Notes on the Dweck Controversy
David Shasha
Notes on the Dweck Controversy
Last Thursday I posted two old articles on Homosexuality and Judaism:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/THABR4LG0O4
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/4m9Q8AonqKI
The reason for the re-posting is the controversy currently going on in the London Sephardic community:
The story was picked up belatedly by many American Jewish media outlets after it erupted in England.
At the center of the controversy is Rabbi Joseph Dweck who is no stranger to SHU readers:
Dweck is a key figure in the Brooklyn-based Sephardic Community Alliance (SCA) which I recently discussed in the following SHU post:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/RKDNQ4UW2dk
Like many of the rabbis of the Syrian Jewish community, Dweck is a very ambitious ladder-climber who very carefully calculates what he says and does based on the benefit to his personal interests rather on intellectualism or altruistic moral values.
His role in the London community has not at all prevented him from maintaining a prominent place in the New York area Syrian Jewish community where he often returns to speak and teach. The core of his support among the Ashkenazified Modern Orthodox Syrian Jews in New York remains strong and speaks optimistically of his eventual return at some future point.
Dweck has often spoken of his desire to institute a form of Judaism in the British Sephardic community that is more reflective of the harsh views of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and the SHAS movement rather than the classical Sephardic tradition of Jewish Humanism, as was the pride of Bevis Marks for many generations since the time of the great Rabbi David Nieto and exemplified by Anglo-Jewish Sephardic luminaries like Moses Angel, Sabato Morais, Grace Aguilar, and George Belasco.
An important resource for this history can be found in Moses Gaster’s History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, published in 1901 to coincide with the Synagogue’s 200th anniversary, which began with the ministry of Jacob Sasportas, the famed anti-Sabbatian antagonist, way back in 1690 and moves on to early figures like Jacob Abendana and the towering Nieto:
https://archive.org/details/ancientsynagogue00gastuoft
Another valuable resource is James Picciotto’s classic Sketches in Anglo-Jewish History published in 1875:
https://archive.org/stream/sketchesofangloj00picciala/sketchesofangloj00picciala_djvu.txt
I have recently presented a sermon from George Belasco’s 1908 collection The God of Our Fathers entitled “The Tabernacle of God” which typifies the rich tradition of Sephardic Jewish Humanism:
Here is the complete book in digital form:
https://archive.org/details/godofourfatherso00belaiala
Little of this precious history and its illustrious intellectual-religious value system has been preserved for the current generation of Sephardim.
I recently presented an analysis of this lack of Sephardic consciousness in my post on Bevis Marks’ Rabbi Shalom Morris and his visit to Livorno which amazingly ignored seminal figures Elijah Benamozegh and the aforementioned Morais who were both born in that port city:
This apathetic disdain towards the classical Sephardic tradition now permeates the London Sephardic rabbinic leadership under Dweck, reflecting the ways in which a new conception of Judaism under the influence of YU Modern Orthodoxy and the Ashkenazi tyranny has replaced the old ways.
The current controversy over Homosexuality is therefore all about the Ashkenazified YU “Idiot” Sephardim of the SCA in their ongoing death-cage battle (which they are losing) with the Ashkenazified Lakewood Haredi Sephardim.
Dweck, as I have gleaned from his anemic yet insufferably pompous writing for the Bevis Marks Synagogue newsletter, is a loyal devotee of Begin, Thatcher, and Reagan who seems to have bit off more than he can chew with all the anathemas now being hurled his way by the Sephardic Haredim.
Naturally, Rabbi Marc Angel posted an item in his defense:
https://www.jewishideas.org/blog/rabbi-dweck-judaism-and-homosexuality-guest-blog-rabbi-jeremy-rosen
The author of this very enthusiastic approbation is Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, another name familiar to SHU readers:
In the wake of the publication of the Complete Works of Primo Levi Rabbi Rosen came out and attacked the Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison who wrote the introduction to the lavish box set. The Zionists have marked Professor Morrison as an Anti-Semite.
In another article he completely ignored Levi’s Sephardic identity and the theme of Religious Humanism in his writing. Not that any of this comes as a surprise in the White Jewish world.
So it would appear that the only Sephardim acceptable to the YU crowd are ones who follow the Soloveitchik Da’as Torah and pay obeisance to the proper Modern Orthodox values.
The Dweck Affair is thus all about Ashkenazi Orthodox infighting and nothing to do with the ongoing problem of Sephardic representation.
More than this, as is the case with “Open Orthodox” institutions like Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the general political orientation is largely Far Right Conservatism and FOX News.
This fits in well with the Trumploving Brooklyn Syrian Jews and their callousness and cruelty.
And so it is that we have ambitious young Syrian rabbis who want to make a big splash in the larger world, but whose own personal morals leave much to be desired. It is one thing to say that you have compassion for people, quite another to actually be compassionate to people.
As has sadly become all too clear to those who closely follow what goes on in the Sephardic community, Dweck might talk a good game, but appearances can be deceiving. As some of us have learned from bitter personal experience, he can be as, if not more, malevolent a person as the people who are now attacking him.
David Shasha