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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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Two years after a judge’s order, a Spanish dictionary still defines ‘Jewish’ as ‘miserly’
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — Two years after an Argentine judge ordered a Spanish dictionary to drop a definition of “Jewish” as “miserly or usurious,” the institution responsible for the dictionary has yet to comply — frustrating the Jewish groups that brought the case.
The definition reflects a long history of associating Jews with greed and moneylending, a stereotype reinforced by literary figures such as Shakespeare’s Shylock and by centuries of anti-Jewish prejudice. The Royal Spanish Academy, the Madrid-based language-standardization institution that is ignoring a September 2024 order by a federal judge here, has defended its dictionary as a record of how words are used, including pejorative meanings.
Jewish groups argue that preserving the definition perpetuates an antisemitic trope.
“We understand that the dictionary reflects how some people use language, but it is also true that many people learn through the dictionary,” Ariel Siedler, a member of the Latin American Jewish Congress (CJL) who monitors online discrimination, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month. “That is why adding that definition seems negative. The aim was to avoid reinforcing discrimination, which would be perpetuated through the dictionary.”
The 2024 order came a month after CJL and DAIA, Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella organization, filed a criminal complaint against Santiago Muñoz Machado, the academy’s director, and other officials. It accused them of “inciting hatred against the Jewish community through the discriminatory definition of the term ‘Jew’.”
When the ruling came down, Muñoz Machado told EFE, the Spanish state-run news agency, that he would examine the ruling even though it is unenforceable in Spain, out of respect for the Argentine courts and the CJL’s parent body, the World Jewish Congress.
“It is a judge’s ruling; therefore, we receive it with the utmost respect — all the more so given that the petitioners behind it include the World Jewish Congress,” he told EFE. Nonetheless, he said then, he still held to what he had told the CJL in 2023, when he responded to the Jewish body’s direct request to remove the definition.
“If the [academy] defines ‘Jew’ as ‘miserly,’ it is because that’s how people use the word,” he said. He emphasized that dictionaries document language rather than invent it, and that deleting a definition would not necessarily prevent people from using the expression.
The academy’s online Dictionary of the Spanish Language lists five meanings for “judío” (Jew/Jewish). The first definitions are “Hebrew,” a person “who professes Judaism,” a “native of Judea, a country of ancient Asia” and “belonging or relating to Judea or the Jews.”
The fifth describes it as a person who is “miserly or usurious.”
In 2021 — the year the CJL first complained to the academy — it began to add that this usage is “offensive or discriminatory,” according to IEDRA, a website that tracks Spanish language usage.
English-language dictionaries routinely include antisemitic meanings of “Jew” while also noting that such usage is offensive.
Defenders of the Spanish academy’s dictionary said the work’s educational role should prevail. “The dictionary serves to explain and understand. Without collecting the various meanings that a word can have, it would be impossible to properly read ancient or modern texts,” Arturo Pérez-Reverte, an academy member and a Spanish novelist, told El Pais in 2024, when the Argentine court issued its ruling. “The RAE dictionary is not the normative police of the language, but the notary that draws up a record of how the language was used and how it is used now.”
There is a precedent for the academy removing an offensive definition. Spanish lawyer Borja Luján Lago in 2023 got the academy to modify the entry for the word “lawyer,” which included the definitions “talkative” and “chatty.” Panama’s Jewish community, hearing of his success, tapped Luján Lago to persuade the academy to remove the offensive “Jewish” definition. More than 20 Jewish groups in the United States and Latin America signed onto the effort.
Based in Madrid and founded in 1713, the academy is the leading authority on the Spanish language, coordinating linguistic standards with 22 other academies, mostly in Latin America.
Approximately 636 million people worldwide are Spanish speakers, according to the Instituto Cervantes’ 2025 report. The countries with the largest Spanish-speaking populations include Mexico (138 million), the United States (65.5 million), Colombia (53.1 million), Spain (48.9 million) and Argentina (47.5 million).
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Two years after a judge’s order, a Spanish dictionary still defines ‘Jewish’ as ‘miserly’ appeared first on The Forward.
