On and Off the Bima

Nice if unsurprising article in the Times about adopted Chinese girls turning bat mitzvah, but please!

“That was my hope when I started her in day school,” Ms. Nealon said, “that when she got up on the bimah” — the lectern where the bat mitzvah girl reads from the Torah — “she would feel like she had the right to be there.”

Sic! Look, you're The New York Times, the only de facto Jewish newspaper some New York Jews ever read. Get the lingo straight, wouldja?

(For reference, the bimah is the platform. The lectern is called the amud. It's called other things too, but I bet no one calls it the shtender in the shuls mentioned in the article.)

On second thought: it could just be that the Times is using lectern in another sense, namely to refer to said platform. If this is the case, they would probably call the reading stand a podium.