If You Tickle Us...

The above was sent to me with the following text: The matchless Vaad Lemaan Intimidation of the Machane has come close to scoring a spectacular own goal by shielding an apparently known abuser. Local moisdos (and possibly others) recently received the attached letter. Phoning the mobile number given during the designated times goes straight to a pre-recorded message saying only that the person concerned is "Mrs [X]" (that narrows it down, then - presumably it might possibly be the choshuva rebbetzin) and saying that if you want more help, to call 020 xxxx xxxx. Calling that number gets you another voicemail message asking you to leave a message. Having done so, you then eventually get a call back in person from one of the stalwarts of the heilige Va'ad, who "having taken legal advice" explains that, leider, they can't give out her first name. But she is an [X] [X] who has been "abusing against boys", but it seems she's AC/DC and is

Click to enlarge The email you see above (read it slowly and savour the chill as it courses up your spine) appeared in the inbox of a parent trying to get his child into Yesodey Hatorah School. After getting nowhere with the school’s admissions supremo, namely one Abraham/Avrohom/Avraham/Avrumi Pinter, the parent chanced upon the idea of raising his case with The Learning Trust and other public bodies who might be able to assist. The parent had exhausted his efforts with communal bodies and rabbonim but with little to show for it, which will come as no surprise to us locals. And so he started badgering outside bodies in the hope that they can wield the stick that gets our bigwigs quaking in their oversized trousers. This, it appears, earned him the honour to be at the receiving end of the above email. I should add that without an apparent provenance (though do note the sender's ever so clever address) the email may be a mere coincidence with no connection to YHS and its cont

Yesodey Hatorah Admissions Information Pack FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS on admissions to Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School “In drawing up their admission arrangements, admission authorities must ensure that the practices and the criteria used to decide the allocation of school places are fair, clear and objective. Parents should be able to look at a set of arrangements and understand easily how places for that school will be allocated” (Introduction to the School Admission Code, February 2012) 1. Q. I would like to apply for my daughter to join Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School (the School) but she does not attend Yesodey Hatorah Primary School. Can the School refuse my daughter a place because of the primary school she currently or has previously attended? A. No. It is against the law for the School to favour applicants who attended an independent fee-paying primary school. Yesodey Hatorah Primary School is an independent fee-paying school and girls from that sc

1. Set up online account at www.eadmissions.org.uk . This applies to all applicants. If you are applying on a paper form then Hackney residents only should use the application form which can be download here . Residents of other boroughs must contact their home local authorities for an alternative paper form. 2. Complete the Supplementary Information form   and contact the UOHC for it to be signed by a member of the Rabbinate. 3. Complete the application form online or submit your paper application form to your local authority preferably by 25 October 2013 but by no means any later than 31 October 2013. A l ate application will put you at a severe disadvantage. 4. Submit the completed and signed Supplementary Information form to the School by no later than 31 October 2013. 5. Sit back and hope for the best. GOOD LUCK! CONTACT SHEET Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School Egerton Road, London N16 6UB Tel: 020 8826 5500 admin@yesodeyhatorah.org Schoo

For the story so far see here … and now read on. After the auditory contest between voices of reason on one side and cacophonous canines on the other it will come as little surprise to learn that the dogs gained the upper paw. It's not for nothing that 'man bites dog' makes the more implausible headline. What supposedly happened beyond that initially reported was that a group of school heads who did not make it to the Westminster outing wrote to Rav Padwa a sulking letter stating that they do not wish to be represented by AOJSOL. For a start they felt that the acronym is too long for people who on a point of principle shun the English language and unless is was transliterated into Hebrew or circumcised by 3 or more letters they will have nothing to do with tongue twisters of this kind. Besides, it is their firmly held belief that a policy of talking to the authorities and negotiating with the DfE over the secular education of kids carries with it the stench of capitul

Last week pupils at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School were told that there would be an Ofsted inspection yesterday and today. An ‘inspector’ duly turned up yesterday. Ofsted have confirmed that “Ofsted is not conducting an inspection of the school on those two dates.” Parents, as usual, were told nothing. Can the Principal or the Chair of the Board of Governors perhaps clarify what is going on?

