Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Ollie Anisfeld
What Shall We Teach Our Children?
Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Ollie Anisfeld - What Shall We Teach Our Children?
- Well, first of all, thank you so much for this opportunity to speak to all of you. And a big thank you to everyone at Lockdown University team, Wendy, Judy, Lauren, Trudy, and everyone involved, and a very massive welcome to Rabbi Joseph Dweck. I’m sure if you saw the email, then it contains quite a comprehensive biography, so I’m not going to run over all of that now. But he is, as well as being the senior rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi community here in the UK, or King of the Sephardi, as I call him, he’s also a personal mentor and friend of mine. And I count the Jewish community extremely blessed to have him here, and we are blessed to be able to hear his insights tonight. And the theme of tonight’s discussion, if you haven’t already seen from the email, is “What do we tell our children?” And I wanted to tackle this question 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. Because I know having spoken to Rabbi Dweck on numerous occasions that he’s given this a lot of thought. And certainly speaking of Jewish engagement as well, which we’re going to talk about tonight. Obviously we’re at a time of year where for a lot of people their Jewish engagement is a bit higher than average. Reminds me of a story I heard of a shul cleaner who was walking around a synagogue just after Yom Kippur, the next day, and he saw the rabbi of his shul building a sukkah. And he was new to the synagogue and new to a Jewish community, he said, “Oh, so Rabbi, what are you doing?” And the rabbi said, “Well, I’m building this temporary dwelling place, basically, it’s a temporary building that we build, and we sit in it for one week and we sit there and we learn, study, we eat.” And the cleaner says, “You’re putting it all that effort just to create a building for one week of the year?” And the rabbi always says, “What do you mean? We built the shul for only three days of the year.” And we laugh-
[Joseph] That’s funny.
We laugh, but it does reflect the issue of a Jewish engagement, or lack of sometimes. So it is worth, worth us talking about these issues. But before we get to Jewish engagement, let’s just start with just being a young person today, ‘cause as I said, we’ve spoken about this a lot, and many in my parents’ generation, my grandparents’ generation as well, feel that young people are more anxious than they were at their age. And I want to start by simply asking, why is that? Can you paint a picture of the world that young people are growing up in for us?
Thank you, Ollie. Well, first of all, I mean, I also want to say how wonderful it is to be back on Lockdown University. I’m very grateful that Trudy has asked, you know, to have me back. And I’m a tremendous admirer of Trudy Gold’s. And it’s really amazing that this is, you know, that this has come and be, it’s become what it is that it’s become. So please God, it should continue from strength to strength. Look, I think, first of all, to ask a question, it’s an important question to ask. You know, what is it that’s happening to our young people today? But it’s also a very complex reality. I think that we need to acknowledge that whatever answers we give are going to be partial answers, because part of what it is that’s going on today is that there is greater and greater complexity that is running in the world. And, you know, complexity tends to lend itself to a certain level of anxiety. And that being the case, whatever answers that we give are going to be an aspect of what’s going on, perhaps broad strokes of what’s going on. And I think that’s important for us to be able to mention that before we kind of get into any of it. But I think, you know, the way that I kind of think about it and talk about it often is that we’re dealing with a paradigm shift. And what that means is that it’s not just that there are components within the world that are changing, but the entire system within which we have been accustomed to living, right, say we, I mean probably my generation and older, yeah, have been accustomed to living, is no longer the framework within which society engages.
And that means, you know, if we are going to use an analogy, you know, we can, we can change the things that we think about, but that’s very different from changing the way we think about the things that we think about. And a paradigm shift is changing the way that we think what we think about. So that is a huge, it’s a massive shift, and, you know, it’s been moving for some time now. So if I were to give some examples, I think one major symbol of shifting paradigm that we find is that external institutions in the world are being dismantled, restructured, if at all, and a huge amount of the way that the world works is moving from being external and objective to being very personal and individualistic, right? So a few simple examples. I’ll give some fun examples and then some bit more serious examples. But, you know, I remember growing up, and it’s funny because, you know, you probably know about this, but have rarely had to actually experience this. Growing up I enjoyed television very much, yeah? And for my entire, most of my life, you know, most of my childhood and adolescent life, if something was on television and we missed the time that it was on television, that was it. It it was over. If you were lucky, you know, you figured out how to time your VCR to record it, and you had to put a tape in there and set it up and so on and so forth. And maybe you got it, maybe, you know, there were many times where you didn’t have enough room on the tape and you only recorded half of the programme. It was a complete disaster, Ollie. It was a disaster. And the re and what that was, nobody questioned that, right? I mean, that was a recognition that there is a studio, there is a broadcasting company that is putting this stuff out at their will when they want, as they want. And we, the consumer had to deal with how it was, it was presented to us.