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What pledges Eisenkot and Netanayhu need to break to become PM
(JTA) —
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponent Gadi Eisenkot will have to break their promises to their constituents if they want to form and lead Israel’s next government.
Their potential political allies will have to do the same.
Netanyahu’s Likud and Eisenkot’s Yashar party both garnered more votes than any of the other nine parties that met the threshold to join the next parliament.
Netanyahu and the bloc of parties that ideologically align with him, however, secured only 53 of the 61 seats needed for a governing majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The Eisenkot bloc won 48.
For Eisenkot, three divisive issues are likely to dominate the debate and force some politicians to renege on campaign pledges: aligning with Arab parties, mandatory military service for Haredi men and a unity government with Netanyahu.
Support from the Arab parties
Eisenkot’s bloc includes four Jewish Israeli parties, referred to as Zionist parties: his own party Yashar, B’Yachad led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Israel Beytenu led by Avigdor Liberman, and the Democrats led by Yair Golan.
Eisenkot could easily become prime minister with a 67-seat coalition if he added the Arab parties, Ra’am with 8 seats and the Joint List with 11. But that is far from straightforward. Three of the bloc’s four parties — Yashar, B’Yachad and Israel Beytenu — explicitly pledged not to form a government with the Arab parties. And relying on their support would face an additional legitimacy hurdle given Netanyahu’s advantage among Jewish voters.
Eisenkot himself has repeatedly and unequivocally said he does not intend to form a government with the Arab parties. During the campaign, he set four conditions for joining his government, including a commitment to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and to the values of the Declaration of Independence, mandatory military or national service, and recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization.
In an interview with Channel 12 News in late September, Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff, said the Arab parties did not meet his conditions and therefore would not be part of the government.
On election night and since then, he has continued to speak of a coalition with Jewish Zionist parties.
Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who relied on the support of the Ra’am party in 2021, when he and Lapid formed their coalition, also ruled out sitting in a government with the Arab parties. Liberman, whose party won seven seats, said he would form a coalition made up of “Zionist parties only.” Only Golan spoke prior to the election of sitting with Arab parties and has since the election called on the other three parties in his bloc to do so.
One attempt to circumvent the issue would be for Eisenkot to form a minority government that would depend on votes from Ra’am and the Joint List from outside the coalition. A more solid version of that game plan would be a coalition that included Ra’am but relied on the Joint List from outside the government. However, this option is also likely to face significant political and public opposition.
The Joint List stated in an official declaration following the election that it was willing to engage in “political cooperation to bring down Netanyahu’s government,” but it did not publicly clarify whether, and under what conditions, it would support a government led by Gadi Eisenkot. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas said in an interview with Channel 12 News on the eve of the election: “I will know how to bring a government to the Knesset.”
The draft issue
Without the Arab parties’ support, the change bloc could theoretically turn to the 13 seats held by the ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, to form a government.
All four parties in the bloc made ending the ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service a central campaign issue. Cooperation with those parties would amount to breaking an explicit campaign promise.
Shas and UTJ have similarly promised their Haredi constituents that they would not allow for forced conscription.
A unity government with Netanyahu
With the path to a government that excludes Netanyahu looking tenuous at best, the change bloc’s alternative would be to join Netanyahu in a national unity government.
But that, too, would represent a flagrant breach of its campaign pledges. The one clear binding principle of these four parties is their goal of unseating Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, whom they have said poses an existential threat to the country.
In a late-October radio interview, Eisenkot said, “I unequivocally commit that I will not sit under Netanyahu, not even in a rotation,” in which he and Netanyahu would share the prime ministership. Bennett said in a radio interview, “I am not going to sit under him because he is the person destroying the State of Israel.” Liberman wrote on X two weeks ago, “With Netanyahu — even if the world turns upside down, we will not sit with him under any circumstances.” Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, said, “We will not sit with Netanyahu and his partners. Period.”
