Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

Parashat Emor Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz The Affliction And The Cure There’s a beautiful passage in the Babylonian Talmud, in Tractate Kiddushin 30b to be exact. “The Holy One, of Blessing said to Israel: My children, I created an evil inclination, which is the wound, and I created Torah as its antidote.” There are many praiseworthy things we call our holy Torah. A tree of life, an elixir of life, a love letter of God to the Jewish people, a ketubah (wedding contract). Verses 7 to 10, from Psalm 19, which is recited during the traditional Shabbat morning service expand on this idea: “The law of the Eternal is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Eternal are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Eternal are right, giving joy to the hear The commands of the Eternal are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Eternal is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Ete...

Sermon Parashat Shemini Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz The Morning After of the Day Before Jews likes numbers – a lot. In fact, we like numbers so much that there is an entire branch of Jewish mystical thinking dedicated to Hebrew numerology called Gematria. Due to the fact that the Hebrew letters of the alphabet also have numerical value, there are rabbis who love playing number games, using Gematria, to look for patterns of meaning (or even a predicted score of their favorite sports team!) However, we can scale it back: we do not need to reference the arcane in order to appreciate Judaism’s fascination with numbers. Numbers loom large in our tradition and have a great number (pun intended) of interpretations attached to them. The first number that our tradition roots itself is, as you may remember from your Passover seders, One. ‘ Echad mi yodea, echad ani yodea, echad Eloheinu, shebe’shamayim uv’aretz ’ – ‘Who knows one, I know one – One is our God in...