And so you were home when it was on or you missed it, you know, everybody kind of planned their day and their evenings around these things. And that’s completely shifted. I mean, you think about the fact that it’s not just that you don’t have to worry about what time it’s on. You can get it on any device, you can do it on your phone, you can in your iPad, you can , you can watch it several times, you can watch it on demand, right? The on-demand thing is what’s, you know, the mantra of the day and everything is now needing to be on demand as I want it, as it’s convenient for me to see it. And that’s had a huge effect on so many things. Movie theatres, you know, cinemas. You know, I don’t have to go to cinema. I could build one or I can have a massive screen television that’s similar to it and create enough, you know, situation in my house to view it that way. So that’s happening. Libraries, yeah? I mean, remember those? I don’t know, how much time? I mean, you know, ask people who are on, when’s the last time you were actually in one? Yeah, maybe you’ll raise your hand and say so, but this is not something that people do. When it used to be ubiquitous. This is what you did. Go to the bank. Who goes to the bank? That was a normal errand that we used to have. So these are external institutions that have needed to shift to catering to your life, your experience, your conveniences. And what that means is that there is a huge surge in individual identity. So what does that do, right? And I’ll mention a book here because I think that it’s helpful to read on these things. So Erich Fromm wrote a book called “Fear of Freedom.” That’s how it’s marketed here in the UK. If you’re not in the UK, if you’re watching outside the UK, in the States, it’s marketed under the title “Escape From Freedom.” And what Fromm does in this book is he talks about the development of capitalism in the West. And he talks about how… And I’ll tell you why, bear with me, you’ll understand why it is that I’m presenting it.
He talks about how in the mediaeval world, the Christian Church in the West, in Europe, was the ultimate authority. The pope was the most powerful man in the world because every king had to essentially follow the Pope’s law and how the Pope determined that things needed. And everybody, it was a feudal system for the most part. So everybody knew their place in society. They knew that God was over them. They knew that they were loved by God, at least they were taught this. Things were very secure, but they were also tremendously limited in terms of personal freedoms. You didn’t really get a chance to move away. If you were a serf, a nobility was just not an option, right? You know, living… And what started to happen in the Italian renaissance was that families like the Medici, and I’m speaking with tremendous hesitation, you know, Trudy . I have no, I completely defer to her on these, so I’m speaking only in broad strokes. But the Medici family was not a noble family, and they ended up, you know, rising in the ranks financially. And they became a very powerful family. They ended up becoming bankers to the Pope. And so what we started to have was this shift and breakdown of this very rigid social system. And the reason why he goes through this, because what ends up happening is that individualism begins then, and people start to discover that they can step away from the womb of belonging that they begin with into a very individualised journey. And individualised journey is indeed a search of freedom, but it’s also fraught with anxiety, fear, loneliness, and depression. Because it’s only you, and it’s all on you to do you. So to come full circle to your question, this is happening in exponential levels from what I just described. Our children are more individualised today than anyone at that time, or even in the previous generation.
And that means the individualism and the freedom that is surging today and the breakdown of external contexts and institutions that are completely being dismantled and reshaped to address your individual needs and tastes and convenience and demands also brings with it a high level of loneliness, anxiety, uncertainty and, frankly, fear. And so that is something that is definitely in the water. I think for many of us, not just young people, right? But they are, I would say, in the deep end, to a certain sense. In other senses, I think that they know how to deal with this stuff much better than we do because they’re kind of, you know, raised in it and it’s more familiar to them. But that’s a very big part of what it is that’s going on. So, you know, when I was growing up and before my time, you as a child or as a, you know, as an adolescent, kind of had to worry about, you know, what does my year think of me? What does my school think of me? What does my community think of me? How do I show up there? For my kids and their, you know, and their contemporaries, it’s what, you know, if they’re on social media, it’s what do these thousands of people all over the world think of me? And that’s whether they have the followers or not. It’s just that’s how one thinks, right? In other words, I am measuring myself today against the entire world, because I have access to the entire world and the world has access to me in very realistic terms. And that’s a massive shift of how it is that I need to identify myself and how I stand in a very global society.
It’s so interesting that you say this, because there’s a bit of a paradox here, because on the one hand you’re saying that technology, the rise of technology, has led to the breakdown of our dependence on external institutions and you know, going somewhere, you mentioned banks, I even think about like TV series. We used to have to, it came out on TV, if you got a chance to watch it, then you could then, if not you buy the DVD in six months from now, then we moved to like, they would release one episode a week on BBC iPlayer or Netflix, whatever. Now, they just put out the whole series in one go and you could binge watch the whole thing immediately. So you’re right there is that growth of just instantaneous consumerism and that kind of culture. And I think also there is something very positive about this in a way because it technology has enfranchised a lot of people. I mean certainly the work that I do, like JTV for example, would not have been possible 20 years ago because of technology, the internet, being able to reach out to people and start things like Lockdown University as well. People can start-
Yeah. Lockdown University wouldn’t have been possible.