Spot the difference Above are recruitment ads for Science and English teachers for the YH Secondary girls' school. Nothing strange in that other than perhaps they may have run out of a ready supply of ex-sem girls and so must cast their net further afield. That however should be a cause for celebration as it indicates that the latest batch of sem graduates have spent their valuable formative years studying how to de-bug lettuce and sew hems and not filling their heads with such narishkeiten as the writings of that notorious anti-semite and his musings on Brutus and Casius. We have hespeidim of gedoilim beginning moirai vraboisai not speeches to friends and countrymen about thrice refusing crowns. That is not the Torah way. Besides, do you know that Science KS3 has life processes as a subject which in turn includes repr-duction, rachmono litzlon ? Is that what we needed a state aided school for to teach our heilige kinderlech how to have more kinderlech kenienehore, chas vc

A show's coming to town. Not quite to our part of town but targeted for our womenfolk though the performances will actually be held in the Camden Town Hall. Prince or Pauper, it's called with the subtitle 'Judge not what thou sees'. That should be 'seest' but let's not get too pernickety over some archaic usage. No cultural event round here can do without its share of controversy though it has been relatively mild in this instance. The rabbis have so far steered clear but with a week to go there is still ample time to pull a rabbit in the last minute so keep your fingers crossed, if that's the right phrase. The Prince will be played by a princess which come to think of it is no worse than Lady Macbeth being played by a man. Yet despite this overstepping of modesty some schools have played safe and banned their charges from attending while others have left it to parental discretion. Since there've so far been no rabbinical interdictions the opin

A silent battle has been raging in Stamford Hill for the last few weeks or even months and possibly years though you would know little about it if you merely followed the local press. The noticeboards have been of some assistance though they also only tell part of the tale. I do not pretend to know all the details so I will present what I do know and leave it to others to fill in the missing bits. Poised on one side is The Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools and Organisations Ltd (AOJSO). Quite a mouth full, I know, but we do like grand sounding names and acronyms round here so let's not dwell on peripheral matters. The AOJSO has made it its task to represent local Jewish schools and yeshivas to government bodies. A notice which popped up on the noticeboards for a short while underlined the object of 'encouraging the fullest co-operation’ between schools and the authorities. Massed on the other extreme is Satmar of the 86 Cazenove chapter and some anonymous activists w

Below is a blog from The Times website. There is little to add other than to disagree with the writer’s statement that the religious education at many of our schools is ‘as high as you might expect.’ The sad truth is that despite more than half a century of phenomenal growth in Torah institutions and tens of thousands of children and teens who have studied little else but Torah and related subjects, the general ignorance of the laity and even of some of the cloth is breath-taking. Fed on an almost exclusive diet of Hebrew texts from the age of 5 and Talmud from 11 and yet some of the most popular books for adults are basic and often crude linear translations of rudimentary texts in the prayers books and the Talmud. There is barely any study or even knowledge of the Bible beyond Deuteronomy. Psalms are chanted endlessly with few comprehending the meaning of the words let alone appreciating the beauty of the poetry. Hebrew poetry, even by ‘kosher’ authors, is simply not available in f

See Part I below Rather than quibble with Ofsted's grading I have run a simple comparison exercise on the Department of Education website comparing YHS to other Hackney secondary schools for which figures are available. The results, which are for 2009-2010, are produced below. I will let the figures speak for themselves and merely say that either the individuals/family/board or whoever runs the school has developed a miraculous formula by which they can achieve an 'Outstanding' grade yet spend overall only 86% of their allocated budget, and less than 50% of it on actual teaching, employ less than a handful of FTE (full time equivalent) qualified teachers, maintain a teacher to pupil ratio that would barely fit the school hall though with a back office budget that exceeds each of the other schools. Or these figures are crying out for some other explanation. Attainment These show YHS to be well above the national average and very high across the board. Who is t

When criticism of YHS is aired, which is not very often since other than a mikveh or shul chat we don't really have a platform for debating these issues and the school is as likely to provide one as chickens would provide a venue for kapores , but nevertheless on those rare occasions when the matter is discussed the stock in trade defence usually goes something like this: Firstly, this is the best you'll ever get round here and if this lot is done away with their replacement is likely to be some truly frightening loonies who will destroy all the positive things about the school. And anyway, the argument continues, the school has been rated Outstanding by Ofsted, their grades are well above average and so what is there to complain about. That the rating did not apply to Governance is unlikely to tax many in Stamford Hill where committees, meetings, minutes, resolutions and votes are not something many lose much sleep over. I do not intend to dwell on these arguments at leng

