Rabbi

​Rabbi Dr Esther Jilovsky has served as Rabbi of Temple Sinai since November 2021. We are very fortunate to enjoy her rabbinic leadership which draws on her love of Torah and deep knowledge of Judaism, as we continue to develop a strong, engaged and future-focused Progressive Jewish community.  

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Born in Melbourne, Rabbi Jilovsky was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2021. She is the author of Remembering the Holocaust: Generations, Witnessing and Place (Bloomsbury, 2015) and editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation (Vallentine Mitchell, 2016).

 

Before becoming a rabbi, Rabbi Jilovsky worked as an academic and researcher in German and Jewish Studies at the University of Melbourne and Monash University, Australia. She was awarded her PhD in German Studies by the University of London in 2011. Rabbi Jilovsky also holds a Masters in Jewish Studies from the University of Oxford. She has published a range of articles and book chapters in the field of Holocaust Memory, as well as pieces for the 929 English website on the Tanakh and a blog for The Times of Israel.

 

Rabbi Jilovsky is delighted to be serving the Progressive Jewish community here in Wellington, where she went to primary school!​​