Yeah, what we’re doing right now wouldn’t be happening.
100%.
So that’s very enfranchising, it gives people a lot of power. But what’s interesting to me is that you say that it’s pushed individualism, but in another sense I would say that it’s actually had, well, I would pose the question to you. Has it not had the opposite effect of individualism in the sense that it is, for young people, and this is all about young people here, it has pushed up massively this role of peer pressure, which is, of course the opposite of people feeling free to be individual, is it not? Because when, because previously any kind of peer pressure or bullying or whatever, or social dynamics, people would leave at the front door of their house when they got home from school, university, whatever it is. Whereas today, it penetrates everyone’s minds the whole time on our phones, on Instagram. And people feel they have to compete, to look a certain way, to act a certain way, be a certain way, and online bullying and pressure and all the rest of it, so in some ways people, the individualism that this may have the potential to create is countered 100 times, is it not, by the fact that people feel suffocatingly pressured to conform, and as a result have no self-esteem?
Yes. I mean I absolutely hear what you’re saying, but I still think, and it’s right. I think it’s an, it’s an accurate, you know, obviously observation. The reason I think that’s true is because the globalisation, right, that technology brings, yeah, or the broadening of context within which one sees oneself is absolutely there. There’s no question about it. But the problem with it is that because it’s so big and because it isn’t, you know, you don’t really have any longer these kind of enclaves of community that could just hold in themselves, you are left to be perpetually individualised. So even the pressure to conform, right, to the massive masses, right, that you’re talking about.
Yeah.
Is definitely pressure, but you don’t really ever belong in a real way, you know, to something that you can also gain benefits from the belonging, yeah? All you get is approval by unnamed masses, right? By lines of text that might come across your screen or a like, you know, that comes onto your… Which is not to be underestimated. You know, the dopamine still surges when you get those likes and when you have the numbers that are rising every time somebody follows you, and so on and so forth. But the real social bonds and connections that are so essential to humanity and that have been essential to us for a lot longer than what it is that we’re dealing with now are left lacking, they’re left missing. And it’s hard for us to be able to get back into that or to that kind of kind of to construct these things for ourselves, especially for the younger people who never really knew it in that way. And so there is a, you know, kind of like a very strong cycle of moving towards the strong individual, but at the same time, you know, latching on to whatever it is that society is dictating. So the challenge today, I mean, you know, without leaving it in that doomsday kind of, you know, sense, I think that the challenge today is to, I’ll say it this way, Churchill said, “If you’re going through, hell keep going.” And it’s an excellent piece of advice. of course implies that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And the process of individualism is a very important process, in my opinion.
I mean, I don’t believe that all of the negatives that we might be seeing in the world today mean that the world is falling apart. That’s my personal understanding. And maybe ‘cause I’m a religious person, right? That I believe in God and that I believe that the world has a direction and that, you know, I say to people very often, you know, pick any time in history, you drop yourself in there and it’s not going to look pretty. You know, it never really does, but somehow when you pan out and you see the net developments of where we’ve come, very few of us actually want to go back in time and stay there, yeah? There’s maybe nostalgia, but very few of us want to go back to those places. So the processes that we’re watching and development individuality is important. But it’s also why I think in this world and today there has been also a tremendous development in terms of mental health, self-care, maturity and growth in terms of one’s self and what one’s needs are, the understanding of boundaries, the values of deep dynamics of relationships, right? These things are also filling social media, right?
They’re filling the waters of where young people are living. And that’s also very important, because there are teachings out there that are kind of coaching through this anxious and very new paradigm shift of time, and I think that if it’s our responsibility to… Our responsibility, I say “our” in terms of our Jewish communities, in terms of our adult population, to really, really spend time on, first of all understanding these things, and to create spaces that allow for the wholeness, right, that’s important in terms of one’s own individual development. And with that we will… We are a social species. There’s no way that we’re going to lose our social structures. They may look different, yeah, but we need each other. And we need to learn how to do each other as we grow and develop and change, you know, in terms of individualism. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, do you think that this… I mean, I was talking to someone recently about the, we don’t even think, I don’t even think about it as a young person, people that grow up with this, the neurological effects that are going to happen when we’re facing a screen being hit with new content, new information, new kind of just, just social pressures the whole time. And we haven’t even thought about the effect that’s going to have on you when it’s the first thing you see when you wake up, the last thing you’re looking at before you go to bed. But you’ve spoken about the fact that it is true. People on social media are starting to recognise, we’re starting to see slowly trickling in positive content, that encourages more healthy habits. Do you think that the answer to some of these problems that we’ve been discussing, like the sort of the instant gratification, consumerism culture, the social pressures, the lack of community, the lack of external structures. Do you think the answer to that problem is going to be through technology? Or is it going to be we are going to have to learn and teach ourselves and communities how to, you know, be master rather than slave to technology?
