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Purim Pleasure

Jerry Zolynsky

Classes, tutoring prepare women
for third annual megillah reading.

2025280

Michelle Sider hosted this first women’s Megillat Esther reading event two years
ago in her Huntington Woods home, where this year’s reading also will take place.

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

F

or the third consecutive Purim,
Michelle Sider will host a wom-
en’s Megillat Esther reading in
her Huntington Woods home.
The reading will start at 9 a.m. on
Purim, Thursday, March 24. Sider has
lined up 10 women to read and one to
serve as gabbai.
What’s different this year is that she’s
also arranged classes and individual
tutoring for the volunteer readers.
Reading megillah is not easy, said
Sider, an artist and art teacher. “You have
to read without vowels, just like a bar or
bat mitzvah portion, plus you have to
learn the trope — the melody for chant-
ing, which is different from the standard
haftorah chanting.
“It’s rare that we can find people who
really know how to read Megillat Esther,”
she said.
Sider’s readers attended three Sunday
morning classes in February. The
first, with Rabbi Eliezer Finkelman of
Congregation Or Chadash, and his wife,
Marilyn, a Jewish educator, focused on
the laws about reading the megillah.
In the second and third sessions, musi-
cian Avy Schreiber taught the trope.
Ben Jacobowitz of Oak Park offered to
provide additional tutoring for those who
requested it. His wife, Talya, is one of the
women planning to read on Purim.
Sider sees the women’s megillah read-
ing as a community-building activity.
“We get women from all shades of
Judaism,” she said. “Some are completely

secular; some are Orthodox. It’s a way for
women to come together.”
Eighty women attended the previ-
ous women’s megillah readings. Sider
encourages participants to come in
costume and stay after the reading for
refreshments.
Participants are also encouraged to
donate to two nonprofit organizations
for women: Haven, in Pontiac, which
serves victims of domestic abuse, and
Yotsrut, an Israeli organization that
helps victims of sex trafficking.
Reading megillah is an obligation
for women as well as for men, Rabbi
Finkelman said. “Women may fulfill
their obligation by reading the megillah
for themselves and may read the megil-
lah to enable other women to fulfill their
obligation.”
Many rabbis say women can also read
to enable men to fulfill their obligation,
but there is some controversy about that,
he added.
Women megillah readers include
Tamy Chelst and Sheyna Wexelberg-
Clouser, both of Oak Park; Aviva
Cohen and Ora Singer, both of
Huntington Woods; Susan Feber of West
Bloomfield; and Marilyn Finkelman,
Talya Jacobowitz, Yaffa Klugerman,
Cherie Levi and Lindsey Potoff, all
of Southfield. Mintzi Schramm of
Southfield will be gabbai.
For details and directions, contact
Michelle Sider at (248) 548-7485 or
michellesider@gmail.com.

Home Care at the Highest Standard

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Arleen Platt and
Andy Roisman

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March 10 • 2016

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