Ofsted vs Stamford Hill

It’s an overcast Thursday in March or, according to the Hebrew calendar, the fourteenth day of Adar — Purim — in Stamford Hill. Theologically, the religious holiday of Purim celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people via the foiling of an antisemitic plot and the pre-emptive killing of 70,000 Achaemenidians. But in contemporary Britain, many people just know it as “Jewish Halloween”. 

Stamford Hill’s Jewish roots extend back well into the 18th century. The Sephardic merchant, Moses Vita Montefiore, lived here during the 1760s — Montefiore House School was developed by one of his descendants. Following WWII, thousands of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews settled here after fleeing the Holocaust. Most of these refugees were Hasidic, a subset of Haredi Judaism.  

There are other Haredi neighbourhoods around Britain, such as Golders Green, Salford and Gateshead, but none are quite as inward and self-sustaining as Stamford Hill. It’s estimated there’s about 30,000 Hasidim living there; the area has one of the highest birth rates in the UK. It’s not uncommon for families to contain up to 12 members. Today, everyone’s out in force, many in fancy dress.  

Purim in Stamford Hill has a chaotic, almost hallucinogenic quality to it. Families march down the street with speakers fixed to trollies, kids are dressed as upside-down clowns, caged birds and SWAT team officers. According to Hasidic tradition, dance is tantamount to prayer and, come Purim, the residents of Stamford Hill pray loudly atop rented tour buses, on junctions and in the road, with sound systems blasting Yiddish dubstep. 

However, unbeknownst to most outsiders, all is not well in this community. Beneath the festivities, many have begun to worry that their way of life is under threat. For the past few months, hundreds of Haredi men and boys have been gathering outside parliament denouncing “anti-religious persecution” and “cultural genocide“. In February, a leading rabbi went as far as to suggest that ultra-Orthodox Jews should consider leaving the UK. The rabbi’s concerns related to a bill that’s currently working its way through parliament and to an anxiety to which any community can relate: the future of their children.