Rabbi Abraham Pinter: "When people leave the community they go to the other extreme"

Rabbi Abraham Pinter has answered a number of questions about the Charedi community in Stamford Hill. Here he discusses allegations that womens' rights are under threat at his own school. 

Tension over Charedi sexual harassment claims

A claim that Charedi men "are notorious harassers of the opposite sex" has raised the stakes in a long-running stand off between Professor Geoffrey Alderman and Rabbi Abraham Pinter.

The two men often provide polar opposite arguments about Hackney's Charedi community.

Alderman's run-ins with the 'ultra orthodox Jewish' community have taken in a range of topics from schooling and statistics to "selfishness". Pinter has usually provided the rebuttal.

However tensions were raised to a higher level last week after Alderman wrote a piece in the Jewish Chronicle which said: "It is, however, well known that charedi men are notorious harassers of the opposite sex."

His comments appear to have prompted an organised campaign against him and the newspaper.

Rabbi Pinter told Blood and Property: "Alderman makes an appalling statement of collective libel. In his emails to you he clearly recognizes that he has made an error and should have chosen his words more carefully. However, it is unacceptable for him to try to get out of his problem in private emails to you. He must apologise for the collective libel and then I will be happy to respond."

The article was first discussed by fellow Hackney blogger, If you tickle us, and comments under the post included a pre-written letter to the Press Complaints Commission which the anonymous author hopes will be sent en masse by enraged Charedim. It describes Alderman's views as "unfounded, defamatory and discriminatory".

The same comment also provided an anonymised pre-written letter for the attention of the Jewish Chronicle calling for Alderman's "suspension as (a) writer for the JC pending the results a full investigation" due to his "continuously hateful conduct towards Charedi Jewry as a whole."

Blood and Property asked Alderman if his comments were meant to single out Charedi men as worse harassers of women than other communities or human beings in general.

He said: "That is not what I was saying. I don't know if there is necessarily a higher instance of harassment of women in Charedi communities than in the general population, I don't have statistics to show that, but that's not the point I was making.

"What I was saying is that they - the Charedim - set themselves very high standards which, I'm very sorry to say, they do not reach. They say they are closer to God than any other jewish group and yet this sort of thing still goes on."

Blood and Property asked if it was reasonable to expect any one community to behave better than another one and criticise them if they didn't. Alderman said: "It is they, - the Charedim - who set the standard they seem incapable of reaching. It is obvious to me that growing up in that sort of community does not make you any better than any other person. Do me a favour: ring up Rabbi Pinter (Avrohom Pinter) and ask him why this is so."

Ask him: "Does growing up in your community make you any better - as a Jew - than me? "

As stated above, Pinter told Blood and Property: "Alderman makes an appalling statement of collective libel. In his emails to you he clearly recognizes that he has made an error and should have chosen his words more carefully. However, it is unacceptable for him to try to get out of his problem in private emails to you. He must apologize for the collective libel and then I will be happy to respond."

Alderman said he didn't have a problem with the formal treatment of women in the Charedi community saying that the women were often the bread winners. He added that when he got married in the Lea Bridge Road synagogue in Clapton in 1973 a number of his wife's relatives, Chardim from Stamford Hill - came to the wedding and they themselves offered a neat loophole to the gender segregation problem - by asking that each family sit as a group at each table.

Alderman also pointed out that the content of his column was discussed, edited and approved by the newspaper before publication so any division between himself and the newspaper over the piece was unlikely.

Hackney play area or evil vortex?

This week Hackney Bloggers have delivered...

Supernatural

Be afraid because, apparently: 'This (Hackney) playground is much more than a play area, its an energy vortex which was marked out and built by Hackney Council planners and construction contractors.... Why go to so much trouble to build a child safe play area with the newest technology in safety turfing to place a boulder on top of that MOUND. Even if you don't believe a word we say, its pretty odd don't you agree?' (Up there with that masonic pyramid on Canary Wharf and Hawksmoor's pentagon of East End churches.)

