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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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The post In Orthodox communities where women don’t read Torah, Purim offers a rare opportunity appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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81 Years After the Holocaust, Antisemitism Pervasive in Germany, Poland
A demonstration in Schwerin, Germany under the slogan “All together to protect democracy”, with a banner reading “Against Nazis”. They want to demonstrate against new borders in Europe and protest against cooperation with right-wing extremists. Photo: Bernd Wüstneck/dpa via Reuters Connect.
Eighty-one years after the Holocaust, antisemitism remains rampant in the heart of the former Third Reich, with rising antisemitic hate crimes in Germany and incidents targeting Jewish communities in Poland drawing widespread condemnation.
On Tuesday, as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a group of Orthodox Israelis waiting to board a flight to Israel at Krakow Airport in Poland were physically and verbally assaulted by an airport employee, in the latest antisemitic incident drawing condemnation from officials and community leaders.
The travelers were praying before boarding their flight when the employee noticed them and began shouting antisemitic slurs while demanding that they stop.
When the group members explained they were nearly finished, the assailant became even more aggressive, reportedly spitting on one person and pushing another.
As the situation escalated and the assailant grew more hostile, airport police intervened to control the scene, with the incident captured and widely shared online.
In videos circulating on social media, the airport employee is seen approaching the group aggressively, shouting, “Why are you in Poland? Go back to Israel.”
The group members are seen speaking in English, asking him to stop, as he persists in claiming that Poland is “his country.”
Go back to Israel, what are you doing coming to Poland”:
A group of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews who traveled to Poland were attacked by a local airport employee – but they didn’t stay silent: “Be quiet.” | video pic.twitter.com/vu0Iz3rSy6— daniel amram – דניאל עמרם (@danielamram3) January 27, 2026
According to local media, airport officials have yet to release a public statement, confirm whether the employee has been suspended or disciplined, or clarify if an investigation into the incident is underway.
The airport workers’ remarks were reminiscent of comments made by Polish lawmaker Grzegorz Braun, a far-right politician notorious for his repeated antisemitic statements and outspoken criticism of Israel.
“Poland is for Poles. Other nations have their own countries, including the Jews,” Braun said during a press conference in November in Oświęcim, a town in southern Poland that is home to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp memorial and museum. International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed annually on Jan. 27, the date when Auschwitz, the largest and most notorious of the Nazi death camps, was liberated.
“Jews want to be super-humans in Poland, entitled to a better status, and the Polish police dance to their tune,” Braun continued.
Poland, like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Germany has been one such country to experience a surge in antisemitism.
Most recently, unknown individuals vandalized the memorial at a local synagogue in Kiel, a city in the northwestern part of the country, destroying items left by people honoring the victims of the Holocaust — including a Star of David, candles, and a photograph.
“This attack is an utterly unacceptable act of antisemitic hatred and an affront to the memory of the crimes committed under National Socialism,” Daniel Günther, the minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, a state in northern Germany, said in a statement. “Anyone who desecrates a memorial site like this violates historical responsibility and the core values of the state.”
“We are witnessing a growing number of antisemitic incidents. Ninety years ago, that hatred marked the beginning of the end,” he continued. “That is precisely why we cannot tolerate a single incident today. Every act must be investigated and punished under the rule of law.”
This latest antisemitic attack comes as the local Jewish community rallies to defend democracy and protest against antisemitism on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Observed each year on Jan. 27, the day honors the six million Jews and other victims killed by the Nazis and commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945.
“Holocaust survivors around the world are asking whether democracies and their citizens are sufficiently aware of the dangers posed by the hateful rhetoric of far-right and populist politicians and parties,” Christoph Heubner, vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee from Berlin, said in a statement.
“Antisemitism has an unfortunate characteristic: it serves as an ideological bridge between right-wing extremists, left-wing extremists, and Islamists alike,” he continued. “These forces will continue to grow stronger if, as a society, we do not stop these threatening developments.”
