Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

Sermon Parashat Noach 2017 Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz All is Relative During Yom Kippur, I gave a D’var Torah that contrasted the characters of Jonah and Abraham. Jonah, I argued, was a direct reversal of some of Abraham’s most praiseworthy qualities as we examined a prophet who was told to minister to Nineveh but who did so with considerable reluctance and judgement. Meanwhile, the Jewish tradition holds up Abraham as a paragon of virtue: compassionate, brave and visionary, he is the exemplar of Jewish ethical monotheism as he challenges God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham himself, of course, knew his own darker sphere, expressed through that morally inexplicable account of the Akeidah – the Binding of Isaac. Even so, in the taste test of Great Biblical Heroes, Abraham comes out on top. In a sense, the Torah invites us to play a similar game between Abraham and Noach. Consider this Round Two, if you will. Parashat Noach is an ext...

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 Noach  Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz  The Land of Confusion  Over a decade ago, I had a bit of a fight about Torah. It’s normal to have a discussion about a piece of text or an interpretation, but this got slightly more heated. A friend and I were reading Parashat Noach and we got to the story of Migdal Bavel, the Tower of Babel.  I read the story with fresh eyes, taking the text at its face-value. My ‘psh’at’ (literal) interpretation was that humanity was still unified. There was no war, no bloodshed, no racism and no national distinctions. (After all, humanity got a fresh start after the Flood just a few verses prior). It sounds like a model United Nations, avant-la-lettre. They settled and wanted to build a city with a citadel to prevent them from being scattered across the earth and to establish an honourable reputation for themselves as a united human community.  I argued that the text betrayed God’s pettiness and judgment. Why decry...

Er is tegenwoordig veel discussie over cultuur en cultuurrelativisme. Bij mijn studie culturele antropologie was het vraagstuk rondom cultuurrelativisme onvermijdelijk en ik moet toegeven dat ik het dilemma voor mijzelf nooit heb weten op te lossen. Is een cultuur uiting die ‘wij’ in het Westen onacceptabel vinden ergens anders wel acceptabel? In hoeverre laat je culturele factoren meewegen in je beoordeling van sociale rechtvaardigheid? En in hoeverre zijn er universele menselijke waarden? Kortom: wat is rechtvaardigheid en is dit absoluut of relatief? De eerste man in de Torah die met dit netelige probleem te maken kreeg was Noach. Noach leefde in roerige tijden en het leven op aarde ging van kwaad tot erger: וַיַּרְא יְהוָה, כִּי רַבָּה רָעַת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ, וְכָל-יֵצֶר מַחְשְׁבֹת לִבּוֹ, רַק רַע כָּל-הַיּוֹם. “En God zag hoe groot de slechtheid van de mens was op aarde en dat alle vormsels van zijn gedachten in zijn hart alleen maar de hele tijd slecht waren.” (Gen. 6:5 – mijn ve...