Natural

Returning to the real world Northern Rustic points out some exotic looking birds in Hackney (he now seems to have a site dedicated to the Birds of Stoke Newington Reservoirs). This week on Northern Rustic it is Waxwings (as it was at the end of Feb) possibly because: 'It could be a long time before our dark urban borough is graced by them again, so it seems only just to make the most of them'.

Ultra Orthodox

Hackney blogger 'If you tickle us' hit the headlines last week via an article in the Telegraph about Stamford Hill. This promted a flurry of activity and as Tickle said: 'The Hill is alive with the sound of comments.'

A colleague at work pointed out where the 'If you tickle us' might be from (I didn't know): Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice: 'Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?' (Meanwhile, if you are in need of more conspiracy theories, here's one about Shakespeare and Hackney)

Free schools in Hackney?
This week's Hackney Gazette has a letter from lots of top Hackney folk complaining about the idea of a free school in Hackney. They say: 'While the public will be paying for them, we will have absolutely no say in how they are run or to hold them to account in the event of problems'. This sounds pretty much like academies which, it is rumoured, are slave-ships for teachers, and also steal each others teachers as if they were competing businesses, and which are not subject to freedom of information act.... but are otherwise loved - may be by some of Labour Party people on the list of objectors to free schools.

Well Street in the FT
This weekend's Financial Times had a piece about a charity set up to help poor people in the East End evicting Well Street shopkeepers. The FT reported: "They want to increase my annual rent from £5,000 to £9,000,” says Danny Rao, who runs the street’s post office. “If that happens, I’ll have to close down. And if I close down, half the street’s going to be dead." That will leave lots of room for more off licences and betting shops - the only money-making shops on Hackney highstreets these days - apart from Tescos, but there's one of them there already. Hopefully the FT's undercover economist and Hackney resident Tim Harford will shed light on whether a charity should be denied the right to ask shopkeepers to pay a market rate rent, and whether there is a cause to fight for here.

Democracy problem in Stamford Hill on the mend?

It is hard to tell how significant this may be but an election is due to take place for a parent governor at the Yesodey Hatorah Senior School for girls.

Here's an extract from If you tickle us we will laugh:

.... News reaches me that, to the consternation of those who dictate our way of life, Yesodei Hatorah Secondary School will be holding elections for a Parent Governor.

And if that isn’t enough, apparently a species of the fairer sex has had the temerity to stand for the position. I mean, what is the world coming to if a woman can try and elicit votes from parents which include men (though one wouldn’t think so when attending open days, parent evenings, graduation ceremonies or any other school activity except if it includes a visit by the PM or a few police officers when the men all miraculously appear)?

How, we all ask, has it come to this? Where have we gone wrong? Is this the result of a (non-existent) fair admissions policy? Is it the influence of having, G-d forbid, parents with tops which indicate a shape beneath and skirts which hint at legs ambulating within?

Some of the school's decisions about admissions were recently overruled after being appealed by parents.

Geoffrey Alderman, a commentator on the community, took an interest in the issue. Meanwhile the school's principal (I think), Rabbi Abraham Pinter, provided some comment on the situation, as did the learning trust.

Some of the issues about democracy and the Ultra Orthodox Jewish community have been discussed on Blood and Property before - they also surfaced in the last council meeting when Labour councillors more than implied that the political representatives for the community (the Conservative Party) were not doing an effective job (The suggestion was that the long-running dispute about loft extensions had over-ridden issues concerning the poorest members of the Ultra Orthodox Jewish community who have failed to use the benefits to which they are entitled.)

If anyone was at this event: http://www.thejc.com/community/local-news/40616/hackney-councillors-support-local-limmud this evening (Sunday) it would be great to find out what was said.

Apparently "Liberal Democrat Ian Sharer and Conservative Simche Steinberger will be part of a panel discussion on how their Jewish values led them into politics."