My Shlichut (Mission) - Goodbye Sermon, Sinai Synagogue, Leeds
Parashat Chukkat 2017 Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz My Shlichut (Mission) It sounds shockingly definite to utter these words and I say them with considerable melancholy but this will be my last sermon at Sinai. Goodbyes can’t be said without thank you’s and I’m at a loss at how to say thank you to a community that has come to mean so much to me. I remember setting foot in this building in 2011 as a 4 th Year Student Rabbi thinking ‘woah, 1970’s décor!’ Soon after, I discovered how warm and close-knit the community was and I loved you even more after being part of the ‘Oy Factor’. Before I knew it, I was the Assistant and (later) Associate Rabbi of Sinai Synagogue, in God’s own County. As I was mulling over in my head how I could do justice to thanking Sinai – both individually and collectively – and the wider Jewish community in Leeds, I thought that I do so by what doing what I love best: teaching Torah. A first pulpit is the mother of all first rabbinic experiences, a