’m het, Ac os nad oes tri cornel, Nid honno yw fyn het.	לכובע שלי שלוש פינות שלוש פינות לכובע שלי אם לא היו לו שלוש פינות לא היה זה הכובע שלי

I would guess Modern Hebrew is probably the only Semitic language with a translation of this European folk song (correct me if I’m wrong!). Of course, no Jewish day-school student learning this song in Hebrew class was ever told that it wasn’t invented by Jews. It seems instead (sorry to burst bubbles) that it was just one of those things that the Zionists found too important to leave behind in Europe. (Or maybe it was a necessary part of what it meant to have a sovereign nation-state with its own historical language.)

Presumably, this song too goes back to the turn of the 18th century, when people had hats that, had they not three corners, would not be their hats!

Where are you, o sweet filling?

The usual Chasidic take on anything related to the story of Esther is to bring out a contrast between the hidden and the revealed. It works a little like this: there is a concept of God hiding His face (and thus allowing the world to operate unguided). And yet at times God’s hand is still present in the world. As such, God remains unmentioned in the Book of Esther, but nonetheless His miracle is revealed on a grand scale. The book is called Megillat Esther (“The Scroll of Esther”), where it might otherwise have been named after another character or been called “Sefer” (book) or “Toledot” or something else. So, they say: the root g.l.l (גל”ל) of “megillah” is like g.l.h (גל”ה) of “revealed”, while “Esther” (אסתר) is remarkably similar to Hebrew hester (הסתר) meaning “hiding” (despite hers undoubtedly being a Persian name, with a meaning more like more like “star”; we are given another name (הדסה) for her in Hebrew).

In the same vein the Hamentaschen reveals just a small portion of its filling (read: God’s hand), while the remainder is hidden beneath lips of dough, just as Esther’s identity and God’s miracle were hidden in Shushan. But while it’s fair enough to add deeper meaning to the cookie, especially when every feature of the festival is typologically associated with this dualistic concept, it’s not reasonable (in my opinion) to expect someone to invent the delicacy for this reason.

Trinity? Are you serious?!

For another religious interpretation of the image of the cookie, some Hebrew web sites I have seen have suggested that the three corners represent the three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in whose merit the Purim salvation came. (And what about the women?) It’s not exactly the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but in the arbitrariness of the association it might as well be.

Further, the site that first alerted me to this theory, the Israeli Education Ministry no less, loses a lot of its credibility by suggesting that “תרנגול הודו” (tarnegol hodu, “turkey fowl”) is an appropriate food for the Purim feast because the Megillah opens telling us that the king ruled from “Hodu to Kush”. Pity that “Hodu” is usually taken as India (rightly or wrongly), and this tarnegol originates in the Americas. (For a good coverage of this see Balashon Thanksgiving edition.) A silly source for a custom if you ask me: just tell the truth and say that Israel is upset to miss out on Thanksgiving and Christmas, eat the turkey, and be done with it.

Or fertility?

(This paragraph not intended for minors…) As noted above, one person suggested the Hamentaschen represented fertility, by way of its being eaten in early spring, containing seeds (or fruit) and looking akin to (I guess) some female anatomy. Now I do realise that that same part of the body is probably the most similar word in Hebrew to “pocket” (כיס). Nonetheless, there is a general approach of those being critical of a tradition to just say “we borrowed it from X”, “it’s an agricultural thing”, “it’s a pagan custom”, “it’s a fertility symbol”. That might be a sensible approach in some cases, particularly if the custom seems to be of the right age or origin, but I don’t imagine this one is. I think it’s too recent (and maybe too exclusively Jewish?) to assume that. I also don’t think that’s how people design snacks, or that there is any such sense of ritual imagery involved in the Hamentasch.

“It’s a yummy snack!”

We haven’t really found a good reason yet for the Hamentaschen’s association with Purim. It seems arbitrarily just something to eat and something easy to put in a package and send to friends. We can identify that from it have come many associations, some arguably quite absurd. Maybe it was just a popular cookie that happens to have been spread and maintained throughout the Jewish world by association with a traditional holiday?

This sort of argument might be substantiated if other European cultures ate similar three-pointed pastries. So I went searching. This web site describes the samosa as a three-cornered pastry and it seems South Africans may refer to them as drie hookie cookies (drie of course meaning three). But they are far from the same thing.

The Danish Trekantede Kager is three-cornered, but by cutting rather than folding. These 1892 lemon puffs are also triangular, but by folding a square pastry in two over the filling. Still, we’re getting closer.

And here we are. The best I could quickly find on the internet: Three-cornered Corniottes are pastries filled with ricotta cheese. This sounds right: “Place 1 tablespoon of filling in the center of the circle and turn up the edges on three sides to make a three-cornered ‘hat.’ Press the edges of the pastry firmly together at the corners so that the filling is enclosed.” In shape, the same as ours, but nowhere near as sweet (but by use of cream, just as many calories, I guess). Also, we needed something pareve (non-dairy) for our Purim feast, so this sort of thing just wouldn’t do.

So it is not entirely certain, but no one but the Jews seems to be making Hamentaschen.

Poppy seeds (mmm… opium).

Although many people nowadays dislike poppy-seed Hamentaschen and prefer other jams, it might be worth exploring them again as the original “mon” inside the “tasch”. It’s not completely unreasonable that someone invented a delicious poppy-pocket pastry and called it “montashen” and someone said, “Hey! that sounds like Haman!” and from then on the two were intricately connected by ears and hats and songs. After all, it is the holiday of being silly.

Nonetheless, they may have more significance. I had thought at first that it might be a seasonal thing. Maybe poppy seeds were produced at Purim? But no, they seem to be harvested mostly in Europe’s late Winter—early Autumn. We do know at least that they have been a popular part of European cooking, and Wikipedia goes as far as to suggest (without citation) that “some consider this cuisine tradition has Pagan roots,” presumably because of the known narcotic effects of poppy seeds.

The most convincing solution I found was dependent on the use of the poppy, but only because it was a popular seed for cooking. It also surprisingly came from Ohr Somayach: “Why poppyseeds? The Talmud states that Esther ate seeds while in the palace of Achashverosh. This enabled her to avoid non-kosher food, yet maintain a healthy appearance.” It then continues with something a little more fanciful, “Perhaps the Yiddish word ‘mon’ alludes to this, since the Hebrew word for manna, the miraculous food which sustained the Jewish people for 40 years in the dessert, is ‘mon.’”

Once you want to make a cookie with a seed filling you need some way to encase them, and folding over the edges of a pastry makes some sense.

The Encyclopedia Judaica on Purim gets halfway there: “Among the special Purim foods are boiled beans and peas, said to be a reminder of the cereals Daniel [sic] ate in the king’s palace in order to avoid any infringement of the dietary laws, and three-cornered pastries known as hamantashen (‘Haman’s ears’ [sic]).” It is strange that the encyclopaedia should make what seem like two errors without explaining the connection between Esther and Daniel, or the lack of connection between ears and taschen. The most important connection it doesn’t make (I didn’t make it either) is the one between the legumes and the pastries.

I am not sure that the solution provided by Ohr is completely convincing. But it is in my opinion the best we’ve got!

Have a Purim sameach! And enjoy your yummy hidden/fertility/patriarchal evil-person’s hat/ear/pocket snack!