That’s a great question. I think that technology’s not going anywhere, right? I mean, you know, as much as we say that, you know, we want to take a break from technology and unplug and so on, I think that’s wonderful. You know, people should certainly recognise, do all they can to be self-aware and recognise what it is that’s going on with their own technology. And it’s even being built into the technology now. So your phone will tell you how much time you’ve spent on the screen and you know, do you want to go quiet for a while? And, you know, do you want to do some work and focus for a while? I mean, you know, you have that, but the technology’s not going anywhere, and there is no way that’s going to be reduced, in my opinion. In other words, it’s not going to be, we’re not turning the volume down on technology. If anything, it is moving into broader and broader spheres. More and more of our lives are being intertwined with it, you know, without our even noticing. I do think that there will always be a range. There will be people who find it extremely difficult to regulate themselves when it comes to this, and that was the case with, it was the case with television, and it was the case with newspapers.
I mean, there are people literally who could not stop, you know, following news and reading the newspaper from front to back. So I said, okay, well that was all different, but it’s all relative, yeah? Part of the human condition is that we tend to have addictive natures, we tend to pursue dopamine, right? You know, dopamine experiences that allow for the surging of dopamine. It’s part of being human beings. We’ve always been that way. It’s true that the natural restraints are becoming less and less, yeah? So when everything is on demand and everything is at our disposal, we will probably have, and we are seeing a very strong range of, on the one hand, real addiction, right? And that’s concerning to me as well, right? There is, there is very serious and real levels of addiction that are connected to the phone and to content, right? That I can get either on my computer or on my phone unencumbered, yeah? And part of that includes pornography, which is extremely concerning. I mean, I have students that are terribly, terribly suffering because from a very young age they were exposed to pornography and developed an addiction. And that was something that wasn’t easily available and ready. I would go so far as to say I think it’s a public health threat, honestly.
But without getting too, too much into that specific detail, there is also going to be other side of things. And I am seeing this happen, right? And where we are begun, we becoming conscious of the risks of what it is that we are creating for ourselves, and we’re correcting for it, right? And I think that’s a major reason why we see, for example, mental health awareness on a very serious rise today. Because we become much more conscious about what role our mental health takes in our life, right, what role it plays in our life. And I think that as a society, we will mature through this, and we will learn how to balance what it is that we’ve created, yeah, for ourselves to be able to make life easier and to be, make life more accessible. And for that matter, the tremendous positives that come of it. Like you say, we wouldn’t be able to do this. There’s a huge amount of Torah that I’m teaching through technology that I would never be able to teach otherwise. There is a large amount of people that I’m reaching and you know, people that are around me that are working with me are reaching that we would never be able to do otherwise. And so there are two sides to that coin. There always will be.
Yeah.
And it always comes back down to the question of, as human beings, we must recognise that there is value in discipline and learning how to set boundaries for ourselves. And that will always be the case, I think, with humanity. Yeah, it’s easy to be able to say, clear it out or step back, shut the doors. But it’s not realistic and it’s not who we are. We have to learn to find the balance with it.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, actually. I am optimistic and I think that we will correct ourselves. I’m reminded of, I was reading a book, fantastic book called “Positivity Bias” by Rabbi Mendel Kalmenson. And it talks about the in one incident that it mentions is that he had two reactions to two big events in his lifetime. The first was the Six-Day War, in which he said, “Wow, this isn’t, this is clearly a nes. This is a miracle.” But then when he responded to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union, he said, “This is . This is messianic.” And the book was asking, what’s the difference between the two? Why did he say the first one’s miraculous, but not messianic, you know, Israel winning this war against all these surrounding nations against all the odds. That seems pretty messianic to me, but the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said was. And the book was said that the answer was that in the case of the Six-Day War, that’s clearly a miracle because you’ve got a fledgling state surrounded by all these other nations, and you know, a miracle is when nature goes against its nature. But what was messianic about the collapse of the Soviet Union was that the evil surrendered itself, and I think what he’s saying is that the messianic vision of Jews is that we believe that humanity will correct itself. We will come, we will mature, we will come to realise of our own accord, what is good for us, and the negative voices and inputs that are just driving us mad and making our lives more miserable. So I fundamentally agree with that. And before we move on to the Jewish stuff, I wondered if you, 'cause I know this isn’t just theoretical for you, this is real for you every day when you are counselling people, and you’ve told me in the past that you really want to, you are working on initiatives to deal with mental health issues that are on the rise. I wondered if you could just share with us just for a couple minutes before we talk, move on to the Jewish stuff about what that work is, and of course there’s a lot of parents and grandparents on this call, so any practical advice you might be able to offer for helping children, grandchildren, navigating a rise in anxiety in a changing world?
