Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

photography: Esther Hugenholtz שִׁירוּ לַיהוָה, שִׁיר חָדָשׁ; שִׁירוּ לַיהוָה, כָּל-הָאָרֶץ. ' Shiru la'Adonai shir chadash, shiru la'Adonai kol ha'Aretz '  'Sing unto the Eternal a new song, sing unto the Eternal, all the Earth!'  ~ Psalm 96:1 Music has always been an inextricable part of my spirituality. I didn't grow up in a 'musical' family (we were the sort who cultivated the 'visual arts') but the musical choices of my older brothers did rub off on me: Bob Marley, Queen, Nirvana, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Tracy Chapman.  Queen and Bob Marley were especially formative to me. It was in this music that I found my earliest spiritual inspiration. When I was 19, I discovered Tracy Chapman and was so inspired that I decided to teach myself to play the guitar and have been writing songs ever since. Once I started getting involved with the Jewish community, I also started composing liturgical and religious music. As a ...

photo credit: Dave Middleton Sermon Parashat Ekev  Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz  Into the Wild  There’s something a bit mad about leaving the creature comforts of your modern life – central heating, indoor plumming, WIFI, a hot bath and microwave –to go out into the wild to pitch your tent, get rained on, eat beans on soggy toast and shiver on a thin mat and an inadequate sleeping bag. Oh, the joys of camping.  And yet we do this every year, with great enthusiasm, much greater than might expect since according to one camping website (biased data perhaps!), 18 million Brits go camping every year. What is it about the attraction of going ‘into the wild’ and leaving it all behind? Every summer, we embrace the ritual of fleeing our mundane lives by going on vacation. And although some vacations are spent in greater luxury than what one may be used to during the year, the fact of the matter is that most vacations embrace an ethos of simplicity. We like goi...

Parashat Devarim  Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz From Rebuke to Reconciliation  After the parshiyot of the last few weeks talking about the failure of the spies to show courage and the conquest of Cana’an, the first parashah of Devarim (Deuteronomy) repeats much of the same theme and I’m inclined to move onto a new type of Torah. Some ‘Torat imi’ to paraphrase Proverbs, ‘Torah’ from my mother.  When my older brothers and I were children and would devolve into the usual sibling conflict, we’d play every card of the blaming game. Rather than taking sides, my mother would always say, “you are responsible for your own actions, not for the actions of someone else.” This would inevitably be followed by our predictable protestations, to which she would answer, “thinking that you’re in the right is not the same thing as having your right acknowledged”. (It works better in Dutch!)  My mother’s message was clear: don’t shift the blame, be critical of yourself and tak...

(This is a reworking of a midrash as a children's story written for 'Shabbatots', Sinai Synagogue's Early Years Education)  Throwing the Moon a Party – a Short Story Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz  Long, long ago, when God created the Sun and the Moon on the fourth day of Creation, God made them both very, very beautiful. Both were very round, very bright and very, very large. The Sun and Moon lived in the sky and they worked together very well and were best friends.  The Sun worked hard to shine on the earth by day. Because of him, plants and crops could grow so people could eat and the Earth was bright and warm. People loved the sun. Who doesn’t love a warm summer day? (Especially in Winter!)  The Moon also worked very hard to shine on the Earth by night. Because of her, people could find their way in the dark to go home to sleep. No-one bumped into each other and no-one got lost in the middle of the night! People felt safe. The night is a special...

Parashat Mattot  Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz  Holding onto Humanity   I knew that this day would come: the day that I would have to give a sermon that I dread giving. A sermon that is uncomfortable, difficult, confrontational. And not just in a theoretical but in a very real way, through polarizing opinion and lived experience.  It would be tempting to hide from the stuff that provokes strong emotions: anger, hopeless, judgment, helplessness, revenge, nihilism, perhaps even hate. It certainly is tempting to focus on the innocuous parts of this week’s reading, or go straight to the Haftarah. Just like it is tempting to switch off the TV and the computer and to bin the newspaper.  Although that would be the safe choice, it may not be the appropriate one. Sometimes we have to dive into the painful conversations. When the world around us is in turmoil, silence fails to show the moral courage that our tradition demands of us.  I came home Thursd...

Often I get questions from both Jews and non-Jews on reading recommendations. Of course, for a rabbi (who by definition is a bibliophile), this is an extremely hard question to answer because the options seem endless. What do you want to learn about? At what level is your current learning? Are you looking for an 'academic' or a 'spiritual' approach etc. Even so, I'm attempting to create a reading list and will strive to update this on a somewhat regular basis. The current list I'm linking to is the list provided by the ' Miller Introduction to Judaism Program '. This American programme is hosted by the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and is one of the most cutting-edge conversion programmes in the non-Orthodox Jewish world. The caveat with sharing their list is that it is centred on the American Jewish experience although their book recommendations are fantastic. A note on the (Jewish) Internet: Individuals are - of course - at the...

photo: Esther Hugenholtz, 2011 Jerusalem – An Eternal Story (talk given at the Leeds Yom Yerushalaim celebration) Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz  For a Jerusalem summer it was unseasonably hot, the mercury of the thermometer pushing past 45 degrees and it was the thick of Ramadan. I wove my way through the Arab sector of the Old City after having visited the Kotel with a friend of mine where we had offered Mincha prayers. Out of respect for the fasting – and probably very thirsty - Muslim population, I discreetly hid my water bottle. We walked past an entrepreneurial Muslim vendor who was selling limonana – the refreshing mint lemonade – to eager tourists, despite the fast. My friend decided to buy some and after friendly ‘salaams’, the vendor offered me a plastic cup for free.  It was a simple and friendly in a city where despite her sweeping and at times difficult history, hospitality remains a core value. Despite the force of history, a Jew and a Muslim met over ...