Twenty-seven middle school students from Great Neck’s North Shore Hebrew Academy NSHA — both Ashkenazic and Sephardic — joined together on Purim to chant the Gantze Megillah, Entire Scroll of Esther, at the school’s Cherry Lane campus in a unique program initiated in 2001 by dermatologist Dr. Paul Brody — now called the Dr. Paul Brody Megillah Readers Program following his retirement four years ago.
Cantor Yitzy Spinner instructed the Ashkenazic students, and this year, the Judaic studies Middle School principal, Rabbi Simon Basalely, and the Elementary School Judaic studies principal, Rabbi Adam Acobas, instructed the Sephardic students. Each student read from the Megillah purchased by NSHA, named the Dr. Paul Brody Megillah upon his retirement, for use by student readers during Purim Day festivities.
Purim is the annual celebration of the salvation of the Jewish people by the Persian queen Esther, who beseeched her husband King Achashverosh, Xerxes, at the behest of her uncle Mordechai, to nullify the decree of the Persian prime minister Haman, who had planned to annihilate the Jews.
The holiday — which this year, according to the lunar calendar, was celebrated Monday evening, March 2, and Tuesday, March 3 — is particularly significant on the Great Neck peninsula, which has one of the largest concentrations of Persian Jews in the world. Recent attacks on Israel, including the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault, have served as a reminder to many of the historical threats described in the Purim story, the organizers said.
Each of the Ashkenazic NSHA students donned Brody’s maternal grandfather’s century-old tallis, prayer shawl, when chanting their Megillah portion. It was Brody’s zeydie, grandfather, Rabbi Jacob Brown, of blessed memory, who convinced him to read the “gantze Megillah,” after Brody learned the initial Megillah trope, cantillation, from Rabbi Solomon Berl, of blessed memory, at the Cantorial Training Institute, now the Belz School of Jewish Music at Yeshiva University.
The Megillah Readers Program has served as a paradigm for other yeshivas and day schools. Several of Brody’s more than 400 NSHA students have chanted the entire Megillah by themselves or shared the reading with one or two other alumni at various synagogues, nursing homes or private homes, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brody himself has chanted the “Gantze Megillah” for 54 years, including 30 years at Great Neck Synagogue, first reading it in 1973 at Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld’s Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, of blessed memory. In 1985, while smuggling Judaica to Jewish “refuseniks,” he read the Megillah illegally at the Great Synagogue of Leningrad, according to the program’s history.
A detailed proclamation declaring June 15, 2022, as “Dr. Paul Brody Megillah Readers Day,” in recognition of his service to Nassau County residents, was issued by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman at the 2022 NSHAMiddle School graduation exercises. A proclamation was also issued by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, recognizing Brody for his accomplishments and service.
