Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz

Parashat Kedoshim Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz The Law of Kindness The last few weeks, I’ve been really engrossed in watching BBC’s ‘MasterChef’. As we speak, the final has been aired (on Friday night) and as soon as Shabbat goes out, I’ll watch it on iPlayer and can’t wait to find out who wins! I love watching the show for its adventurous and creative cooking. It’s a guilty pleasure because, as a religious Jew, I can only have 10% of the dishes they prepare! It’s a true celebration of treyf : the episode where they cooked the giant prawn with urchin sauce and noodles flavoured with octopus ink powder really took the proverbial cake! What I’ve really enjoyed about MasterChef is its unexpected and counter-cultural message of kindness . This is a Reality TV competition where the prize opens the doors to a career that could change contestants’ lives, where judges from the best and brightest of the food industry submit the contestants to their unrelenting judgement. There’s ...

Parashat Acharei Mot 2016 Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Difficult Freedom We’re still stuck with our matzot. Officially, by Reform and Israeli standards, Pesach ended yesterday night but because the end of the 7 th day of Pesach led immediately into Shabbat, many of us will not have had the chance to bake challah or buy bread. And so we find ourselves in limbo, somewhat, still eating the bread of affliction as we inch towards redemption, dreaming of delicious chametz. (I have a suspicion it’s going to be a pizza night for my family after Shabbat goes out!) The deeper symbolism behind our craving for carbohydrates is our own craving for freedom. When chametz re-enters our lives, we have completed our week of contemplating slavery and we prepare to emerge into the fullness of our daily, remarkably free lives. We leave the Holiday Torah readings behind and pick up our regularly scheduled parshiyot again: this week, Acharei Mot. Shockingly, Acharei Mot – which literally means ‘Af...

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...

Parashat Ki Tissa Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Intelligent Design ‘ V’emale oto ruach Elohim bechochmah uvitvunah uv’da’at uv’chol melacha ’ – ‘And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with insight and with knowledge for all his craftsmanship.’ We learn from this verse then, that Betzalel ben Uri, Master Craftsman is divinely inspired. We tend to gloss over these verses in search of what follows: the description of the Tabernacle and the laws of Shabbat. But I’d not like to take us there yet. I’d like to linger a little longer at ‘wisdom, insight and knowledge’. Why does the Torah tell us that Betzalel possesses these three qualities? The Torah is usually terse and one descriptor would have been enough. Yet we get three for the price of one! Chochmah, binah and da’at. Wisdom. Insight. Knowledge. Rashi picks up on too and gives us a very meaningful interpretation: Chochmah, wisdom: ‘mah she’adam shomea me’acherim v’lamad’ – ‘what a person hear...

The Game of Altars Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz The challenge of a visiting rabbi when preaching is how do you share a little about yourself so people get a more rounded picture of who you are. I’ve spent half of Shabbat with you already and look forward to getting to know all of you much better. As for ‘a little more of me’: I’m a science fiction and fantasy nerd (most rabbis are). And I share a particular predilection for ‘Game of Thrones’. ‘Game of Thrones’ is a highly-successful television series based on George RR Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ fantasy novels. Set in a Medieval-esque world, the series distinguishes itself from the usual ‘sword and sorcery’ type through its explorations of power and political intrigue. The premise of the show centres around different characters vying for the Iron Throne, the centralized seat of power that unites the known world. The brilliance of the show lies in how it discusses questions of character and influence: how power corrupts, al...

‘Pleasing to the Eternal’ Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz Please complete the following sentence: ‘my most favourite smell in the world is…’ I know you’re British so this might be a bit awkward, but let’s try anyway. ‘My most favourite smell in the world is…’ My toddler’s and baby’s freshly washed hair. Cinnamon. Fresh ginger root. Logs burning on the fire place. Challah hot from the oven. Cut grass on an early summer’s day. Any of our senses can take us back to our most precious moments in a matter of milliseconds yet few things are successful at plummeting the depths of the soul as smell. An entire childhood of summer holidays, memorable Shabbatot with loved ones or the romantic linger of someone’s perfume can be conjured up by the most fleeting scent. According to the Torah, a sense of smell isn’t only important to human beings but also to God. We read in parashat Vayikra, this week’s Torah reading:     ‘ V’hiktir haKohen et hakol haMizbecha olah ...

Parashat Shemot Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz The Revolutionary Road to Marriage There’s a game a friend and I used to play in rabbinical school. It was called: ‘open the Torah in two random places and then create a connecting ‘ d’rash ’ between the two texts’. Clearly, this is evidence of seminarians’ nerdiness but this ‘midrash making’ has ancient Jewish precedence. Our Rabbinic tradition is brimming with connecting interpretations to squeeze even more meaning out of the terse words of our Torah. Today I am going to reinvent that game in a slightly different guise. It’s called ‘how do you tie a random parashah in with an upcoming simcha?’ Today, Simon Marcus and Becky Teiger are celebrating their recent engagement to be married with our community: a community they are so dedicated in building up through their myriad of volunteer (over?) commitments. Our community is as strong as the members who build it and it is important for us to celebrate all the contributions, large or ...