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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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California Judge Blocks Challenge to State K-12 Antisemitism Law
Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters in Los Angeles, California, US, Oct. 2, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.
A US federal judge in California has struck down a challenge to the state’s new K-12 antisemitism law, a measure which established a new Office for Civil Rights and other protections for Jewish students.
The law, also known as Assembly Bill 715 (AB 715), is California’s response to an epidemic of antisemitism in K-12 schools, which, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, has produced a slew of complaints alleging civil rights violations. It calls for creating an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and potentially barring antisemitic materials from reaching the classroom.
Since its signing by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October, the law has been challenged by individuals and groups who argue that it violates the First Amendment. One such party is middle school teacher Andrea Prichett, who sued the state government in November to halt the law’s implementation. She was joined by the “LA Educators for Justice in Palestine” group, which has advocated adding “ethnic studies” programs to K-12 school widely criticized for not only teaching a biased, anti-Israel history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also allegedly promoting other concepts that foster racial division and grievance.
In the suit, Prichett argued that the K-12 antisemitism law was “hastily written” and “singled out for punishment” anti-Zionist viewpoints. She also criticized the law because it “empowers anyone to file a complaint claiming classroom content and instructional materials criticize Israel and Zionism,” preventing teachers “from freely discussing these critical issues.”
Writing in Wednesday’s decision, Judge Noël Wise, appointed by former US President Joe Biden in 2024, said the plaintiffs’ argument is specious.
“With the enactment of AB 715, this yet to be appointed Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator will eventually be involved in how local schools ‘handle’ antisemitism. While this may include the administration of antisemitic discrimination complaints, it does not follow that the complaints will be judged more harshly than current complaints,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs have not shown that the mere existence of AB 715, even with its forceful precatory language about antisemitism, means public school administrators will be more likely than they are now to find that antisemitism complaints are meritorious.”
Furthermore, Wise noted that even if what Prichett and LA Educators for Justice in Palestine is true, it fails legally for asserting public teachers’ right to unfettered free speech, which does not exist for government employees while they are at work. Teachers may comment on matters of public interest, she explained, citing past jurisprudence by the US Supreme Court, but it cannot interfere with government’s advancing its “legitimate interests.” When they speak in the classroom or on a public school campus, Wise stressed, they do so not as private citizens but as state officials speaking “with the voice of the government” — a fact which allows government to steer or proscribe what is said on its behalf.
She continued, “As public school education belongs to the government, the government may regulate Teacher Plaintiffs [sic] speech to accord with the government’s education goals. It is of no significance that the curricula and the attendant speech required to teach it may advance a single viewpoint to the exclusion of another.”
Jewish civil rights groups on Wednesday commended the decision for drawing on established legal precedent and affirming California’s right to fight discrimination.
“The court correctly acknowledged that public school teachers do not have free speech rights in the classroom, because when they deliver lessons to students they are speaking on behalf of the government,” said Carly Gammill, director of legal policy and litigation at StandWithUs Saidoff Law. “While teachers can speak freely in their private lives, they cannot use K-12 public education as a platform for bigotry against Jews or other groups. School districts and state officials have both a right and a responsibility to protect students from instruction that crosses the line into antisemitism.”
The American Jewish Committee also issued a statement, with its chief executive officer Ted Deutch saying, “Public schools need to be welcoming to all, including Jews, and must not be used as platforms for teachers to express individual political views. Bias and discrimination that can lead to outright antisemitism has no place in California — or any — classrooms.”
Antisemitic incidents in California schools include vandalism and assault. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment.
In Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials were accused of ignoring complaints about discrimination and tacitly approving hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School (BUSD), for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
California is not alone in dealing with the issue. Pennsylvania has a significant K-12 antisemitism problem as well, a fact acknowledged recently by a surrogate of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro following the US Congress announcing an investigation into antisemitism in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and a disturbing anti-Israel statement at a high school in the Wissahickon School District.
“Governor Shapiro takes a back seat to no one on these issues, and as he has repeatedly spoken out about antisemitism, and this kind of hateful rhetoric is unacceptable and has no place in Pennsylvania — especially not in our classrooms,” Rosie Lapowsky, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital in Dec. “This is a matter the governor has made clear the district needs to take very seriously.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Florida Sees Three Antisemitic Incidents in One Week as State Pushes Back
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis participates in a Fox News Channel’s Democracy 2024: Fox News Town Hall ahead of the caucus vote in Des Moines, Iowa, US, Jan. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Scott Morgan
Communities in Florida’s Jupiter and West Palm Beach saw three acts of antisemitic intimidation last week, part of a trend of hate targeting local Jews this year as the state government moves to respond forcefully.
At the Jupiter Civic Center Beach, a vandal used bright orange spray-paint to write “Kill Jews” on two beach crossovers, according to a report from WPTV, West Palm Beach’s NBC affiliate, which confirmed two instances of the genocidal slogan vandalized in the town, both on government property. Each case of vandalism has been covered up, though not fully removed, according to video footage.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office also said that its Targeted Violence Unit was investigating a “suspicious call” at a Kosher restaurant in West Palm Beach.
