Rabbi Joseph Dweck
What Shall We Teach Our Children?
Summary
Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Ollie Anisfeld engage in a deep conversation about how we should teach our children. They tackle the topic both from the question of Jewish engagement among young people, but also from a wider perspective about the world that young people are growing up in.
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.
Ollie Anisfeld
Ollie Anisfeld is the founder and director of J-TV, a global, online Jewish channel that aims to inspire positive Jewish identity, values, and knowledge through engaging video media. J-TV features content on current affairs, Jewish philosophy and values, Jewish history, and other entertainment. Ollie launched J-TV in 2015 while he was in his final year at University College London reading history. J-TV has viewers all over the globe with a viewership that is predominantly aged between 16–35. Ollie’s favorite word is “edutainment”—a combination of educational and entertainment content to influence hearts and minds.
It’s different. It’s different. It’s one step removed. Grandparents can kind of … The nice thing about grandparents is grandparents can give the softer aspects when sometimes it’s not, you know, found by the parents, and that’s okay. I mean, that’s part of what grandparents do, yeah. They don’t have to worry about the deep disciplines and the day-in, day-out, you know, raising of children, which is quite difficult. You know, no question about it. But yes, grandparents certainly have a great deal of influence on their grandchildren. You know, mine did on me, and I think that I know many, many people who are very grateful for the relationships they had with their grandparents, yeah, as a source of strength and guidance, yeah.
Yeah, I think it’s a good question. I think that these cases are particular, right? So it would be very easy to say yes, you know, we should always do that. But you know, there are complicated issues here at hand, and it may or may not be the best tactic to be able to deal with it. So I’m not in a position to be able to answer that, as a general response. But I will say that if there is opportunity to do so, and we know that it will not end up being, you know, backfiring in a significant way, which it might, because one has to be able to consider the political elements of it, which are not small. It’s not an avenue that I think we should shy from, shy away from.
Yeah, I find a frightening, full stop. I mean yeah, absolutely. I’m worried about the fact that it’s so high and, you know, one is not exaggerating when one says that the institutions of higher learning are hotbeds of anti-Semitism. And yeah, that’s one has to question why that is, which I’m not going to go into now my thoughts on that, but I think, you know, it clearly is concerning, because if these are the places in which this is happening, it almost says, you know, that the educated view or the educated way of living is this. And I don’t hear enough on that. I don’t hear enough around that in which, you know, the voices that are combating that and the voices that are countering that specifically, I hear a lot about anti-Zionism, and you know, what we say in response to that. But the very fact that the high educators, right, are empowered, almost, right, to be able to speak in anti-Semitic ways is, yes, it is very, very concerning to me. And it’s on my mind regularly. It’s one of the reasons why I’m doing the campus tour. Yeah, is to at least, you know, come in there and be able to kind of, you know, speak in a meaningful way to the students that God bless ‘em, are doing what they should be doing, is, you know, to be in university and study, you know, and engage in higher learning, but nonetheless feeling, you know, or at least there’s a concern that this is not necessarily a, quote unquote, safe environment. So, yeah.