Yeah. Well, thank you for creating the space for that. I mean, I think first of all, yeah, I mean, look, in my work there are two sides of it for me. One is, I’m very grateful and I take very seriously the fact that I have the privilege of being able to speak to many people and hold a platform, you know, and where, you know, my teaching and kind of sharing ideas is broad, and in that space, because I do think that mental health is as important as our physical health, if not more, it’s important for me to speak on that and to teach on that, and from my place, you know, because Torah is a very important part of what I teach very often to show where in Torah these ideas are, because I don’t think that they’re new ideas. I think that’s something that’s very much part of Jewish thought. So there’s a lot in my teaching, in the dialogue that I present and the thoughts and ideas that I share that includes this aspect of life, right? The mental health, support, cultivation, growth aspect of life. Because there are two things. I think there’s mental health and there’s mental illness, and they’re not one in the same. When we talk about mental health, it’s kind of like talking about what do you do for your physical health, right? You go, you work out, you exercise, you jog, you eat healthy, and so on. These are things that not only maintain health, but also cultivate health. And that’s something that’s very important for us to do for our mental health as well. So a lot of my sharing and teaching and, you know, kind of presentation of thought definitely has that colour to it, and so that’s one aspect of it. And I think it’s really important today that we talk on those things for all of us. Certainly helps me, you know. So I’m hoping that if it helps me, it helps other people.
The other part is that we’re working on different initiatives. So one of the things we recently did, we brought in Rabbi Yoni Rosensweig, who’s a good friend, and he’s a rabbi in Israel, originally America-born, but he’s a rabbi in Israel that has dedicated his rabbinate, basically, his professional career as a rabbi to supporting mental health, but specifically around Jewish law and mental health, because there are many, many observant Jews that want to be observant, but are finding tremendous conflict and difficulty with their struggling with mental illness and, you know, mental health difficulties. And so he has dedicated everything, you know, that he does basically to guide and help that. So we brought him in for a speaking tour, which was actually very successful here in London, which I was happy to do, and he spoke to kollel students, he spoke to congregations all over London, and it was really very, very helpful and I want to do more of that, please God. And one of the things that we’re doing now also in partnership with him is that he started an institute that educates rabbis around mental health and illness, right? So to become more aware of the real inner workings and dynamics of what happens when somebody is struggling with their mental health, and also to understand the halachic aspects specifically around those things. So we’re going to be doing that here as well. So my office is going to be developing a programme here for rabbis to do that in the next year. And I think that’s something’s very much needed, and hopefully we’ll be able to help in that perspective, to be able to bring it, you know, into the religious side of things. And to bring it in to the Jewish communal side of things that, you know, so that people can also experience their religious lives through the connection to that.
And then I guess finally, with what you said about the fact that there are parents and grandparents, you know, that are here, and I’m a parent, not yet a grandparent, there’s time for that, but there is so much that I could say, but I will say, I will choose to say this: there is no more influential people in a child’s life than parents. And I used to be headmaster of a school, and I would tell this to the parents all the time. The single most influential teacher in a parent’s life, in a child’s life, are parents. And that can never be changed. That that just is what it is. And that means for better, worse, or otherwise, a parent holds profound influence on a child. So, and it also means that the way that a child learns from parents is very, very rarely what the parents say and very often what the parents do. So the first thing that I would say is, it is important if we want our children to be whatever it is that we wish them to be, you know, fill in the blank, it is essential that we model it rather than say it. And that’s not easy, right? It means that really it requires an element of introspection, of questioning, what am I really able to do in terms of what it is that I want my child to be? And many of us, whether consciously or unconsciously, want our children to be what we were not. And that’s, you know, that’s very difficult. That’s a tall order for a child, but it’s essential that we know that the way that do action and modelling rather than just what is that we tell them, that’s the first thing. And the second thing that I will say is because a parent is so profoundly influential, whatever you say to your child holds immense weight. So when you praise your child, it holds immense weight.
A hundred people can compliment your child. If you as a parent genuinely really compliment your child, it equals a hundred people saying the to the child what it is that you said to them, but the truth is also the opposite. So a hundred people couldn’t insult your child, embarrass your child, shame your child, and I’m sorry I’m using strong words here, but these things happen on a daily basis. When as a parent we embarrass, shame, insult our children, it leaves deep marks. So think twice before you do anything like that or say anything. I don’t imply that anybody intentionally does that, but it also requires self-awareness. And there is a very big difference between those things that I mentioned and discipline. Discipline can happen without shaming, insulting and embarrassing.
