GABY KOPPEL
STAMFORD HILL is changing brick by brick. On Clapton Common at the heart of the area known for its thriving Charedi community, a huddle of dingy old bedsits have been replaced by Ilan Square, a smartly appointed block of apartments. Elsewhere too, spanking new buildings have appeared, many of them developed by Agudas Israel Housing Association.
Though there’s clearly still much to do, it’s already been a remarkable transformation made all the more surprising by the woman behind it. The Chief Executive of the only housing association in the country that caters exclusively for Charedi residents is Polish refugee and mother of seven Ita Cymerman-Symons, who realised in the 1980s that her people were in dire need of somewhere to live.
Stamford Hill had been Jewish for decades, but after the war the Strictly Orthodox took refuge here, converting the looming Victorian properties into shtiebels, yeshivahs and homes. As the years passed, their large families began to outgrow the local housing stock and found themselves horribly overcrowded or at the mercy of unscrupulous private landlords. With so many families living in squalor, Symons started thinking about what she could do.
It took a while before the male gatekeepers of the community were prepared to take “Little Ita” seriously. Some laughed, others sneered and even when the organisation was up and running there were those who insisted that you couldn’t possibly put a woman in charge — despite the fact that it was her idea. She wasn’t having any of it.
“They tried to put me down when I started this organisation,” she says, “but I’m like a ball, the harder you knock it down, the higher it jumps back up.” After 40 years of house building, AIHA has close to a thousand properties including an elderly care home in Schonfeld Square and the mother and baby unit on Lordship Road — but their domain also stretches out to North West London, Westcliff, Salford and
Canvey Island. It turned over a cool £14.4 million in 2019. Not bad for “Little Ita”, still running the organisation and still as fearless as ever.
Some see Cymerman-Symons as a one-off, an exception to the rule. Because the public face of the community is a continuum of black hats and beards, it’s assumed that the typical Charedi woman is a stay-athome mum having endless babies and baking challah rather than
— say — running a multi-million pound housing empire. But one well-known local rabbi sees that as an almost deliberate lack of awareness, “Perhaps the Stamford Hill community understands the wider world much better than the wider world understands Stamford Hill,” he says — and Symons agrees.
The public face of Charedi life is male, but women like Ita CymermanSymons (below with Boris Johnson) wield real power
“I think, this is a misconception that the Orthodox Jewish women are in the background, half hidden, doing the cooking and the baking,” she says. “Yes they do that as well, but in our community nothing could be further from the truth — the women in Stamford Hill are probably the most innovative and successful women anywhere. They come forward and get on with it”.
Elsewhere I am told that women are clocking up success as videographers, photographers, accountants, Pilates teachers, graphic designers, interior designers, school principals, business people and even plumbers. There are many inspiring examples like Rebecca Rumpler who couldn’t find a school catering for the needs of her Down Syndrome son so she just went and set one up. Chaya Spitz is the widely admired CEO of Interlink, an umbrella for nonprofit organisations.
But there is still a degree of reticence about coming forward in public, out of deference to a culture which expects ‘modesty’ from women. A wide ranging set of religious and cultural norms, modesty affects everything from wardrobes and wigs to an expectation that women will avoid any behaviour perceived as “showing off”. The rabbis of the Beltz community whipped up a storm of controversy a few years ago when they sent out an edict that women driving “goes against the rules of modesty in our society”.
It is out of concern for modesty that the pages of the Charedi newspapers only feature photographs of men. And when I approached people about this article, I encountered a huge amount of apprehension, with many women cautious about speaking up or — maybe — out of turn.
Yocheved Eiger was happy to be named, though not photographed. Chief Executive of the charity Bikur Cholim, she employs 40 staff organising an army of volunteers delivering emotional and practical help to families dealing with illness and old age. In the past it was a purely voluntary organisation, but in the seventeen years since she arrived it’s changed into a tight professional outfit with a significant budget — a development Eiger is keen to stress was a team effort. It is partnered with local authorities and is accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
A mother of eight, Eiger had no previous experience of running a large organisation, but says “I surrounded myself with people who knew what to do, individuals and companies who were able to advise us. We’ve got an amazing staff team and also that we’ve been able to identify the right people to help us at the right times.”
She says her organisation owes a lot to “women in the community who are completely dedicated and selfless” and though they certainly have the skills to land better paid and more prestigious work elsewhere, prefer to serve their own people.
Acknowledging that some Charedi women are reluctant to be applauded in public for their achievements, she quotes a maxim that Ronald Reagan allegedly kept on his desk in the Oval Office “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.”
It’s a feeling that runs deep. One woman described as a “phenomenal” breaker of stereotypes by a leading rabbi was just as open and candid as I’d hoped she might be, but her children were adament that she should not have her name in the paper. Head of Jewish Studies at a successful secondary school, she’d made light of the challenge of managing a big job and large family.
“More important than delegating is prioritising” she said, identifying her top three goals as happy children, clean house and healthy foods. She believes it’s also important not to be a martyr and to make sure there’s help when you need it.
“In my mother’s time it was almost unknown for women to work outside the home,”she says. Women work now because they need two incomes to survive, she said, and there are more options available.
But not everybody recognises the picture of happy, powerful women changing the world of Stamford Hill. Yehudis Fletcher, founder of pressure group Nahamu, says “they are the community organisers and support workers and charity organisers and grant application writers” , but are not allowed to have any real power.
“‘I feel like they are on a long leash, but it’s a leash nevertheless”. Fletcher points out that the board of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, the community’s influential main representative body is solidly male.
She suggests that the idea of a phalanx of wig wearing ladies forging their way through the world can be both misleading and damaging for those who don’t want to or can’t. After this newspaper ran an opinion piece last year calling Charedi women the “ultimate multitaskers” it drew quite a kickback. An anonymous contributor responded that the “cheerful picture of Charedi life could be wounding to the hundreds of other women who are unhappy, oppressed, fearful and silently screaming”.
Of course there are vulnerable and suffering people in any community — but it’s easy to see how the social mores of Charedi life could result in more anguish than joy for some. Despite this, the consensus still seems to be that the community is changing, albeit slowly. There are now more opportunities for women to flourish outside the home than in the past, and some are grabbing that opportunity with both hands, however discreet they feel they need to be.