Adar
The twelfth and last month, in late winter — the month of Purim, and of the finished second temple.
Adar closes the religious year, a month before Nisan brings the barley and Passover. Like Nisan it is a Babylonian name, taken on during the exile, which is why it appears only in books written after it: Ezra dates the completion of the rebuilt temple to the third of Adar, and Esther turns on it, because the lot Haman casts in Nisan lands eleven months away in Adar — long enough for everything to be reversed. When the calendar needs its extra month, the later Jewish calendar adds it here, as a second Adar.
