Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Give Us A Heart of Wisdom There’s something interesting going on in this week’s double Torah portion, Vayakhel-Pekudei. Nestled in between the meticulous detail of building the Tabernacle and its instruments, between descriptions of gold and silver, linen and wool, purple, scarlet and blue, we learn a number of things about human psychology.  Taking place not long after the unfortunate incident with the Golden Calf, the people give eagerly and generously to the building of the Mishkan. This spirit of volunteerism and fundraising is of course often cited by rabbis and lay leaders alike as a prompt for our congregations to do the same—after all, there’s no better fundraising pitch than one that comes directly from God! Yet, this is not what I want us to take a look at today. There’s another aspect of human psychology that gets a lot of airplay during this parashah and that is the notion of ‘chochmah’, wisdom. The word...

Parashat Vayechi 2016 Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Future Questions of Personhood There were two recent newspaper articles that prompted me to think deeply, and perhaps by my own admission, conservatively, about the issues they raised. Both dealt with cutting-edge technological advancement that challenge our deepest-held notions of what it means to be human. The first article discusses the future of fertility treatments through in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) . In contrast to the conventional technology of IVF in which a woman’s ova are used, IVG uses generic tissue cells (such as skin) engineered into reproductive (sperm and egg) cells. The consequence of this new technology is that instead of having a few embryos available for implantation, a woman could have an unlimited amount of embryos at her disposal. To be able to generate embryos cheaply could be a blessing, democratising fertility treatments and help those after chemotherapy. Ethicists warn, however, of a morally fr...

Parashat Vayeitzeh, Human Rights Shabbat 2016 Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Bit by Bit When Jacob left Beer-Sheva and journeyed towards Charan, he was truly and utterly free. Not even gravity could constrain him, as he laid his head to rest on a pillow of stone and dreamt of the angels ascending and descending the ‘sulam’, the ladder to the heavens. Jacob was on an intrepid adventure, a quest for liberation. He needed to get away from the limitations of his own upbringing and the mistakes that bound him to his past. In that freedom, he found vision in the night, courage in his fear. Yet, only a chapter later, he found himself in subjugation to his uncle Laban’s deception. Wanting to marry his cousin Rachel, the beautiful younger daughter, Laban contracted him to work for seven years before allowing him to marry her. The Torah tells us that Jacob agrees with the terms and conditions of this arrangement and narrates: ‘ Vayavod Ya’akov b’Rachel sheva shanim va’yihyu be’einav ...

Parashat Chayei Sarah Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz A Legacy of Kindness Abraham is bereft. Not long after the events of the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac, he hopes to return with his son to the normalcy of family life. However, he will find that all his changed and  his legacy challenged, as he loses his beloved Sarah. Midrash Tanchuma, a late midrash from the 9th century C.E. connects the two events of the Akeidah and Sarah’s death and establishes a causality between them. The Midrash posits that Satan appeared before Sarah disguised as Isaac, when Isaac and Abraham were still upon Mount Moriah. Satan goes on to describe in painstaking detail how Abraham intended to slaughter their precious son. Even before Satan has completed his account, Sarah died from sheer horror. Both the p’shat – the plain text – of the Parashah and the rabbinic imagination of the Midrash confront us with a deep sense of irreversible loss. ‘ Vayavo Avraham lispod le’Sarah v’liv’chotah ’ – ‘A...

Parashat Lech Lecha Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz A Father’s Daughter There is something Biblical about the trajectory of my late father’s life. Born in Amsterdam in 1903, in a devout Protestant family, he was the only one of five his siblings not born in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA). Breaking with a long family tradition to train for the ministry, my father embraced science and reason and studied medicine instead. In the 1930’s my father was an ambitious young family doctor with a dream to become a psychiatrist. My father, Paul Theodoor Hugenholtz in the 1930's with his parents and siblings. He is the man labeled number 5. During the mid-to-late 1930’s, my father travelled to Germany for reasons unknown to me; perhaps they were related to his profession. Family history recounts that he had a chance to witness Adolf Hitler speak and that my father, intrigued by how such a cruel demagogue could sway so many, went to the rally. My father intellectually, morally and ide...

Parashat Noach Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Taking a Stand at the Wall Recent events taking place at the Western Wall two made me feel a particular type of embarrassed regret. Last January, Nathan Sharansky, the well-respected political activist and Soviet Refusenik, helped broker a compromise on behalf of the Jewish Agency between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox denominations (including Women of the Wall) with regards to accessing the Western Wall. The conditions of the compromise were that the Western Wall would remain in the hands of the Ultra-Orthodox while the Southern part of the Wall, also known as ‘Robinson’s Arch’ would be made available for egalitarian prayer as per the custom of the Reform and Conservative Movements. The government promised to start construction works on Robinson’s Arch (which at the moment is a not very accessible archaeological site) and hoped to complete the project in a year or two. This was met with great enthusiasm in the non-Orthodox world and I m...

Parashat Bereishit Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Back to the Future Remember way-back-when, before the new Millennium? Decades ago, what were your associations with the year 2000? As someone who straddles the line between Gen X’er and Millennial, I distinctly remember binge-watching mediocre science-fiction flicks as a teen: RoboCop, Back to the Future (granted, that’s a classic), Total Recall (directed by my ‘landsman’ Paul Verhoeven), Alien (and its numerous sequels), Jurassic Park, Waterworld and Independence Day. My 1990’s scifi movie-watching habits ingrained a love for the genre till this day. Despite my love for the genre, I have to acknowledge that science-fiction narratives are almost always dystopian. Very few have a hopeful, redemptive message (the ‘Star Trek’ franchise being a noted exception) and most dwell on a grim and gritty future, currently, Charlie Brooker’s ‘Black Mirror’ series being a prime example. As a social scientist, I’ve often wondered about why t...