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In Orthodox communities where women don’t read Torah, Purim offers a rare opportunity
(JTA) — When Alyza Lewin became a bat mitzvah in 1977, the fact that she had a ritual ceremony at all was still relatively revolutionary in Orthodox circles. But she took the rite of passage a step further, and did something that, for Orthodox Jews at the time, was considered the exclusive province of men.
She chanted the Scroll of Esther, known as the megillah, in front of a mixed-gender audience in suburban Washington, D.C. on the festival of Purim. Among the crowd were her grandfathers, who were both Orthodox rabbis. Lewin was the eldest of two daughters, and her father wanted to find a ritual she would be allowed to perform while remaining within the bounds of traditional Jewish law.
“My father, when it came time for the bat mitzvah, was trying to figure out what was something meaningful that a young woman could do,” she said. “So he decided: My Hebrew birthday is four days before Purim — he would teach me how to chant Megillat Esther.”
For many modern Orthodox women more than four decades later, women’s megillah readings have moved from the cutting edge to squarely within the norm. The increasing number of women’s readings is an indication of the growth of Orthodox feminism — and its concrete expression in Jewish ritual.
According to the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, at least 105 women-led megillah readings, for both mixed-gender and women-only audiences, are taking place worldwide this year. In 2019, according to JOFA, the number hit a peak of 139, up at a relatively steady pace from 63 in 2012, when the group began collecting data. The number of readings dipped last year due to COVID-19 precautions, but JOFA expects this year’s total to come close to the pre-pandemic high once congregations get around to notifying the organization of their events.
JOFA’s executive director, Daphne Lazar Price, said she had observed but did not quantify a related phenomenon where she’s seen “tremendous growth:” girls marking their bat mitzvahs with megillah readings, as Lewin did.
“Instead of a traditional Torah reading service or women’s tefillah [prayer] service or a partnership minyan service, we’ve seen a lot more… girls read, in part or the entire, Megillat Esther,” Price said.
Alyza Lewin’s personal megillah scroll cover is embroidered with an image of Mordecai being led on a horse by Haman on one side, and her name on the other side. (Photos courtesy of Alyza Lewin. Design by Jackie Hajdenberg)
Although traditional Jewish law, or halacha, obligates women to hear the megillah on par with men, many more traditionalist Orthodox communities still do not hold women’s megillah readings. Some Orthodox rabbis may believe that women need to hear the scroll chanted but should not themselves chant the scroll. Another objection stems from the idea that synagogues should gather the largest audience possible to hear the megillah, rather than fragment the crowd into smaller readings.
Still others worry that a women’s megillah reading will act as a sort of gateway to non-Orthodox practice more broadly. Gender egalitarianism is one of the principal dividing lines between Orthodoxy and more liberal Jewish movements, and some Orthodox rabbis say women who organize a megillah reading of their own may then venture into chanting Torah or leading public prayers, which women in the vast majority of Orthodox communities are not allowed to perform.
“The fear is, if we give a little, it’s a slippery slope and once we allow women’s megillah readings people intentionally will manipulate or maybe even accidentally just get confused,” said Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb, an Israeli Orthodox rabbi formerly based in Baltimore, describing some rabbis’ concerns regarding women’s megillah readings in a lecture last month surveying a range of perspectives on the topic. “If women’s megillah readings are OK, then women’s Torah reading is OK, then women rabbis are OK and before you know it, I don’t know what.”
In recent years, a growing number of Orthodox women rabbinic leaders have weighed in on the question as well. Maharat Ruth Friedman, a spiritual leader at the Orthodox congregation Ohev Sholom: The National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., said women reading megillah may feel more acceptable to Orthodox communities that see women’s performance of other rituals as a step too far away from Orthodoxy.
“It is kind of the one semi-kosher or kosher thing that women in more [religiously] right-wing communities can do,” Friedman said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that the rabbis allow them to meet in the synagogue space, but at least that there is a contingent of women who will go to them.”
In some communities, women’s megillah readings might take place in private homes or in other spaces outside the synagogue. Some Orthodox rabbis permit women to read the megillah for other women, but prohibit it in front of men.
The idea of feminist megillah readings has become so mainstream that it was a storyline on “Shababnikim,” an Israeli comedy series about renegade haredi Orthodox yeshiva students. One of them is alarmed by his fiancee’s determination to read the megillah for a group of women and barges in to stop the reading. He later decides that despite his discomfort he should be more flexible in the future, within the constraints of Orthodox law, to make the woman he loves feel respected.
