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The main purpose of reading the Megilla is to publicize the miracle and demonstrate that God rules and oversees the world, directing everything for the best. Even the worst troubles eventually turn around for the good. This understanding strengthens people’s faith in God and stimulates them to do more to reveal His name and rectify the world.
Reading the Megilla in public, to broadcast the miracle, is so important that even the Kohanim working in the Temple would delay the daily Tamid offering in the morning in order to hear the Megilla with the congregation; only afterward would they offer the Tamid. Similarly, Torah scholars who are occupied by the study of Torah, even if they can read the Megilla with a minyan in their study hall, should nevertheless interrupt their studies in order to go to a synagogue and hear the Megilla together with the masses (Megilla 3a).
Therefore, the members of a synagogue that usually hosts several minyanim every day should try to gather together on Purim and hear the Megilla with a large number of people. However, one who generally prays in a small synagogue need not change his fixed practice in order to hear the Megilla in a large synagogue, provided that there will be a minyan at the reading he attends (SA 687:2, Ĥayei Adam, MB ad loc. 7, SHT ad loc. 8, 10).
Only as a last resort – if one is unable to hear the Megilla read in a minyan – may one fulfill the mitzva in private, with a berakha (SA and Rema 690:18). 4

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