Why Esther Was Named for the Myrtle and What That Means

The Talmud in tractate Megillah notes that Esther was greenish in appearance, yaraqroqet, and that a thread of grace was drawn over her. It is an unusual physical description, and the Tikkunei Zohar, compiled in thirteenth-century Castile, Spain, does not let it pass as merely unusual. In its section 112, it reads that greenish coloring as a mystical signature, a marker of Esther's identity within the structure of divine attributes, and traces it through myrtle branches, the three Patriarchs, the willow, and the lips that transmit divine wisdom.

The Tikkunei Zohar notes that yellow is even more praiseworthy than green. The movement from green to yellow, or the presence of both shades in the Hebrew word for her coloring, places Esther within a color symbolism that the Kabbalistic tradition associates with the Shekhinah in Her aspect of Malkhut, divine sovereignty. The verse that seals the interpretation is (Esther 5:1): "And Esther clothed herself malkhut," dressed herself in royalty, but in Kabbalistic reading, clothed herself in the sefirah of Malkhut, the divine attribute of sovereignty that is the Shekhinah Herself.

What the Myrtle Actually Represents

Esther's Hebrew name was Hadassah, and hadass is myrtle. The Tikkunei Zohar connects this to a Mishnaic detail preserved in Tractate Sukkah (3:4): the myrtle branch used during the festival of Sukkot must have three leaves emerging from a single point, and this triple structure is said to represent the three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Esther is named for a plant that encodes the founding fathers of the Jewish people in its very growth pattern.

Midrash Rabbah, with over 2,900 texts including the Esther Rabbah commentary compiled in the early medieval period, preserves extensive traditions about Esther's connection to Hadassah. The name change from Hadassah to Esther follows the pattern of many biblical name changes: the hidden name is the true name, and the public name describes the role. Esther, from the Hebrew root meaning hidden or from the Persian word for star, is the outer identity. Hadassah, myrtle, is the inner structure. The three-leaved myrtle that perfects through the Patriarchs is what stands behind the queen in the palace.

Why the Color Green Belongs to Esther

The myrtle is an evergreen. In a tradition that associates vegetation with vitality, permanence, and divine blessing, the evergreen quality of the myrtle connects to the aspect of the divine that remains present even when everything around it withers. Kabbalistic tradition across its 2,847 texts associates different colors with different sefirot, and green-yellow belongs to the zone of Malkhut transitioning into the active world, the color of divine sovereignty as it manifests in earthly reality.

Esther's green-yellow coloring is, in this reading, not a description of her skin but a description of her spiritual nature. She is the color of the attribute she embodies. When she stands before Ahasuerus unannounced and uninvited, when she takes the physical risk of approaching without being summoned, she is acting as Malkhut always acts: descending toward a place of danger to accomplish the work that cannot be accomplished from above. The tradition preserved in the apocryphal additions to Esther describes her stripping off her royal garments and standing before God in sackcloth before putting the royal clothes back on. The green she carries into the throne room is the green of a woman who has already submitted to something higher than the king.

The Willow and the Two Lips

The Tikkunei Zohar's reading does not stop at the myrtle. It proceeds to identify Esther with the willow, aravah, the fourth species of the Sukkot bundle, citing Midrash Tanchuma on the portion of Emor (chapter 19). The willow, in the Kabbalistic anatomy of the four species, is associated with the two lips: palm with the spine, myrtle with the eyes, willow with the lips. Lips are the organs of speech, the transmitters of Torah, the interface between the interior understanding and the exterior world.

Midrash Tanchuma, compiled in seventh to ninth-century Palestine, preserves the teaching that the willow, having no taste and no smell, represents Jews who have neither Torah learning nor good deeds. They are included in the Sukkot bundle alongside the others, and their inclusion is itself a form of divine mercy. Esther, in the most desperate moment of the Persian exile, stands as the willow: without a husband present, without the full apparatus of Torah as her protection, without prophetic guidance, entering the king's court armed only with her lips, with her speech, with the words that will expose Haman.

How Esther Embodies Malkhut in the World

The Kabbalistic structure that the Tikkunei Zohar builds around Esther places her at the point where the divine attributes meet the political world. Malkhut, sovereignty, is the sefirah that receives everything from above and transmits it below. It has no independent light, just as the Shekhinah has no independent light, but it is the point of contact between the divine and the human. Esther standing before the king is Malkhut standing at the boundary between the upper world and the lower one.

The Book of Esther never explicitly mentions God. The tradition, preserved in the Talmud in tractate Megillah and elaborated in Esther Rabbah, explains this absence as intentional: God is hidden in the Book of Esther just as He is hidden in Esther's name. But the Tikkunei Zohar's reading of Esther's colors, her name, her plant associations, and her spiritual function argues that the hiddenness is not absence. The myrtle is evergreen. The color persists. The three Patriarchs are encoded in the branch structure. What looks like a story without God is, in this reading, a story in which God is present in everything: in the green-yellow of the queen's complexion, in the three leaves of the branch she is named for, in the lips that will speak the words that save a nation.