Megilla reading for dummies... oops, I meant mommies

Yesterday my daughter came home from school with an arts-n-craft that would make any normal parent proud… leave it to me to cringe at the site of a gragger. It was the noisiest contraption I’d ever heard; taking it out of the knapsack alone sent out a good 80 decibels of unbearable noise into my otherwise peaceful apartment. The engineering was straightforward—two (heavily decorated) paper cups fastened together and filled with noisy junk. I finally found where my school money goes—they don’t fill these cups with popcorn kernels or rice; I’m proud to say that my daughter’s school fills her gragger with quality material--the biggest dried lima beans you ever saw and, I bet steel marbles as well. What were they thinking, the noisier the better? Being the patient mother that I am, I immediately hid this monstrous contraption away until Purim. I thought, “I won’t have to hear it until Megilla reading when I take it out in its right time.” It then dawned on me that I’d have to install a silencer on the gragger before letting my daughter walk into shul lest I wish to be stoned by my fellow congregants with those very lima beans.

So that’s how the dilemma began. Consider the following:

1. Women are halakhicly required to hear the Megilla twice on Purim (with equal stringency as men).
2. Women are traditionally the ones toting the little (read: noisy) ones along to the Megilla reading.

These two conditions are mutually exclusive and virtually impossible to fulfill at the same time. Anyone who has sat through a Megilla reading in a non-yeker shul (how do they do it, btw?) knows that of the usual 95% of the service that makes it over the mechitza, another 15% of the words are skimmed right off the top during Megilla reading (comstumes rustling, graggers graggling (?), babies crying, mother’s pleading for some silence, etc…) Clearly, not a good combination.

In Israel they deal with this situation brilliantly. The megilla is simply read twice so the kids can be shifted between parties. Why American’s don’t adopt this practice stumps me. Maybe some feminist groups protested saying that this equates motherhood with womanhood and further assumes the caretaking role to the female, etc… I think this is as fair a deal as it gets, as in, 'I go deaf for 45 minutes, okay, now your turn'. But somehow it hasn't caught on in orthodox circles. I have gone to private home readings in the past but I still ended up toting along the blasted gragger, accompanied by its eager owner. How could anyone expect me—with my kid who's highly prone to noisy debacles and my embarrassingly short attention span—to be able to hear the entire Megilla intact?

Now, what if women could read their own Megilla? Imagine we could claim the same immunity to noisy accessories or interuption as our male counterparts, i.e. “can’t you see I’m part of a minyan here, isn’t it a little sacrilege to ask me to---insert child-related activity here--?” I’ve often heard, in hushed tones though, that in certain instances woman are fully allowed—even encouraged—to make a minyan and lead their own services. Mikras Megilla, it turns out, may be one of them. [Full disclosure: my pseudonym is Am Haaretz for good reason, so bear with my very imprecise overview of the halakha.]

What are the issues and what’s holding us back?

There are two aspects of reading Megilla: (1) pirsum hanes, publicizing the miracle, which is satisfied by hearing the Megilla read aloud, and (2) mechiyas amalek, wiping out amalek (Haman’s) name, which is satisfied through reading aloud. Women are clearly obligated in the first because they took part in the miracle, but they don’t have any obligation to erase Amalek. In addition, Megilla takes the place of reading Hallel on Purim and women, unlike men, are not obligated in reading Hallel. For one person to include another person in a mitzvah, they must share equal obligations; in this case, the woman cannot satisfy mechiyas Amalek or Hallel for a man and therefore cannot read Megilla for him. (Sources: bahag & machreshes). This still does not explain why women can’t read Megilla for themselves or each other.

I did some quick, superficial research, and unbelievably I found that most rabanim consider ten women a proper minyan for reading the Megilla and even blessing harav eth riveinu! (I didn't even know you need a minyan for Megilla.) There appears to be no specific halakhic problem with women reading Megilla amongst other women. (Please don’t generalize and/or extend these opinions to women’s prayer groups, because the issues there are completely different.) If you follow this link and scroll down to "Women Reading Megillah", you'll see quotes of many interesting people's opinions, most of which seem to support the notion. Even this dissenting opinion of R'A. Soloveitchik is unconvincing, as no actual prohibition is cited:

“…in those communities, such as in Israel, where there is already an established custom to have a second Megillah reading for women, it is irrelevant whether the reader is male or female. Elsewhere, where such a minhag is not so common, a special women's Megillah reading should not be permitted (for hashkafic and public policy reasons).”

So I ask you, is public policy more binding than a more meaningful, halakhicly proper, fulfillment of a mitzvah? Might it be time for a hashkafa shift to better acommodate a mother's needs? Or is it wishful thinkingon my part to expect a better Megilla reading/listening experience if women were in charge?