And it is a parent’s duty, it is a parent’s responsibility to make sure that they learn the difference between the two. And I cannot emphasise that enough, because what we say as parents to children lasts. It rests within them, and for their entire lives they will be looking, if we end up creating a deficiency in our children, right, a sense of inferiority in our children, which again, I’m not saying that anybody does intentionally, but it happens and it requires our awareness of it. Our children for the rest of their lives will be looking to fill that. So I know that I’m speaking of very serious things, and I know that you may be not wanted me to open something so serious, but because you asked, because it’s so important, I’m going there, and I think that it’s hard to put into words how important it is, yeah? So especially during this time of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, where introspection is the name of the game, that’s something that is important for us to think about, yeah, as parents.
Yeah, and I think it’s incredibly profound and self-evident what you’re saying, so I think everyone’s greatly appreciative of it. I just want to remind of you as you can post questions in the Q&A chat, and I’ll have a look at them soon. But before I get there, the reason why I mention that now is because we’re going to shift to the question of Jewish identity, but if you have questions on what Rabbi Dweck has said up until now, please, you can feel free to start adding them in. Now, let’s shift. I think there’s probably, this is quite based on what you said. This is a nice, an easy shift into the question of Jewish identity and how we can create better, stronger engagement there. Do you want to paint a picture of the world young Jews are growing up in, and what would cause a young Jew to feel interested or disinterested in their Jewish heritage?
Well, really it builds on everything we’ve just said, right? Because young Jews are not living in a world different than what we just described. You know, most young Jews are living in the world that we just described. So they’re dealing with the individuality and the anxieties that come with that and the, you know, the globalisation and the social media and so on and so forth. I mean, most young Jews are dealing with all of that. What comes into that is the elements of Judaism that were structured in previous paradigms, right? So what was very obvious to us for many generations, right, Jewish community, Jewish education, synagogue life, community life, those kinds of things, right? That is, I would say, under bigger threat than it ever has been, I think in almost all of history. I know that’s a serious thing to say, but I believe it. I believe that because the structures and institutions and external, you know, constructs that we were used to and that we relied on, almost without even thinking about them, just assumed that they were always going to be there. Because all of those things are really being questioned and really, if not being dismantled, the dismantling is being entertained or kind of, you know, on its way. Everything that was a stronghold for us, or a foundation for us in our Jewish life and Jewish community is also under question of threat. So forget about COVID. Before COVID, synagogue attendance, synagogue culture, and what I mean by synagogue culture is the community culture that was built around synagogue membership, right? So not too long ago, especially in this country, communities were built around synagogue, yeah?
And that’s regardless really of observance so much. I mean, one did not have to be very observant to nonetheless recognise that the hub of their Jewish life, which they value, was in the synagogue. So you sent your kids to Cheder. Cheder was always connected to synagogue, and that meant that your kids grew up around other kids that were connected to synagogue. And when they got older, they went to synagogue, they got married through the synagogue, they had kids. Everything was really, really centred around that. And that is, for the majority of our congregations, I will say weakening. I’ll use that word, right, it’s weakening. And it’s weakening for many reasons. But one of the reasons because what’s going on in society with institutions in general, so, you know, a part of my work is in interfaith, I’m a president of the Council of Christians and Jews together with the chief rabbi and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Cardinal of the Catholic church. And a couple years ago, right, maybe three years ago now, was before COVID, we were sitting at our, you know, annual meeting and the Archbishop said, “You know what? I’ve been speaking with my advisors and they said the Anglican church’s days are numbered.” And he turned to Cardinal Nichols at the time and said, you know, “What do you say, Cardinal?” Cardinal said, “Yeah, that’s what they’re telling me, too.” And he said, “Well ,” yeah?
Sorry, say that again? He said?
He said, “It’s a good thing that we have faith that things will be all right,” right? And you know, faith is good, and I’m certainly not one to, you know, to negate the value of faith, but I do think we also need to recognise why these things are not as strong perhaps as they used to be. And I don’t think they are. I think that if we’re realistic, except for certain pockets, right, and certain enclaves, en masse, these things are not the same. And people tend to think it’s because we don’t have the right charismatic leader or, you know, Chabad is not controlling things or, you know, whatever the case may be, and I don’t think that’s the case. I think the case is that there is a big paradigm shift that is going on and, you know, we are used to a structure that is not quite adjusting to where young people are, right, or to where, you know, society is moving. So I do think we need to kind of fundamentally think about what needs to happen in terms of our Jewish communities in order to be able to respond to these things. And it’s a very difficult question. It’s not like, okay, you know, you sit down and around a table and you say, okay, X, Y and Z is happening and this is what we do to respond. It requires profound shifts and sometimes it also requires risks, you know, that we have taken order to be able to shift those things.
