Inside Europe's biggest Hasidic community

[Emmeline]

North London's Hasidic Jewish community is an intensely private world, where marriage is an integral rite of passage, strict rules must be adhered to and faith is taken seriously. Paddy Wivell spent three months finding out what goes on behind closed doors.

More here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13417502

A Hasidic Guide to Love, Marriage and Finding a Bride is on BBC Two, Wednesday 18 May, 2100 BST or catch up later on iPlayer.

[Rachel Bronwyn]

This will be fascinating. I've seen bits and bobs from inside this community (or one much like it) and you'd never guess it's anywhere in the UK. It's practically a little pocket of Isreal in London. The impact "the outside world" has on individuals living within the community is tiny. It's as though the intense privacy of the community has made them immune to assimilation.

[Paula]

Ooh, I'll look forward to it, it's a topic I know little about.

[j.mills]

Comical wedding footage notwithstanding, I found this article on the Beeb rather sad:

North London's Hasidic Jewish community is an intensely private world, where marriage is an integral rite of passage, strict rules must be adhered to and faith is taken seriously...

"Nobody can become a 10-minute Jew," warns Hasidic scholar and Stamford Hill resident Gaby Lock. "It's so vastly away from your way of life that you would have no understanding of it whatsoever."

In Lock's front room, he talks about just a few of the 613 Commandments that govern the lives of the 20,000 orthodox Hasidic Jews who live here. It's already enough to give you a headache.

Out on the streets, men with beards and ringlets wear black hats and coats and hurry to synagogue while women push buggies into kosher supermarkets wearing wigs to protect their modesty...

The Hasidim see a lot of modern technology as a potential danger, putting at risk the spirit of purity and holiness of the community and threatening the innocent minds of its children.

Television is known as "the Yetzer Hara Box" which roughly translated means the "evil temptation machine". Owning one can be likened to "having an open sewer in the lounge"...

The two genders are kept apart at public events and, in orthodox Jewish law, men and women not related or married to each other are not even supposed to look one another in the eye.

"In my mother and father's generation, they wouldn't even meet for an hour [before agreeing to marriage]," says Bresler.

"They met for maybe one or two minutes, say hello to each other and say yes or no. Now some Hasidim are meeting for an hour or maybe two and then getting engaged."

*Sigh* If they want to live under these bonkers restrictions, good luck to 'em. But I think there's a legitimate objection to bringing up children in such a wilfully closed society, probably going to faith schools, with little or no exposure to other ways of living and other beliefs (or lack thereof). It means that when they're old enough to 'choose' how and where to live, it's almost no choice at all, since they'd probably have to abandon their entire social and cultural hinterland to live what we are pleased to call a 'normal' western lifestyle; and the unchallenged beliefs they've been inculcated with and surrounded by must make departure not only difficult but 'sinful'. Positive feedback loop - self-perpetuating meme-plex - inward spiral...

EDIT: To clarify, I don't mean they shouldn't be allowed kids! But they shouldn't be allowed to deny them exposure to other ways of living. No faith schools, that would help to sort it out.

[Hugin]

This will be fascinating. I've seen bits and bobs from inside this community (or one much like it) and you'd never guess it's anywhere in the UK. It's practically a little pocket of Isreal in London. The impact "the outside world" has on individuals living within the community is tiny. It's as though the intense privacy of the community has made them immune to assimilation.

To be fair, most of Israel is not Hasidic, and ultra-Orthodox Jews are the country's most despised minority (yes, moreso than the Israeli Arabs).