Rabbi Joseph Dweck
Hannukah: The Story and its Meaning Today
Summary
The story of Hannukah celebrates the historic victory of the Macabees over the Greeks and has served as a lesson for generations. In this talk, Rabbi Dweck explores how some of these lessons apply to modern Jewish life.
Rabbi Joseph Dweck
Rabbi Joseph Dweck is the Senior Rabbi of the S&P Sephardi Community of the United Kingdom. Rabbi Dweck is American born and has lived in Los Angeles, California, and Brooklyn, New York. He studied in Jerusalem at Yeshiva Hazon Ovadia under the tutelage of former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ZL. He also studied psychology and philosophy at Santa Monica College in California and received a BA in liberal studies from Excelsior College. Rabbi Dweck received his Semikha (rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef under the auspices of the Sephardic Rabbinical College of Brooklyn, New York. He received a MA in Jewish Education from Middlesex University at the London School of Jewish Studies. Rabbi Dweck currently resides in London with his wife, Margalit, and five children.
There’s so much that we can do today as part of the diaspora. I think that there is a question of what it is that we do locally in terms of our own communities, to strengthen our own communities. There’s a question of what it is that we do in order to support Israel itself, whether it’s our own presence there or the support financially there and so on. But ultimately, if you want to ask me, which I see you are, the first port of call, the first thing that we do is to motivate ourselves to unity. I genuinely believe, that’s not, you know, that’s not just some, you know, pie in the sky or high flying idea that is a pipe dream. I mean that we must do, we must make concerted efforts to recognise that our viability on this earth has everything to do with our unity. Now, I don’t mean to say that we should smear over the differences that we have. There are differences that are serious and don’t go away. And we need to have those differences, engage in dialogue, and do the best that we can to be able to come to some level of connection and understanding with it. But if we don’t recognise fundamentally that we are a family and that, you know, you may not always like members of your family, that’s understandable. You may not even like to talk to members of your family. But oftentimes, unless in extreme situations that same member of the family that you don’t really like or like to talk to, if they were in trouble, if they were, you know, in danger, you would either be on the first plane to help them, the first train to help them or be there to be able to do what it is that you need in order to be able to be there. And in the worst case scenario, if they were dying, you probably would go to pay your respects, on the worst case scenario. We are a familial nation.
I think that it’s more complex than that. I think that it’s more complex than that. And I think that if you look, you know, you talk about invented by the rabbis, even the rabbis themselves downplayed the nerot. When you look at our prayers and we talk about Hanukkah, it’s not even mentioned in the prayers and the prayer. So it has its place and it’s significant in terms of what it is that it is but I think that the war is not diminished. It’s just became very, very central to people because it’s what is that we do? It’s an action that we do on the festival. And so people tend to focus on that a great deal.