Sephardi figurehead Rabbi Dweck to make aliyah in 2026
Senior Rabbi says serving UK's Spanish and Portuguese community for a decade is 'one of the greatest honours of my life'
The Sephardi community’s senior rabbi has announced plans to make aliyah with his family in 2026.
After more than a decade of service, Rabbi Joseph Dweck and Margalit will move to Israel to be closer to their children.
Following the announcement of the family move he said: “It has been one of the greatest honours of my life to serve as senior rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi community over the past 11 years. With God’s help, Margalit and I plan to make Aliyah in January 2026. With most of our children already in Israel, we feel that this is the right time to take this long-awaited step, bringing us closer to both our family and the homeland of our people.”
(C) Blake Ezra Photography 2015.
American-born Rabbi Dweck added that his time in the UK has given him an “appreciation for the strength, wisdom, and warmth of the British Jewish community. I am profoundly grateful for the many opportunities we have had to learn, reflect, and grow together. From Israel, I plan to focus more on public teaching, writing, and expanding (online Torah community) The Ḥabura. I very much hope to remain connected with my dear friends and students here, and I look forward to continuing teaching and engaging with the community during frequent visits to the UK.”
Rabbi Dweck arrived in the UK in 2013 to become senior rabbi of the S&P and served as deputy president of the London School of Jewish Studies, as well as a president of the Council of Christians and Jews alongside Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis
He never intended to be a rabbi, hoping instead to become a psychologist, but the Los Angeles-born rabbi instead became the senior rabbi of the S&P Sephardi community of the UK, and one of the most admired figures in the rabbinate in Britain — an accomplished chazzan and a scintillating public speaker.
Daniel Sacerdoti, chair of the board of trustees of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi community, said: “With deep affection, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to Senior Rabbi Joseph Dweck, Margalit, and their family for their exceptional service to our Kahal (congregation).
He added that their “unwavering dedication to Torah, devotion to the service of God, and genuine kindness toward all have been evident in everything they have undertaken.”
Rabbi Dweck, who, with his wife Margalit, grand-daughter of the one-time Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef, has five children, is descended from the Syrian Jewish tradition and served for 15 years, between 1999 and 2014, as rabbi of Congregation Shaare Shalom, a Syrian Sephardi synagogue of more than 700 members, in Brooklyn, New York. At the same time he also served as headmaster of Barkai Yeshivah, a large Jewish day school in Brooklyn, from 2010 to 2014.
After receiving semicha (rabbinical ordination) from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rabbi Dweck also obtained a MA in Jewish education from Middlesex University at the London School of Jewish Studies.
Rabbi Dweck arrived in the UK in 2013 to become senior rabbi of the S&P and served as deputy president of the London School of Jewish Studies, as well as a president of the Council of Christians and Jews alongside Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis.
Renowned for his public speaking, Rabbi Dweck ran into trouble in 2017 when he gave a lecture on the Torah view on homosexuality. In summary, he said that while sexual relations were prohibited by the Torah, he declared that Jewish law did not legislate against the feelings involved. He said that there should not be witch-hunts, adding tha tthere were “plenty of skeletons in everybody’s closet”.
He went on: “The entire revolution of feminism and even homosexuality in our society … is a fantastic development for humanity.” Changes in social attitudes, he said, had “forced us to look at how we deal with love between people of the same sex. And it has reduced the taboo of my children, of me, of my grandchildren being able to love another human being, same sex, genuinely – to show affection to someone else, to hug and kiss someone else, to genuinely express love without worry of being seen as deviant and problematic”.
His lecture was — apparently to his own surprise — hugely controversial. He was particularly attacked by the maverick Golders Green rabbi Aharon Bassous and the affair ended with a rabbinical panel, headed by Chief Rabbi Mirvis, which effectively rapped Rabbi Dweck across the knuckles, though concluding that he could continue his role as the senior rabbi of the Sephardi community. The decision was supported by former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
By his fingertips, Rabbi Dweck held on to his job after a ruling by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s review committee.
But he paid a high price — he had to relinquish being a dayan on the Sephardi Beth Din, and to agree to submit the contents of his public lectures to a member of the review committee. He has also agreed not to return to his former congregation in New Jersey to be a summer scholar-in-residence, as he has done for the past three years.
In January 2018, Rabbi Dweck resumed his lectures with a new series at the London School of Jewish Studies at a sold-out return to Hendon.
Rabbi Dweck also serves as a member of the Standing Committee of the Conference of European Rabbis.
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