They’re not going to get any more specific than that because, you know, I think that there is a lot of complexity in it, as I said before. And, you know, congregations, communities do that. And I think it’s also another discussion because it gets into very religious questions and traditional questions and so on and so forth. But that’s what’s happening. So what’s going on in society is happening within us. That’s number one. The other thing that I’ll say is also on the last thing that we spoke about. And that is that with all of that, with all of that, with all of the shifts and with the questions of what’s the future of religion and people’s engagement and so on and so forth, I still say, and I believe very, very strongly, the single best way to ensure Jewish continuity, Jewish life, Jewish future is how it is that we model it in our families. It literally begins at home. And there is no single factor that is more powerful than how it is that we live our Jewish life in our homes, yeah? And I think that there’s a lot of hope that the Jewish school will do the Jewish thing for our kids and synagogue and the will do the Jewish thing for our kids, and they will do wonderful support acts for our kids, right, they will do great support, but there’s nothing that replaces the Jewish identity, Jewish life and Jewish experience, and I want to highlight the word experience, yeah, that happens at home. Nothing replaces it. And so that’s something that’s also very important. responsibility. It is. And it is something that isn’t always easy to be able to maintain, but there is no question at all that, again, the single most powerful factor to ensure Jewish identity, Jewish practise, to whatever degree we believe that should be, and Jewish future, is how it is that we live it and model it in our homes.
And for you as a rabbi, if you see homes or parents that don’t feel, you know, willing or especially inspired in their Jewish identity, you know, where do you start with that? Because obviously if there’s a willingness among parents or grandparents or family, then that’s great, and then your advice is applicable. But what about, what do you do in cases where you feel like the spark isn’t really lit?
Yeah, I mean that is part of the role, right, of a rabbi, of a Jewish community, of synagogue, of Jewish learning and so on. Of course there is, you know, we want to be able to kind of ignite a desire, an interest, an opening and curiosity about it, yeah? And there’s no question about, you know, the fact that certainly for me as a rabbi, I know many, many other rabbis. That’s kind of what we’re in it for, you know, is to be able to speak each one in his or her own way about what is exciting, engaging, beautiful, interesting, worthwhile, valuable about Jewish life, about Torah, about Jewish Jewish thought about Jewish history and Jewish future and so on. Yes, of course, it’s very, very important to engage with that as much as possible.
Yeah.
And yet it needs to hold somewhere, right? So yeah, I mean obviously there’s, you know, a whole element of system that’s part of it, but it’s a big bit.
But it starts in the home. I agree. And what has been-
It’s held in the home. It’s held in the home.
It’s held in the home. Right. And what would your advice be for Jewish people, especially young Jews on campuses that face anti-Zionism, often anti-Semitism spills over into that, what do you say?
Yeah. It’s really rough. I mean, it’s really not, it’s not good out there. It’s not good out there. That’s another thing that I’ll be working on this year. I’m doing a campus tour of universities around the country to be able to speak with the, you know, the Jewish students that are there. And first of all, to address some of the things that I, you know, I think that they’re thinking about, you know, when it comes to their own Judaism, but also to give, to give some what we call chizuk, right? To just give some strength and support, because it is very difficult, and there is a great deal of anti-Zionistic, which I equate with anti-Semitic rhetoric. And, you know, I just did a podcast with a campaign against anti-Semitism, and I did also a talk at JFS to the sixth form there, and I think that, you know, again, anti-Semitism, there are many components to it, but I believe that one of the best ways for us to deal with it is in our own pride and strength of identity, yeah? When you are proud of who you are, and you are aware, right, you’re knowledgeable about who you are and you feel strong about it, you stand taller. And when you stand tall and you stand confident, it emits a certain aura, right, that is very real and very meaningful. And so, like for example, when in the recent conflict in Israel, there was a huge amount of stuff that was flying through social media that was anti-Zionistic.
And you know, my son, my youngest son, who’s 15, almost 16, you know, he came to me, he said, “Daddy, is what they’re saying true about what’s going on in Israel, what Israel is doing?” And I realised that he has no sense of, you know, what actually is going on and what, you know, what did Israel do and what didn’t it do and what is it, you know? And so that comes back to education. I really think that educating our children towards an aim of pride, right, of who we are and being able to recognise that one could recognise, you know, fault and failure without having to hold shame and embarrassment, right, about who it is that we are. One could recognise, okay, you know, that was a wrong move perhaps by Israel or that was the wrong move by, you know, by our people. But nonetheless, the magnitude of pride and history and knowledge and strength and contribution that the Jewish people have given, not only to this country, but to the world, is a very powerful reason why we should be able to stand tall, be able to have a clear rhetoric as to, you know, what is true and not true and what is right and wrong with regards to who it is that we are. It’s important to be able to instil our children with pride around that, and that goes back to education. They need to know. They need to know who we are, and they need to know, you know, what our history is and you know, what really comes to the table. So, you know, I think that’s a big part of it. That’s a very big part of it. And we can, I believe that there’s a lot to fill in with regards to that.
I couldn’t agree more. And actually on reflection about my own, you know, childhood and upbringing, I think that, and this all ties into, as you say, how the home we live in what we, literally what we tell our children. And actually when that pride is instilled and then you realise that you are facing a world that doesn’t necessarily share that same pride or you’re up against something, in some ways that may actually be a source of motivation for people.
