Clapton Pond Blog

Trouble In Stamford Hill

From The Jewish Chronicle:

"A rabbi who uncovers child abuse in strictly Orthodox communities says he feared for his life as he was chased by a group of 200 Charedi men in North London. Rabbi Nochum Rosenberg, 58, was forced to flee from a Stamford Hill synagogue where he had been listening to a lecture last Thursday. He ran into Manor Road, in the heart of the community, and was taken to safety after stopping a passing police car."

I feel protective of our Orthodox community for obvious reasons, and had this article not appeared first in the Jewish Chronicle I would have been wary of linking to it. But their story is too worrying to ignore. Harry's Place has an angle on it and a link elsewhere.

Rose Hudson-Wilkin

She's the priest at both All Saints church in Haggerston and Holy Trinity in Dalston. Not everyone was pleased to see her when she showed up ten years ago:

“There is a group that think it’s OK to have women cleaning and decorating the church but they must not stand up and represent Christ. When you hear people denying your very being, as a child of God, you are entitled to a righteous rage."

She's interviewed in The Times.

Orthodox Marriages

Chief executive on the London Jewish Forum, Alexander Goldberg:

"The Home Office, Foreign Office and UK Border Agency all acknowledge that there are no forced marriages in the Jewish community in Britain. This undisputed fact only becomes interesting in the light of the Home Office's announcement that it is to raise the age for marriage visas from 18 to 21. The move is described as part of a crackdown on forced marriages in the UK but it will also impact disproportionately on London's strictly orthodox Jewish community where consenting international marriages between young people are common."

And further on:

"Both the extended family and the community at large support young families in Stamford Hill. Intergenerational relations are important, embodied in building developments such as Schoenfeld Square where the elderly care home overlooking the nursery school playground. The thought of sending all young people to Israel or the United States to set up home is painful for this community."

Read the whole article at Comment Is Free.

The Gay Chusid

Quote:

"im 32 i feel gay, i like being gay, im happy go larry man, tho i can get emotionaly in love with people, so keep away lol."

Now read on.

A Delinquent Jew

From 18 June BBC 4 will broadcast a series of three films about Jews in Britain. The first is set in Stamford Hill. Novelist and quality blogger Linda Grant has seen it:

"In the first film, Solomon is released from prison after a lengthy sentence for drug trafficking, eight years of which were spent in Israeli jails, and returns home to Stamford Hill, where the exhausted but ever-patient community once again takes him in and tries to rehabilitate him - not because he's family but because he's a Jew. They find him somewhere to live, they get him work, the hard-pressed ladies with their hot wigs and 12 children are kindness itself. Solomon, a Jack the Lad with a very gold-coloured watch and a borrowed Lexus, traces his delinquency back to when he wanted to wear a silver and white shirt and slightly racy slip-on shoes and his mother screamed at him. Solomon likes, he admits, being the centre of attention. He craves excitement. His drug dealing is everything to do with being Solomon in an environment that is profoundly anti-Solomon."

Now read on.

Islam & Beer

Mr Osler of Stoke Newington:

"The authority of all organised religions is in longstanding decline. If it is the case that a minority of youth of Muslim extraction are moving towards radical forms of Islam, it is equally true that the majority are only nominally observant. Let’s put it like this; I live in a predominantly Muslim area, and there are no shortage of Turkish bars that will serve you a bevvy."

For further thoughts relating to Michael Nazir-Ali, read on.

Evangelical

Photographed from a number 48 at the junction of Hackney Road and Cambridge Heath Road. I won't be going, but love that poster...

From The Shaigetz

His most recent:

"I don't think writing a blog can do much more for my cause than this one has. I had joy and some fun and my season in the sun, and with close to half a million hits, an achievement of sorts for the voice of the lone Chassid. I have managed to avoid being lynched and that is a victory of thoughts too. I have come to the stage where what I have already written more or less covers what I have to say and challenging myself to find a new angle is not satisfying. I could put the points of what could have been the next four blogs in four paragraphs. It makes a far less enjoyable read but what difference does that make?"

Now read on.

St Judes Church

Catholicism isn't called that for no reason. At St Scholastica's in Kenninghall Road the congregation is very African, pretty London-Caribbean and a bit Spanish and Irish too. By contrast, the inconspicuous little St Jude's in Blurton Road [see map] has a substantial Vietnamese component and, at present, an Irish priest who my County Cavan-born mother-in-law has taken a shine to. I took this photo of the church on 2nd March, the day after St David's day - hence the worshipper with the daffodil. The glorious shaft of light from above suggests God was paying attention that morning. (What do you mean, it's just the sun coming up?)

Blogging The Qur'an

In the 1960s a small boy arrived in London from Pakistan and moved in to his new home by the Pond. There were few mosques in London then and no prospect of attending a madrassa, so he took to studying the Qur'an on his own. Before that, he'd read it with his mother:

"It's an experience shared by most Muslim children. It's usual, once children are about four or five, for mothers to start reading the Qur'an and getting the child to repeat the words, again and again, till they become familiar and can be easily recited from memory. Actually, I started a little late - when I was pushing six. In those days, we lived in a small town on the Pakistani side of the Punjab. After dinner every Thursday evening, my mother would shout: "Sipara time!" I would stop playing, run to her, jump on her lap, and put my left arm around her neck. She would open a slim, rather torn booklet, and start reading: Bismi llahi l-rahmainl-irahim. In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful..."

The small boy was Ziauddin Sardar, a proud Hackneyite, now author of many books on relationships between Islamic cultures and the West, including his autobiography Desperately Seeking Paradise. His latest project is called Blogging The Qur'an. The quote above is from his Introduction to it. The Guardian's brilliant idea was to invite Ziauddin to spend the year examining every verse of Islam's holy book, offering his interpretation of it and responding to readers comments as he goes. Read more about it here - and, of course, join in.