According to newly released figures from the German Ministry of the Interior obtained by the newspaper BILD, antisemitic incidents continued to rise last year, with 2,122 offenses reported in Berlin alome, including 60 violent attacks.
This represents a significant increase of 80 percent compared with the already high number of incidents in previous years, with Berlin police recording 901 such offenses in 2023 and 1,622 in 2024, BILD reported.
“The rise in these figures is alarming, but not surprising. When politicians allow antisemitic demonstrations to go unchallenged, it emboldens certain groups and reinforces their antisemitic attitudes and attacks,” Timur Husein, a member of Parliament from the CDU, Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, who requested the data, told the German newspaper.
Husein also said that the CDU is looking to strengthen Germany’s assembly laws to ban antisemitic demonstrations, which he says are responsible for a significant share of these crimes.
Earlier this month, the commissioner to combat antisemitism in the German state of Hesse sounded the alarm after an arson attack on a local synagogue in the town of Giessen, warning that it reflects a “growing pogrom-like atmosphere” threatening Jewish life across Germany as Jews and Israelis continue to face an increasingly hostile climate.
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Minnesota, Rabbi Tarfon and the language of horror
I sat up when Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota described a “coalition of the horrified” that formed in response to this past weekend’s appalling shooting of a protester on a Minneapolis street — the second shooting of an American citizen there by ICE
“Coalition of the horrified?” I thought. “That’s a great phrase. And it can move people.”
“There’s sort of this coalition of the horrified that has developed around what’s been happening here in Minnesota. And it includes law enforcement,” Smith told the PBS News Hour. “It is people who care about Second Amendment rights — the level of rejection of this behavior of ICE is growing, not diminishing.”
Perhaps Republican politicians are finally horrified enough to talk with Democratic colleagues about how disproportionate all of this is.
While “horrified” is a relatively recent word, first used in 1791, the word “horror” is quite old, and its history helps explain what many of us are feeling.
The word “horror” comes from the Middle English orrour, horrour, which is borrowed from Anglo-French horrour, which is in turn borrowed from Latin horrōr.
According to Merriam-Webster, it means “standing stiffly, bristling (of hair), shivering (from cold or fear), dread, consternation.”
That “stiffness” seems apt.
In recent weeks, I have spoken to several friends and neighbors who could not figure out how to respond to the Trump administration’s most recent outrages.
“I just don’t know what to do,” a longtime neighbor and Democratic activist said.
“What can one person do about any of this?” an old friend commented sadly. “I feel powerless.”
In other words, stiffness had set in.
But Senator Smith’s apt language gives us all a starting point. Form a coalition. Join with others. Stand together.
And Jewish tradition has a deeper answer to the “what to do?” question. It comes from Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of the Fathers.”
Rabbi Tarfon was discussing what to do when the day appeared short, but the to-do list was long. His famous comment — lo alecha ha’mlacha ligmor — is relevant now.
“It is not your duty to finish the work,” Rabbi Tarfon said. “But neither are you at liberty to neglect it,” Rabbi Tarfon said,
This is the same passage that Josh Shapiro, the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, quoted when he was elected in 2022.
He quoted the same verse again after Minnesota governor Tim Walz was selected as the vice presidential pick. Shapiro had been a contender, but ultimately was not chosen.
What is important now is not only to know who we may be standing with, but also who we are not standing with.
We don’t stand with those who shoot protesters to death in the street. And we don’t have to complete everything — we don’t have to agree with fellow protesters on every political issue — but as Rabbi Tarfon explained, we do have to get in the fray.
We have to remember our tradition. Ben chorin, frequently translated as “at liberty” in the Rabbi Tarfon phrase, is actually an idiom meaning a free man.
If it sounds familiar, it may be because it’s the singular form of b’nei chorin, or “freeborn” in the plural, part of the famous avadim hayinu or “we were slaves” narrative in the Haggadah.
Once we were slaves; now we are free.
We cannot allow ourselves to be so stiff with horror that we become powerless. We cannot give up freedom for slavery.