Yeah.
'Cause it gives us a sense of meaning, a sense of we believe in something, there’s a cause to fight for, and it can actually be a positive thing.
Yeah.
So it’s all that, it all comes down to, as you say, that family environment that-
It’s family environment. But here also it’s an element of education.
Well, I mean, so much of that can happen in the family environment around that.
Can happen in the home. It does.
Yeah.
But this is something that I believe can happen in school.
Absolutely.
And I think that it can be enhanced in the curriculum. It can be, that is something that I believe that schools should be responsible to, you know, to help with, yeah.
I agree, but I feel in particular that emotional component, not so much necessarily the information that the emotional component, the esteem, the pride one has.
Yeah.
About .
I agree with you.
You need like spaces.
I agree with that.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, we’re going to turn to questions now. So if, please, we’ve got a few minutes to take some of your questions. If you want to type them into the Q&A box, I will pick on some of them.
Q&A and Comments:
Q: We’ll start off with Ari says, or Ari, I dunno, “Do grandparents have the same positive/negative impact on children as parents?”
A - 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.
Q - Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve got a question from Barbara Friedman. “The fracture of the family unit by divorce seems another major cause. I see why parents need therapy on how to end their marriage, but how to help their children in the family as well. We neglect this part.” Do we neglect this part? I suppose she’s asking.
A - Yeah, it’s a tough question because the rise in divorce is one of the symptoms of this highly individualised move, right, in society. So whereas, again, a generation, two or three ago, marriage was a very different institution than it is now. Marriage was kind of understood that you’re going into this as a partnership. You are, you know, it’s first and foremost about raising family and building a life together, and so on. And because more and more and more, we are, as a society, certainly in the West, in the West, right, asking ourselves, what do I want for me? And what am I going to build my life doing? We’re getting married later and the rate of divorce is higher. Because when I start asking those questions about my life and me and as an individual and so on and so forth, meshing myself with another individual is much more difficult, because I have to really, really understand the deep ins and outs of relationship and intimacy and what comes out as a result of those interactions. And when we can’t do it, you know, it fails. And so yes, because it’s surging and because it is something that we are grappling with, the outrider of that, unfortunately, is the children, you know, and what happens as a result of divorce and what they go through. Are we neglecting it? I think it’s a strong term, you know, that we’re neglecting it. I don’t want to give like such a broad stroke on it.
I think that in my opinion, and again, this is only from my perspective and my opinion. I’m not a professional and I’m not, you know, in this field, and I’m not speaking on it from a great deal of research and, you know, exploration, but as a rabbi and as a person who deals with many families, the children in divorce is something I’m really, really worried about, because it does have serious and long-lasting effects. I mean, thankfully, you know, children, many, many children have a great deal of resilience to them, you know, and they’re able to co kind of come through and develop. But I would like to see more, you know, focus on, you know, bringing children through divorce, the aftermath of divorce, adults that were children of divorce, you know, and recognising this aspect of life. So yeah, I think it’s of course, you know, more can be done and we can focus in a better way on it perhaps.
Q - I’ve got a question from Leila. “Do you find it frightening that so much anti-Semitism in higher education comes via the teachers/lecturers in those institutions? I fear that in times of upheaval in politics, as there was in Germany before and during the war, intellectuals become leaders of anti-Semitism, blaming the Jews for everything.”
A - 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.
Q - Yeah. Well, on this exact topic, Ralph Friedman asks, “Should Jewish organisations be more proactive by launching legal challenges to universities who are not taking steps to protect free speech by allowing blatant anti-Semitic acts on their campuses?”
A - 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.
Q - Yeah. Sue Friedman, she’s written quite a long question, but it to, if I were to summarise what she’s basically asking or sort of reflecting on is that, is there some sort of outsource, it seems like you’ve basically said there is. She basically seems to be saying there is outsourcing of Jewish education identity to schools that families are doing in our generation, and they seem to be thinking that that will suffice. And I assume from everything you said, you would agree with that comment.
A - It never suffices. It’s a wonderful support and development and, you know, they’re doing, you know, positive work, can always be better, but nothing replaces, nothing replaces the home.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think let’s wrap up on that note because I think that was the sort of the key take-home message, if you’ll pardon the pun, that you’re trying to get across to everyone, and it really, I felt that it was really coming from a deep place and it feels very self-evident and it’s a great message to finish on. So Rabbi Dweck-
Thank you for doing this discussion with me, Ollie. It was, it was a pleasure to do it with you. Thank you.
It’s an honour to do this with you, it’s an honour to know you and to have your mentorship and friendship, and thank you to everyone for tuning in. That’s us done.
I’m everyone and well over the fast. Please, God.
Amen. Absolutely. Thank you everyone.