About this blog
This blog belongs to Esther Hugenholtz, a Dutch rabbi, cultural anthropologist and writer. The blog has one 'active' homepage ('Home') on which new content will be posted regularly. The blog also has several 'static' pages which are thematically subdivided. Content from the homepage will be archived there . For my more personal reflections (mostly of interest to friends, family and those who know me), visit my parallel blog 'And Esther Wrote'.
The purpose of this blog is to promote my professional writing (articles, columns, essays and sermons, in both Dutch and English).
This blog is bilingual. Dutch readers can access Dutch posts by clicking on the 'Dutch' label in the tagcloud. English readers can access English posts by clicking on the 'English' label in the tagcloud
This blog is bilingual. Dutch readers can access Dutch posts by clicking on the 'Dutch' label in the tagcloud. English readers can access English posts by clicking on the 'English' label in the tagcloud
About Esther
Esther Hugenholtz (1978) was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She spent the majority of her childhood in southern Spain where she attended Sunny View International School. After completing her high school education, she moved back to the Netherlands where she obtained her M.Sc. (Master of Science) in Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of non-Western Societies from the University of Amsterdam. Furthering her Jewish education, she studied at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel and was an E. Levinas Fellow at Paideia, the European Institute of Jewish Studies in Stockholm, Sweden.
Esther completed the first two years of her rabbinical training at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a seminary affiliated with the Conservative/Masorti movement of Judaism and interned as a Rabbinic Fellow at the American Jewish University. She was a regular columnist for the Dutch interfaith website 'Nieuw Wij' ('a new we') and regularly publishes articles for different Dutch Jewish media. She is also the writer of a booklet on modern uses of mikveh for the Liberal community of Amsterdam which was published in the fall of 2010. She regularly lectures on Jewish themes and has also been involved with the organization of (and teaching at) Limmoed.nl, the Dutch branch of Limmud (a Jewish festival of learning). Furthermore she has taught Hebrew school at the Amsterdam Liberal community. She has completed the remaining three years of her rabbinical training at Leo Baeck College in London, UK and was ordained a rabbi with this seminary on the 7th of July 2013.
In her free time, she enjoys composing liturgical music, songwriting and playing the guitar, writing, travelling, photography and cooking. She takes an interest in issues of multiculturalism and social justice and firmly believes in representing a socially-relevant and spiritually-compelling Judaism for today's world.
She and her husband are currently expecting the birth of her first child in mid-August and will be taking up a post as Assistant Rabbi at Sinai Synagogue in Leeds in late November 2013. You can find her on Twitter and on Facebook.
She and her husband are currently expecting the birth of her first child in mid-August and will be taking up a post as Assistant Rabbi at Sinai Synagogue in Leeds in late November 2013. You can find her on Twitter and on Facebook.