As women’s megillah readings have increased in popularity, they have reached the farthest parts of the globe, even reaching as far south as Antarctica. (Courtesy of Raquel Schreiber via JOFA)
At the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a liberal Orthodox synagogue in New York City, women have been reading megillah for decades. Founding Rabbi Avi Weiss wrote a Jewish legal analysis explaining why women are permitted to read the scroll in 1998.
“I personally am someone who advocates, and in our synagogue community looks to expand, women’s roles and give more opportunities for women,” said the synagogue’s current senior rabbi, Steven Exler.
Lewin is also watching the practice expand at her synagogue, Washington, D.C.’s Kesher Israel Congregation, where women have read from the megillah for nearly three decades. This year, she’s reading the fewest chapters of the megillah she has ever read. She usually reads half of the scroll, including a difficult passage in the ninth chapter. But for this week’s women’s reading at her synagogue, a new volunteer signed up to chant the ninth chapter.
Still, despite her pioneering reading at age 12, and her decades of chanting, Lewin has encountered the Orthodox community’s ambivalence around women and megillah firsthand. For many years, she borrowed her father’s scroll when Purim came around. But about eight years ago, Lewin asked him for her own scroll as a gift, which can cost upwards of $1,800.
Lewin’s father traveled to Israel to find a scribe to commission the megillah. But he wasn’t comfortable telling the scribe the megillah would go to a woman, and instead said it was a gift for his son-in-law.
Years later, Lewin was at a wedding where she met the scribe who wrote her treasured megillah, and revealed to him that the scroll belonged to her.
“He was thrilled,” Lewin said. “I think it was his individual personality. There are some individuals who are very supportive of the increase in opportunity for women, that women are becoming much more learned in terms of Jewish law.”
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13-Year-Old Boy Brutally Assaulted in Paris in Second Antisemitic Attack in Less Than a Week
Tens of thousands of French people march in Paris to protest against antisemitism. Photo: Screenshot
In a shocking second antisemitic attack in less than a week, a 13-year-old boy in Paris was brutally beaten Monday by a knife-wielding assailant, prompting authorities to open a criminal investigation and step up security amid a rising tide of antisemitism.
On his way to a synagogue in Paris’s 18th arrondissement, the schoolboy was physically attacked by a group of five assailants who beat him, pressed a knife to his throat, called him a “dirty Jew,” and stole his belongings, the French news outlet Le Parisien reported.
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the victim was walking to a synagogue, clutching his kippah in his hand rather than wearing it for fear of being recognized, when five attackers confronted him; stole his AirPods, sneakers, and coat; and forced him to empty his pockets.
The boy also told authorities that he was shoved, punched in the face, and threatened with a knife to his throat before his attackers stole his belongings, shouting antisemitic remarks throughout the assault.
Local police have arrested and taken an 18-year-old suspect into custody after he was recognized during the assault by someone on a video call with the victim. The four other attackers remain at large as of this writing.
The prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into armed robbery and armed violence, committed as a group and aggravated by discrimination, as authorities continue to work to identify and apprehend the remaining suspects.
This latest antisemitic attack marks the second such incident in less than a week, underscoring a growing climate of hostility as Jews and Israelis face a surge of targeted assaults.
Over the weekend, three Jewish men wearing kippahs were physically threatened with a knife and forced to flee after leaving their Shabbat services near the Trocadéro in southwest Paris’s 16th arrondissement, European Jewish Press reported.
As the victims were leaving a nearby synagogue and walking through the neighborhood, they noticed a man staring at them. The assailant then approached the group and repeatedly asked, “Are you Jews? Are you Israelis?”
When one of them replied “yes,” the man pulled a knife from his pocket and began threatening the group. The victims immediately ran and found police officers nearby. None of the victims were injured.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, France has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the French Interior Ministry, the first six months of 2025 saw more than 640 antisemitic incidents, a 27.5 percent decline from the same period in 2024, but a 112.5 percent increase compared to the first half of 2023, before the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Last week, a Jewish primary school in eastern Paris was vandalized, with windows smashed and security equipment damaged, prompting a criminal investigation and renewed outrage among local Jewish leaders as targeted antisemitic attacks continued to escalate.