Letters (not) published in The Write Lines, the famous letters page that arrives from parts other publications won't acknowledge to exist Dear Editor Like all heimishe yieden everywhere I was overwhelmed by hakoras hatov for the dedicated chosheve askonim who have made available the kosher dictionary . I immediately went out to the Hill to get one so that my children ke"h should no longer cholilo come across posule words when doing their homework. (Mentioning homework reminds me of the letter I wrote last year about the geferleche load of homework the girls are given so that they can't help their mothers in the evening, but now I am writing about something else.) I had barely sat down to browse the new dictionary when I landed on my behind after noticing the word 'bum'. I didn't chas v'sholem go looking for such words but it literally stuck itself in my face. Luckily my children were not yet home so I could stick the pages together because oi lorosh

Should you ever have had the good fortune of being invited to a Stamford Hill wedding you will know that of all the songs belted out at these affairs, get me to the church on time is one you will not get to hear. The inoperative word being not so much the church as the ‘on time’ because if anything can be guaranteed it is that the affair will kick off at least an hour late. And that’s early. This is not only a Stamford Hill affliction but one that applies to chasidim in general wherever they happen to dwell. If an explanation were ever needed of this rather unpleasant habit (with which yours truly is equally hampered) the days of selichos which we have just put behind us are as good as any. During the selichos days men rise earlier for the pre- shachris service which commences at about 6.15-6.30a.m. Not terribly early one would think, and not much earlier than many a working person rises to get to work on time. Not everyone gets up that early as there are later services but most w

Some weeks ago in his column Ben Yitzchok referred to a number of schools and praised them for not relying on 'Government finance and educational control'. As to some new state-aided Jewish school in Golders Green he had this to say: '...So why go with a begging bowl to the Government for new schools where the admission policies involve uncertainties, to put it mildly.' He then cited the examples of Dr Schonfeld and Rabbi S Pinter and the schools they started and led respectively -Pinter didn't start any schools- for which they did not rely on outside help. He ends, 'Emulating their example is bound to pay dividends.' This is a perfectly legitimate stance and not so long ago Menorah in North West London was offered voluntary aided status and turned it down, reportedly because they did not want government interference in the running of their school. Indeed Ben Yitzchok expressed similar reservations some 7 years ago when YHS became voluntary aided. There

Shock. Horror. Disgust. Dismay. These are just some of the sentiments expressed by our Dear Leaders among the panoply of emotions generated by the news that elections are to be held in Stamford Hill. Not in our, or their, wildest fantasies did they, or we, imagine that there exists a power to compel anyone in the holy square mile to hold elections. We have been brought up that power is theirs by right, and just occasionally, when a contingency arises, by might, and now we are led to question our most basic and fundamental assumptions. How are we to contend with this, is the question on all lips. Admittedly, local and national elections are held at polling booths within shockling distance of our great institutions, and these are passed by the Rabbonim as permissible so long, of course, that votes are cast in favour of the right candidates. But as with all non-Torah-true influences great care is taken to ensure that alien concepts such as democracy, accountability and transparency do

Little is known of the benevolence of Her Majesty's Government in our circles once Housing Benefit is taken out of the equation. Malchus shel chesed is a nice catchword for those who want us to repose our trust in them as the sole channel to the authorities who must be kept on side lest they herd us all on cattle wagons for transportation to the other side of the river lea. But in our day to day lives any beneficence of the authorities is wiped out by parking tickets, bailiffs and the nazis in the planning department. You could perhaps include the NHS though one could argue how benevolent it is to have to wait in a queue in the early morning cold to get an appointment with a doctor everyone knows to be a shlimazel. As to free education, as far as most Stamford Hillers are concerned it's like western civilisation to Ghandi: not a bad idea. But Yesodey HaTorah was supposed to change all of that. Parents who've been dodging the school-fees collector all their child-rearing