“Like what?” I say.

She hops off the counter and turns to look at me. “Okay. What do you think about me leining?”

I look at her like she has just asked me what I think about her asking her parents if she can get a pet lion.

“Like, your bat mitzvah … parsha?” I say incredulously.

I think Honey might have just indicated that she wants to chant the portion of the Torah read in shul the Shabbat closest to her turning twelve. Or rather, if she was a boy, the portion that the bar mitzvah boy would read when he was called up to the bima to make a blessing on the Torah for the first time. And, while I do know that for Reform and Conservative Jewish girls it is totally common for them to have bat mitzvahs and do all this leining and blessings, in our Orthodox world it is pretty much unheard of and logistically impossible.

Without even getting into the specifics of the Jewish laws, which I don’t really know, once we turn bat mitzvah, we can’t go into the men’s section anymore—where the bima is—so where would a girl read the Torah from?

“Wait,” I whisper, my eyes wide. “In a partnership minyan?” As far as I can tell, people like Honey’s family would just as soon go to a Reform temple than be caught dead in a partnership-style service, which still have separate men and women’s sections but give women more opportunity to lead the prayers.

“I was thinking about Megillas Esther,” Honey says calmly. “At a women’s-only service.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling my mouth make a small circle.

“I was born on Purim.”

“You were,” I say, considering this. Megillat Esther is the story of the exceptionally brave Queen Esther, who with her uncle Mordechai risked her life to save the Jewish people from the evil Haman, who wanted to destroy them. Does Honey feel a connection to Esther other than being born on the holiday where the megillah is read twice? She’s never had to risk her life like Esther, but she is definitely someone I consider brave.

“I thought your parents were making a kiddush the Shabbos after Purim. I thought that’s all you wanted,” I say instead.

“I don’t care about a kiddush either way. And I don’t want a party. But I do want to do something,” Honey says.

“But I’m doing something,” I say. “I’ve just started learning Megillat Rut with Aunty Steph—why don’t you learn Megillat Ester and give a dvar Torah?”

“I knew Micah’s whole bar mitzvah parsha better than him, just from listening to him practice,” Honey says, ignoring my point. “And I knew Josh’s and Ezra’s too.”

“Okay, but, Honey, Purim is in a month,” I say practically. “Don’t guys spend, like, a year learning for their bar mitzvah?”

“I could just do a chapter,” she says. “I don’t have to do the whole thing.”

“But who’s going to teach you? And who’s going to come? And what—” I don’t know why, but I feel overwhelmed by a long list of objections as to why this isn’t going to work out for her.