Two or three times a week, a group of young people from across the Jewish world tune into a virtual beit midrash run from London.
Since its launch last year under the tutelage of Rabbi Joseph Dweck, Senior Rabbi of the S & P Sephardi Community, the Habura, as the study programme is called, has grown to attract 300 subscribers from 19 countries.
Students and teachers have produced four online journals and, impressively, have now published a book on Pesach, consisting of essays by participants as well as extracts from hachamim from the past.
With lockdown and other Covid measures restricting face-to-face teaching, “we took advantage of the fact that people were online,” Rabbi Dweck explained. “We aimed to be able to draw teachers from different places without geographical limitations.”
Its success reflects a growing appetite to discover more about the classical Sephardi tradition.
As high-level Torah learning came to be dominated by the Ashkenazi yeshivot, the Sephardi tradition tended to be overlooked, even though it is rooted in the example of the some of the most illustrious rabbis of medieval Spain, who often combined their Jewish scholarship with secular accomplishments as philosophers, poets, even generals. Maimonides, famously, was a physician.
As Rabbi Dweck has put it, “It was a time and place when people came to love and know God by embracing his world.”
While not all the Habura students are Sephardi — nor, in fact, all of the rabbinic figures on its curriculum — they share an interest in an ethos that, he said, is “old and tried and true”.
He hopes to increase awareness of some of the later exponents of that ethos, such as Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel, Chief Rabbi of Israel and Rabbi David Halevi, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, in the last century; or earlier, Rabbi Yisrael Moshe Hazan, Chief Rabbi of Rome in the 19th century.
Names that he became familiar with growing up in the American Syrian Jewish community and learning at the yeshivah of the most eminent modern Sephardi sage, Rav Ovadia Yosef, grandfather of his wife Margalit, and at the Sephardi Rabbinic College in the USA.
The Habura’s translation of a work by Rabbi Hazan on the Oral Torah, which is currently under way, shows the seriousness of its commitment to make Sephardi sources more available.
The Habura is a project that comes under the wing of the fledgling Office of Senior Rabbi (SRO). Rabbi Dweck arrived as Senior Rabbi to the S & P eight years ago but the office is being established now to give him greater scope to promote the Sephardi tradition.
The tradition deserves a wider hearing and to enable that is to offer “a service to the community”, he said. “I am a teacher at heart. It is the core of everything that I do.”
While the S & P may prize its heritage — the antique artefacts and its distinctive customs and liturgy — “the most precious aspect of our community,” he said, “is our thought”.
Due to societal changes that have been gathering pace over the last two or three decades, many of our young, he believes, are facing an “existential crisis”. Each generation may confront its own trials. But today for example, “atheism is a big issue, much bigger than it used to be. People are very much grappling with the question of God. Is it necessary to even believe in God in order to be able to live a meaningful, moralistic life?”
And whereas people with questions may once have looked to the framework of religion to find answers, its importance for many of the younger generation has been waning.“Even 25 years ago, religion was in a safer position than it is today.”
To support his view, he might point to the surveys that document declining religious belief in the West and a growing number of Jews who identify as “cultural” or “secular” rather than religious.
As young people navigate to find their place in the world, their horizons are no longer determined by the expectations of a local community but by broader influences, including their interactions on social media. “We are in a different situation whereas we are looking at ourselves in terms of the global society,” he said.
His interests in psychology and other fields of thought have enabled him to provide a contemporary frame of reference for his teaching. The Habura demonstrates his ability to connect with the young. The average age of subscribers to the programme is 25.
While the Habura caters for a more academic clientèle, the office is intended to have a broader remit; in the pipeline is a series of workshops for university-age people which will help with “self-development”, on working out what it is they want to do post-college.
Some schools of outreach tend to rely on an experiential approach to Judaism. If only someone could taste the joy and warmth of a traditional Friday night dinner, then that is what might draw them in to the Jewish fold. While hospitality remains important, he argues that young people need more than chicken soup. They need “content”.
The shiur with its rabbinic source-sheets may still have its place, but “it is not the only way we should be teaching. We should be using every outlet at our disposal to be able to offer thought, content and learning”.
Six years ago he made a series of two-minute videos, “bite-sized” introductions to God, prayer, mitzvot, suffering and other topics. A follow-up series on Jewish festivals is due for release soon.
His weekly Instagram look at the Torah portion has built up a following of 600. The app which can be downloaded from the SRO website provides access to a database of 500 recordings of his talks.
His teaching, of course, is not confined to the young. But whatever his audience, he aims to articulate a Judaic outlook that is “pragmatic”, “humanistic” and sensitive to the challenges posed by modern living.
For more details, see seniorrabbi.com
For the book on Pesach, thehabura.com/books