The challenge for Netanyahu
On the other side, Netanyahu also has no clear path to forming a government. The parties in his coalition defied expectations by winning 53 seats, but securing the eight additional seats needed for a majority appears out of reach. Netanyahu deployed the prospect of the Arab parties in the coalition as a cudgel to bash the opposition during the campaign. In a speech on the eve of the election, Netanyahu called cooperation with those parties “a disgrace.”
That may not stop him from trying to form a government with one of the Arab parties, particularly Ra’am, whose leader Mansour Abbas told Channel 12 on election night that he was speaking with politicians from both blocs.
Netanyahu during the 2022 election held talks with Abbas about forming a government.
Even if Netanyahu were to do the unthinkable and cooperate with the Arab parties, however, he would be unlikely to secure a majority. His ultra-nationalist partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, made clear during the campaign that such cooperation was out of the question for them.
With all apparent paths to a government blocked, forming a coalition in Israel may require a fundamental breach of campaign promises that would shake up the entire political system. The alternative is another election, which would be held if no side succeeds in forming a government.
The post What pledges Eisenkot and Netanayhu need to break to become PM appeared first on The Forward.
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The Ethan Klein YouTube cheating scandal is reigniting a debate about IDF service
The chronically online are still reeling from — and reveling in — the cheating scandal surrounding Jewish YouTubers Ethan and Hila Klein. And, after Hila’s estranged brother spoke out for the first time this week, commenters have revived a debate over the siblings’ service in the Israel Defense Forces, reflecting the ways in which shifting political trends online can impact even seemingly-unrelated stories.
Hila, an Israeli who met Ethan during his Birthright trip to Israel in 2007, posted a statement accusing Ethan of the affair on Oct. 22. The two had built a joint YouTube career in America garnering millions of subscribers to their show, the H3 Podcast. They married, had three children together and employed around a dozen people on their production crew — one of whom is alleged online to be Klein’s affair partner.
Because of the show’s Israeli connections, the Kleins’ Birthright meet-cute, and the show’s myriad other Jewish connections — the podcast employee allegedly having the affair with Ethan is also Jewish — discussions of Israeli politics have long swirled around the show. Ethan feuded with numerous other YouTubers and internet figures, including Hasan Piker, with whom he used to cohost a podcast, over the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s war in Gaza.
In recent years, especially after Oct. 7, with pro-Palestinian sentiments increasingly dominating online, the H3 Podcast’s connection to Israel has become a central part of its identity, and drawn controversy and analysis across the internet from Piker and general viewers. Each time Israel has been brought up on the show the conversations are closely tracked and analyzed in relevant subreddits.
With the Kleins making headlines because of the affair, old Israel discourse has resurfaced surrounding the internet celebrities. Central to it is the question: what level of Israeli military service is forgivable in the eyes of the far left? As Hila routinely came under scrutiny for her service, the Kleins would point to Hila’s brother Moses Hacmon, who also served but has faced far less criticism for doing so.
Hacmon, another internet celebrity, has long been feuding with Hila and Ethan, thanks to his now-wife, infamous YouTuber Trisha Paytas. (Paytas is known for an endless string of controversies including taboo OnlyFans content and saying the n-word while singing along to a rap song, as well as being accused of physically abusing Hacmon.)
Hacmon, who moved to the U.S. in 2002 to launch his art career after finishing his IDF service, met Paytas through Ethan and Hila. The Kleins had just begun having Paytas on their show, which led to Ethan launching a new podcast, Frenemies, with Paytas. Initially, the two couples were close. But the show lasted less than a year and ended in a bitter falling-out over revenue, creative disagreements and family drama, severing ties between the two couples. Now, that conflict is finding new life as fans fight over which siblings’ IDF service was most immoral.
Scrutiny over military service
In defending Hila’s IDF service, Ethan mentioned multiple times that she worked a noncombat desk job and never hurt anyone personally.
The Kleins, who show a vindictive streak against their enemies, also often deflected criticism of Hila by pointing at Hacmon, saying he was an active combatant in the air force, and pointing angry commenters in his direction. (Hacmon and Paytas, while they have drawn their own controversies in the past, have come under less fire as of late and currently are popular in the online ecosystem.)
