Healing in Its Wings
Theology is not merely the futile exercise of debating how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Theology informs our world view and drafts our response to the moral issues of our day.
Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz
About Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz
Posts by Rabbi :
The Great of the Small
While science may help lift the veils of our ignorance and solve many mysteries, it does not bleed the mystical from our lived experience.
The Worst of Times and the Best of Times
It is hard to think in exponential increases, in orders of magnitude, in terms of emergency declarations and social distancing. This is the stuff of dystopian near-future sci-fi and we seem to have landed in the middle of it.
Statement from the Rabbi on COVID-19
As you have read in President Sue Weinberg’s congregational letter, we are switching our congregational life from in-person services and activities to online activities in accordance with an evidence-based policy of social distancing.
Raising Up Kindness
Parashat Mishpatim is a perfect storm. Opening the book of Exodus during volatile political times is an exercise in confirmation bias in the best of cases, but Mishpatim speaks to our current reality – in an election year, no less – in uncanny ways.
A Torah of Love (Valentine’s Day Sermonette)
To be honest, I don’t care much for a commercially-driven Hallmark holiday that I don’t celebrate but I am passionate about love. Here’s why.
Between The (Head)lines
Like many of you, I’ve been following the headlines about the Coronavirus outbreak. While I leave assessments of this new virus to the epidemiologists and public health experts, I think we can glean meaningful insights about our moral responses by reading between the headlines.
On Holy Ground
I love that feeling of sinking my boots into virgin snow, leaving freshly made footprints. There is a quietude to fresh snow that is magnificent and spiritually resonant; like the Shekhinah has draped Herself in a fine tallit.
Rabbi Hugenholtz’s Martin Luther King Day Speech
I am a newcomer to this beautiful country, an immigrant, a Jewish leader in a time of rising anti-Semitism and a white woman who is yearning to learn about the African American experience as well as reckon with the legacy of her own skin color. We who walk with both a sense of vulnerability as well as our own privilege are called to embrace our complexities and contradictions.
Finishing Well
Now that the chanukkiyot are packed away, the candlewax has been scraped from window sills, the dinners, the Season’s post cards, the gift wrappings, champagne corks and fireworks are behind us, what we have left to reflect on are not only our expanded waistlines but the family relationships we built during the winter Holiday Season.