“You don’t know who that individual is who’s going to take it upon themselves to act and move beyond words,” Josephine Gon, executive director of the Palm Beach Center to Combat Antisemitism and Hatred with the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County, warned WPTV in an interview. “That’s what is so serious right now. It’s a very fertile environment for bad actors.”
Florida has seen multiple efforts in recent weeks and months to counter those who target Jewish citizens.
On Dec. 8, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Brotherhood as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
“Florida agencies are hereby directed to undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities by these organizations, including denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support,” DeSantis said of the designations on social media.
CAIR-National and CAIR-Florida responded in a joint statement.
“From the moment Ron DeSantis took office as Florida governor, he has prioritized serving the Israeli government over serving the people of Florida,” the statement read. “He hosted his very first official cabinet meeting in Israel. He diverted millions in Florida taxpayer dollars to the Israeli government’s bonds. He threatened to shut down every Florida college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, only to back off when CAIR sued him in federal court.”
CAIR compared DeSantis to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (whose state also designated the group as a terrorist organization this year), describing him as “an Israel First politician who wants to smear and silence Americans, especially American Muslims, critical of US support for Israel’s war crimes.”
On Dec. 15, CAIR announced the filing of a lawsuit against DeSantis in response to the terrorism designation.
The legal system in Florida has prosecuted several individuals accused of antisemitic acts this year.
In October, Florida state Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the arrest and prosecution of Nicholas Ray of Spring, Texas who allegedly had made death threats under a ”zionistarescum” X account against Jews he believed responsible for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk the prior month.
In August, John Kevin Lapinski, Jr., 41, received a 25-year federal prison sentence from US District Judge Rodney Smith in Miami due to his terrorist plans to attack Jewish Americans and Black Americans in Florida. US Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said at the time that “this defendant stockpiled weapons, tactical gear, and detailed attack plans to terrorize Jewish and Black Americans in our communities. His intent was not abstract — it was written on his maps, his targets, and his so-called hit list.”
Also in August, police charged a Florida State University (FSU) graduate student for an alleged assault of a Jewish peer captured on video.
In April, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism announced it had found that Phoenix Ikner, 21, the alleged attacker behind a shooting at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee which caused two deaths and six injuries, had expressed an interest in Nazism, using Third Reich terminology to name himself in online games.
“What we’re seeing — if in fact this individual has extremist views, and it seems at the very least he was exposed to extremism — is the continued crossover between extremism and the glorification of violence that eventually leads to violence,” said Carla Hill, a senior director of investigative research at the ADL’s Center on Extremism
A hearing for Ikner occurred on Nov. 13 in Tallahassee. His trial has been pushed back to March 30 due to a change of counsel.
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London Denies Star of David Removed From Israeli Flag During New Year’s Eve Special After Facing Backlash
Flags displayed on the London Eye during the British capital’s New Year’s Eve celebration on Dec. 31, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
A spokesperson for London Mayor Sadiq Khan denied speculation that the British capital deliberately removed the Star of David from the Israeli flag that was displayed during the city’s New Year’s Eve fireworks spectacle on Wednesday night.
Flags from around the world were projected onto the London Eye Ferris wheel to form the European Union flag, in an effort to celebrate the diversity of people in London and “send a message of unity for 2026,” according to the mayor’s office. It was displayed as part of the city’s celebration to welcome the new year, but some viewers noticed that Israel’s flag appeared simply as a white rectangle with two blue stripes. The iconic Star of David that is typically in the center of the flag was not clearly visible, which prompted some social media users to claim the symbol of Jewish identity was “removed” or “erased.”
However, City Hall quickly released a statement insisting that the animated flags were very small and moved too quickly to appear clearly to all viewers. The visibility issues affected other blue and white national flags as well that were included in the sequence, including those of Guatemala, Argentina, and Honduras.
“A range of flags were displayed on the London Eye to represent the wide variety of countries of origin of people who live in and contribute to the success of London,” said a City Hall spokesperson, as cited by The Standard. “These animated flags were small and moving so were not all entirely clear at every point as they gradually formed into the Union Flag.”
The group London Jewish Forum (LJF) shared a video on social media that showed the Star of David very faintly on the Israeli flag in the New Year’s Eve display. In a released statement, LJF agreed with City Hall that the issue with the Star of David was because “elements were not always clearly visible at every moment due to the scale and motion of the animation.”
“There is no evidence that this was antisemitic or that the Israeli flag was singled out,” the group added. “The footage and the organizers’ explanation are consistent on this point. We also understand why people are watching these details closely right now. When antisemitism is rising, symbolism carries weight and scrutiny is natural. In this case, though, what we are seeing does not suggest intent or targeting.”
Other images projected as part of London’s celebration for 2026 on Wednesday night honored England’’ women’s rugby team the Red Roses for winning the Rugby World Cup, the Lionesses soccer team being victorious in the Euros, and Europe’s triumph over the US in the Ryder Cup. It also featured visuals and songs from “Wicked: For Good,” as well as a message from the film’s Grammy, Emmy, and Tony-winning actress, London native Cynthia Erivo.
Roughly 100,000 people lined the banks of the River Thames on Wednesday night to watch what was considered the largest annual firework display in Europe, according to the mayor’s office. The event featured more than 12,000 fireworks and over 400 lights.