We must instead use that horror to come together. I hope Senator Smith is right that at the leadership level, that is already happening. At the language level, at least, I can feel a turn.
The post Minnesota, Rabbi Tarfon and the language of horror appeared first on The Forward.
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San Diego Group Apologizes for Disinviting Rabbi From MLK Jr. Event Over ‘Safety Concerns,’ Pro-Israel Stance
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC. Photo: Reuters / Allison Shelley.
Organizers of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in San Diego, California, have apologized for disinviting a rabbi from speaking due to his stance on the Israel-Hamas war and “safety concerns.”
Alliance San Diego made the apology in a released statement after receiving widespread criticism for its treatment of Rabbi Hanan Leberman, the leader of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego. He was originally scheduled to lead the closing prayer at the city’s 38th annual All Peoples Celebration at the Balboa Park Activity Center on Jan. 19.
In a description for the event, Alliance San Diego invited the public to “choose Courage; to decide, with intention, to do what is right even when the fear and opposition are loud. Now more than ever, our voices must rise above hesitation. We must claim our dignity and echo the notion that any attack on one, is an attack on us all.”
A day before the event, Leberman wrote in a Facebook post he was “deeply upset” to learn he had been disinvited from presenting at the ceremony because of his “connection to Israel.” Alliance San Diego claimed Leberman was instead invited to attend the program as a guest, but the rabbi said he ultimately decided not to attend the event at all.
The decision to disinvite Leberman from presenting at the event was condemned by a coalition of nearly four dozen community-based organizations, social service providers, and synagogues in a joint statement published on Jan. 18.
While apologizing for the move in a statement shared on Instagram, Alliance San Diego also explained its decision, saying that event organizers faced “major disruption over two speakers’ public stances on the conflict in Israel-Palestine.”
“We hear the community’s concern that this decision felt to some like an exclusion of Jewish identity echoing historical traumas and antisemitic patterns present in many public spaces today. This was not our intention, and we apologize for reinforcing this pattern,” the group said. “To protect the attendees at the celebration and keep the focus on Dr. King, we asked both speakers to attend as our guests instead of present on the program. Our decision was based solely on safety concerns and was communicated in person conversations with the speakers. We recognize, however, that intent does not erase impact, and we take responsibility for the hurt caused … A deep source of regret is that our missteps have distracted us from our core work of creating a San Diego that is safe for all people.”
Leberman was born in Chicago, raised in Philadelphia, and ordained as a rabbi in Israel, where he lived and worked before moving to San Diego, according to the website for Tifereth Israel Synagogue. He moved to Israel at the age of 20 and served three years in the undercover counter-terrorist unit Duvduvan of the Israel Defense Forces, often serving as the unit’s cantor. Leberman studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, and aside from being a cantor, he is also a professional opera singer. He served as a rabbi and cantor for the Masorti movement in Israel and led congregations as a guest cantor in Israel, England, and the United States.
Alliance San Diego said in an earlier statement that it asked two speakers to give up their speaking roles at the event “in response to concerns about potential disruption related to Zionism and anti-Zionism,” but noted they had not been disinvited. The other speaker was not publicly identified but also ultimately decided not to attend the event.
“At the time, we believed we were acting in the best interest of protecting attendees and preserving the spirit of the event,” the group said in its statement. “Our intention was never to exclude Jewish faith leaders or Jewish voices from this space. As an organization working across many communities under immense strain and confronting assaults on immigrant communities, including Jewish and Israeli immigrants at a time of rising antisemitism and fear, we acknowledge that our decision contributed to that pain rather than alleviating it.”
Leberman said in his Facebook post on Jan. 18 that disinviting him from speaking at the event “runs counter to Dr. King’s message — particularly at this moment in history, when Jews are experiencing the most significant rise in hate crimes of any group.”
“The decision to disinvite me is, in my view, a disservice to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,” he added. “I believe the organization would benefit from deeper education about what Zionism truly is and about what the Jewish community is facing today — from both the left and the right.”