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Over 90% of American Jews Feel Less Safe After Recent Antisemitic Attacks, Survey Finds
A friend organized a vigil for Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, both Israeli embassy workers who were allegedly murdered by an anti-Israel activist, in Washington, DC on May 22, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Nearly all Jews in the United States feel less safe after a recent wave of antisemitic attacks, and the majority have changed their behavior over the last year as a result, according to a major new survey.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) on Tuesday published its annual State of Antisemitism in America report, revealing a growing level of fear among American Jews — especially the 31 percent directly targeted by antisemitic hate themselves in the past year. Of those who reported being the target of antisemitism, 80 percent said they changed their behavior in response.
“We need Americans to wake up to the reality of what their Jewish neighbors are experiencing,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement announcing the report.
The AJC’s researchers found that 91 percent of American Jews feel more unsafe in the country following last year’s antisemitic attacks against Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence in April and pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado in June, in addition to the slayings of Israeli embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky at the Capital Jewish Museum in May.
Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents said they feel less safe as a Jewish person in the US because of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel. During the onslaught, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists perpetrated the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages.
“Right now, in America, when Jews gather, whether at synagogue or a community event, it’s routinely behind metal detectors and armed guards,” Deutch said. “No one in America should have to change their behavior because of what they believe, but that’s how most Jews are living their lives. What we’re asking for is what every other minority group expects in America: the freedom to be who we are without fearing for our safety.”
The report documents that 55 percent of Jewish respondents to the survey said they changed their behavior in response to fears of antisemitism, while 17 percent noted they have considered leaving the US in the past five years as a result of rising hate, an increase from 13 percent in 2024.
Majorities of American Jews are attuned to the threats of online hate and the dangers of the popular large language model (LLM) chatbots marketed as so-called “artificial intelligence,” including SpaceX’s Grok, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Anthropic’s Claude.
Seventy-three percent of American Jews who were surveyed said they have experienced online antisemitism, and 65 percent expressed concerns at either the “very” or “somewhat” levels that LLM chatbots will spread more bigotry against Jews.
In addition, 69 percent of American Jews worry that information and misinformation from LLMs will inspire antisemitic incidents, according to the data.
More American Jews surveyed in 2025 said they saw antisemitism on social media platforms than those in 2024. Jews reporting seeing antisemitism on billionaire Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook social media website rose from 47 percent in 2024 to 54 percent last year, while those experiencing the hate on his Instagram photo-sharing app shot up from 32 percent to 40 percent.
American Jews seeking to enjoy online videos also reported rising bigotry targeting them on Alphabet’s YouTube (increasing from 27 percent to 38 percent) and Oracle’s TikTok (up from 18 percent to 23 percent).
The picture of life for younger American Jews is much more dire than for the middle-aged and elderly, with 47 percent of respondents 29 and younger saying antisemites had personally targeted them in the last year. This compares to 28 percent for Jews 30 and older.
The survey also affirms reports in recent years of increased antisemitism at the outposts of American academia.
Among Jewish college students, 42 percent said they experienced antisemitism while on campus, and 25 percent reported feeling or being excluded from a group or event because of their Jewish identity.
Jewish institutions remain widely under threat, with 28 percent of respondents saying that antisemites had targeted at least one synagogue, Jewish school, or community organization where they affiliated.
The survey also found that the protest slogan “globalize the intifada,” which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israelis and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand such violence, provokes fear among 88 percent of Jewish respondents, with 27 percent saying they would feel “very unsafe” hearing the words. Among the general public, only 13 percent of respondents said they knew the phrase while 32 percent had heard the similar controversial war cry “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
More Americans (73 percent) knew the “Free Palestine” chant. The AJC noted that the alleged killer of Milgrim and Lischinsky “is reported to have shouted ‘Free Palestine’ during the shooting. The alleged attacker in Boulder is also reported to have yelled ‘Free Palestine’ as he threw a Molotov cocktail at the crowd of people gathered to support hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, ultimately leading to the death of 82-year-old Karen Diamond.”
In a parallel survey the AJC conducted of the American general public, researchers found that 70 percent of respondents called antisemitism a problem, 63 percent said it had increased since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, and 45 percent had seen or heard an antisemitic incident in the last 12 months.
Deutch on Tuesday highlighted some of the key findings in an op-ed published by the New York Post announcing the report.
