Three Corners, Two Names

Hamantaschen carries two folk explanations that both read the same three cornered shape as a piece of the Purim story rather than as a plain pastry design. The Yiddish name, hamantaschen, literally Haman's pockets or Haman's pouches, points to the three cornered purses or pockets Haman is imagined to have carried, so eating the pastry becomes a small act of taking apart the villain's own belongings.

The separate Hebrew name, oznei haman, Haman's ears, reads the same three points instead as his ears, drawing on a folk tradition that Haman's ears were cut off before his execution, or simply that his large ears marked him out as a figure of mockery; either reading turns a piece of him into something eaten and enjoyed at the very festival that celebrates his downfall. Bakers in different communities favor one name over the other, and some serve both readings side by side without treating them as competing claims, since the point of both is the same: transform a villain into a treat, an old and widespread trick of festival food in which the thing feared is made small, sweet and consumable. The poppy seed filling most associated with the pastry is itself sometimes connected to Esther's own diet in the story, in which she is said to have eaten only seeds and legumes at the Persian court to keep to permitted food while concealing her identity.