20 youngsters roll out Megillat Esther in Great Neck

A milestone at the North Shore Hebrew Academy Middle School will be reached when 20 students, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, will read Megillat Esther for their schoolmates and faculty on Purim day, which falls this year on a Thursday, March 5.

Dr. Paul Brody, a dermatologist by profession (pictured near left surrounded by his students) has instructed more than 225 students at NSHA for the past 14 years, enabling them to read the Megillah at various synagogues, hospitals, nursing homes and private homes, for those unable to attend synagogues.

Rabbi Adam Acobas facilitates the students’ hectic schedules to enable adequate review time with Dr. Brody.

The students have achieved a unique accomplishment, joining a small, qualified group that possess the knowledge to publicly chant the Megillah. Dr. Brody, who has read the Megillah for over 40 years, once chanted it at the Great Synagogue in Leningrad in 1985, despite great peril, where the gabboyim were actually members of the KGB.