Women Reading Megillah for Men: A Rejoinder Rabbi

Rabbi Avraham Weiss begins his recent article, “Women and the Reading of the Megillah,” with the questions: “May women read the Megillah for other women, and for that matter, may women read the Megillah for men?” Rabbi Weiss devotes the great majority of his essay to the first issue, and while a number of points as well as the conclusion remain debatable, his essential arguments in favor of a woman reading for other women are found in halakhic sources. My greater concern relates to his treatment of the second issue. Rabbi Weiss writes at the conclusion of his article: “The issue of women reading the Megillah for men is more complex. Here, even the early authorities are divided. Later authorities seem more inclined to permit this kind of reading at night rather than during the day.” In the following discussion, I wish to establish that the sources and arguments that Rabbi Weiss utilizes to reach this position are flawed in both substance and methodology. I must emphasize that I am not certain of Rabbi Weiss’s actual intent, for while he seems to justify a woman’s actual reading of the megillah for men at night, he never explicitly affirms the validity of such a practice. Indeed, Rabbi Weiss never distinguishes between the theoretical and the practical in regard to our topic (with one notable exception which I shall mention later); and certainly when he discusses the situation of a woman reading the megillah for other women, a primary focus of his article, he is speaking of practice. For that reason, a reader could understandably conclude that when Rabbi Weiss strongly articulates AARON COHEN