“Among Americans who know a Jewish person, only 54 percent said they had personally seen or heard one or more antisemitic incidents in the last year,” Deutch wrote. “Among those who don’t know any Jews? Thirty-two percent.”
Deutch continued, “I am not advocating for special attention or treatment for my community. I’m calling for, rather, the same care, awareness, and collective outrage we would rightly see if these daily assaults were being made against members of any other religious or ethnic group in the United States.” He warned that “the fortress of metal detectors and bulletproof glass we’ve built around the Jewish community is a physical sign of the deep cracks undermining the foundation of our society.”
Holly Huffnagle, the AJC’s director of antisemitism policy, warned in a statement that tolerating the spread of antisemitism “corrodes social trust, legitimizes extremism, and weakens the democratic institutions that protect everyone, making a clear, dedicated government response not just optional, but necessary.”
The AJC’s survey took place between Sept. 26 and Oct. 29, 2025. Researchers drew data from responses provided by 1,222 Jews, ages 18 and up, as well as 1,033 adults in the general population. The margin of error for Jewish respondents was +/-3.7 percent while for the general population it was 3.4, at a 95 percent confidence level.
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China Played Key Role in Iran’s Digital Crackdown on Protesters, Report Shows
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
The Iranian regime used Chinese and Russian technology to silence dissent during recent nationwide anti-government protests, imposing near-total internet shutdowns and disrupting satellite communications to suppress public scrutiny, according to a new study.
On Monday, the international human rights organization Article 19 released a new report examining digital cooperation between China and Iran, detailing Beijing’s role in expanding Tehran’s digital repression apparatus.
“In its pursuit of total control over the digital space, Iran borrows directly from the Chinese digital authoritarian playbook,” Michael Caster, head of Article 19’s Global China Program, said in a statement.
“From Chinese companies embedded inside Iran’s infrastructure, to Iran’s support for China’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ principles based on censorship and surveillance, both countries align in their ambition to disconnect their populations from the open, global internet,” he continued.
According to the report, China has provided material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, bolstering its surveillance and censorship capabilities as Chinese firms including ZTE, Huawei, Tiandy, and Hikvision continue operating in the country despite international sanctions.
“Emulating China’s infrastructure of oppression helps Iran entrench power, sidestepping accountability and exercising full control over the information environment,” Article 19’s head of resilience, Mo Hoseini, said in a statement. “That way, dissent is not just silenced, it is prevented from ever surfacing.”
The study also explains that Iran is seeking to replicate China’s “Great Firewall” through its National Information Network, a system designed to restrict access to the global internet while centralizing censorship and embedding surveillance deep within national infrastructure.
As international scrutiny over the regime grows, new estimates show that tens of thousands of people were killed by Iranian security forces during an unprecedented crackdown on nationwide protests last month.
Two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials told Time magazine that as many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone. Some reports have put the figure even higher, suggesting the regime could have perpetrated one of the deadliest crackdowns in modern history — all under cover of digital darkness.
With authorities enforcing an internet blackout for weeks, the actual number of casualties remains difficult to verify. Activists fear the internet shutdown is being used to conceal the full extent of the crackdown on anti-regime protests.
According to Craig Singleton, a Stanford professor and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, surveillance technology supplied by Chinese exporter Tiandy Digital Technology Co. has strengthened Iranian security forces’ ability to identify and track protesters.
The equipment, including network video recorders, has been deployed during both the current unrest and previous waves of nationwide protests.
Chinese surveillance firm Tiandy is helping Iran track, identify, and repress innocent protesters—moving from street cameras to knock-on-the-door arrests.
This is digital authoritarianism in action.@SecScottBessent @HowardLutnick @Secrubio @BrendanCarrFCC @FDD
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— Craig Singleton (@CraigMSingleton) January 13, 2026
China expressed support for the Iranian regime last month amid the protests, hoping Tehran would “overcome” the unrest and “uphold stability.”
If the regime in Iran was seriously weakened or potentially collapsed, it would present a problem for a strategic partner of Beijing.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing
Iran’s growing ties with China come at a time when Tehran faces mounting economic sanctions from Western powers, while Beijing itself is also under US sanctions.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
The extent of China’s partnership with Iran may be tested as the latter comes under increased international scrutiny over its violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.
However, as The Algemeiner previously reported, Iran’s relationship with China has proven weaker than official statements from both countries would suggest, filled with limits and skepticism even as Tehran faces unprecedented military challenges from both the US and Israel.