QUEEN ESTHER, cloaked in splendor. Mordechai passes on the all-important information on the Jewish community as Haman hangs. 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. Women reading the Torah “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 […]
In Orthodox communities where women don’t read Torah, Purim offers a rare opportunity
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