Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

Parashat Pekudei Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz The Relevance of the Irrelevant Caught somewhere between the slavery narrative of the Book of Exodus and the wilderness stories of the Book of Numbers, lies the vast expanse (dare I say ‘wasteland’) of technical details of Leviticus. The construction of the Tabernacle, the detailing of the Priestly garments, the instructions on how to perform the sacrificial cult and – to top it all of with – the purity laws regulating conduct around bodily fluids, secretions, corpses, insects and weird types of house mold: great fun! Usually, when we are presented with such difficult, grating or dull texts, we have a few hermeneutical options—that is, ways to interpret said texts so that we can make sense of them. Our first option would be to ignore the text. We’re just not going to talk about all that icky, boring, irrelevant stuff. However, this is neither intellectually nor spiritually satisfying. We can’t just ignore whole swaths of our t...

Photocredit Finchley Reform Synagogue Parashat Pekudei This sermon explores the overarching theme touched upon in last week's sermon: can we draw an analogy between the power struggles in Torah and the pressing events of today's world? Accountability It’s been quite an intrepid journey, a political saga. These past five weeks, we have witnessed a people and its leadership wrestle with each other. Five weeks ago in parashat Terumah, the building of the Tabernacle was birthed in idealism. The people generously laid their riches at the feet of Moses and Aaron. But something transpired. The outpour of popular devotion was used to furnish not only the Mishkan itself but was also used to bolster the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Did the nascent Israelite democracy shift towards a theocracy? In parashat Tetzaveh we saw the Israelite donations transformed into priestly wealth. The High Priest, Aaron, is made a glorious garment. Yet Moses is silent. What happened between the sibling-r...