The Kleins said that they didn’t take issue with Hacmon’s service. But, they said on numerous episodes of the podcast, if people were upset with Hila for serving in the IDF, they should be just as upset with Hacmon.
Until this week, Hacmon hadn’t publicly spoken to or about the Kleins for five years as tensions simmered. He did not invite them to his wedding with Paytas or introduce them to the couple’s three children (who are named — actually — Elvis, Malibu Barbie and Aquaman).
But Hacmon broke his silence on Tuesday to talk about the affair. He said he felt for his sister and that his door was open to her, but added that things the couple had said about him, particularly his military service, were painful lies.
“I never graduated from flight school,” said Hacmon on his podcast with Paytas. “I never was a pilot. I’ve never been in combat. I’ve never hurt anyone. I’ve never shot a gun at anyone.”
This may sound like a petty feud over minor details; either way, both siblings served in the IDF. But it reflects the shifting tides of political trends and viewer favor online.
Pro-Palestinian activism, and harsh criticism of Israel’s army in light of the war in Gaza, has become the mainstream acceptable stance online, and views are so black and white that small details can ruin an online career. Fans, hungry to cancel their enemies, scour the internet for evidence of what they consider to be a sin — for some people, even recommending the wrong book or using the wrong brand of makeup can be an indication of cancellable politics around Israel.
For many influencers, serving in the IDF at all, regardless of role, is enough for online cancellation, but since both of the siblings served, the fight boils down to details, with each sibling attempting to distance themselves from the violence as much as possible to prove that they are not the wrong kind of Jew.
Getting into the weeds on Israel
But a decade ago, this political framework had not yet taken hold of the internet, and Israel was not a pariah online — meaning that the evidence on both Hila and Hacmon’s service can get muddled, as they presented their records differently back when they seemingly thought it sounded cool to be in the army.
An interview with Hacmon published sometime circa 2015 seems to corroborate some of his most recent statement:
“I spent a year and a half in the flight school,” Hacmon said about his service in the air force. “When I left the military after three years I really wanted to catch up for that time.”
But despite his insistence that he did not see combat, in a 2021 episode of Frenemies, long before Oct. 7, Paytas seemed eager to prove her husband had been an active combatant. She bragged about Hacmon’s service in the IDF saying he deactivated bombs in Lebanon and was a “bomb specialist.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” replied Ethan.
“That’s what he did,” yelled Paytas, gesturing to Hacmon who sat silently off screen.
Hila, on the other hand, worked a desk job throughout her service and at one point was, as she described it, a secretary for a brigade that conducted military missions in Ramallah, a major city in the occupied West Bank. One night, unauthorized and acting out of curiosity, she accompanied the brigade on a mission to detain “a terrorist.” This anecdote, which she shared during a 2017 episode of the couple’s podcast, would be used against her time and time again by Piker and various critics after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Viewers commenting on the siblings’ mandatory service had various takeaways.
“I don’t like either of them but you can’t call out one without the other being terrible too,” said one X user. “It’s hypocrisy.”
One commenter, coming to Hila’s defense argued: “Moses was in the IDF, just like Hila. The difference is Hila worked a desk job then asked to go out on the field ONE TIME out of curiosity. Moses worked with bombs and was actually out doing field work, as Trisha loved to brag about.”
While the exact details of each siblings’ service remains disputed, one thing is certain: the casualness with which they once discussed the IDF is gone. What used to be simple background in their personal histories — an experience most Israelis share — has become ammunition in arguments over their alleged complicity in the conflict and an opportunity for moral grandstanding.
All of this is old news, really, though; today, its main effect is drawing attention away from Ethan’s affair. The military debate and disdain many online feel for the IDF — especially in the left wing circles these four worked in — has left little sympathy for the mother of three navigating separation after a devastating affair.
The post The Ethan Klein YouTube cheating scandal is reigniting a debate about IDF service appeared first on The Forward.
