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ICFRC: Stranger in a Strange Land: Personal and Philosophical Reflections of an EU National in Brexit-Referendum Britain

Listen to an audio podcast of this program.

Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz (1978) was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She spent the majority of her childhood in southern Spain. 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 completed the remaining three years of her rabbinical training at Leo Baeck College in London, UK and was ordained a rabbi with this seminary in 2013.

Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz has served as the Associate Rabbi at Sinai Synagogue in Leeds and is very excited to be the new Rabbi for Congregation Agudas Achim, Iowa City, Iowa. She is married to Dave Middleton and the proud mother of preschooler Jonathan and toddler Noa. In her free time, she enjoys composing liturgical music, songwriting, 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.

Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz completed the last three years of her rabbinical training at Leo Baeck College in London, UK and was ordained a rabbi with this seminary in 2013. During this time, she experienced the process of Brexit as an EU citizen living in London. She shares her personal and philosophical thoughts from this period of time.

For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.

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