Behind the closed doors of the Hasidic community

18 May 2011 Last updated at 14:12 GMT 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. Film-maker Paddy Wivell spent three months finding out what goes on behind closed doors and how an outsider is received.

"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 change between Stamford Hill and even a just a mile down the road is like crossing a border into another country.

"[There are] laws concerning charity, laws concerning the salting of meat, rules concerning the eating of meals, laws about how to go the toilet," says Lock, plucking passages at random from just one of his volumes of the Code of Jewish Law.

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In my parent's generation, they wouldn't even meet for an hour [before agreeing to marriage]”

End Quote Avi Bresler Hasidic Jew Along with these rules, the desire for privacy and scepticism about the media makes it difficult to speak to anyone.

"Everyone is very secretive," says Lock's wife Tikwah, who has been married to him for 40 years.

"They're thinking about the children they have to marry off and what will harm their name. Blow it all. We just say what we like, especially my husband."

Lock smiles. He is rare in this community - someone happy to engage with outside media. In fact, he quite enjoys ruffling feathers.

He is considered something of a rebel but in the village-like atmosphere of Stamford Hill, even he doesn't want to be too conspicuous and won't be filmed outside the confines of his home.

A lot of the community is very open and engaging to speak to, but most are unwilling to appear on camera.

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There are 613 rules - or Mitzvot - governing traditional Jewish law, based around the 10 commandments. Some of them are fundamental, others are a little more obscure...

Not to follow the whims of your heart or what your eyes seeNot to make human forms even for decorative purposesNot to plant a tree in the Temple courtyardNot to engage in astrologyMen must not shave the hair off the sides of their headNot to do prohibited labour on the seventh dayTo have children with one's wifeNot divorcing woman he has raped and been compelled to marryNot selling a captive womanAn employee is allowed to eat the produce he's working inIn my three months there, the only people willing to speak on camera were those on the outside of the community, the less conventional or traditional Hasidim - and they were few and far between.

Avi Bresler, a 41-year-old father of five, has been living in the community since he moved from Israel as a teenager. His eldest son, Yitzchok Mair, is getting married to a girl called Simcha who moved to Stamford Hill with her family from Yemen.

According to Bresler, the commandment to marry is one of the most important of all.

"You know, I've already been invited to over a hundred weddings this year - it's normal round here," he says.

Most Hasidic people marry young. A normal age for boys and girls in this community - by that point becoming men and women - to get married is around 18 or 19 years old.

Their parents normally hire a shadchan (matchmaker), as there is little chance of meeting a girl any other way. 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."

Bresler's son met his bride-to-be a little less conventionally - when he was working behind the till in one of his dad's grocery shops.

The Hasidic community in Stamford Hill, north London, is the largest of its kind in Europe

"You must think we are mad in our black hats and coats," he says.

"But I can see the world through your eyes."

Bresler has done something that sets him apart from the rest of the community.

He spent over four years in prison for money laundering. According to the prosecution, just over ?6.5m was found, to be used to buy drugs from Colombia.

And though divorce is rare, Bresler is separated from his wife and lives alone on the outskirts of Stamford Hill.

While in most communities, this would mean many would be wary of him, the Hasidic community has welcomed him back despite having "made a bit of a mess of his life", as Lock's wife Tikwah puts it.

It does mean, however, that matchmakers could find it difficult to find partners for his other children.

'Modest' ceremony

On arriving at the wedding venue, Bresler points to a group of men putting up a white curtain that will divide the male and female guests.

"If you want, you can film the other side if you use a ladder, but don't go round there," he says.

Bresler is putting on a reception for over 400 guests but, he says, it is not an opulent wedding, quite modest in fact.

The ceremony begins with a solemn service held under an outdoor canopy known as the chuppah. The bride circles the groom seven times and they recite seven blessings.

Bresler's son looks particularly nervous, but that is hardly surprising when you think it was the first night the couple will be permitted to touch each other.

After a meal and blessings, tables and chairs are hastily moved from the centre of the room.

Tikwah says she was scared of her husband Gaby when they first got married and moved in together

And it is here where things change from the way you might expect.

Men dance in circles and then in lines, then back in circles again. Bresler hands out tumblers of whisky, filling and refilling them. The groom is hoisted in his chair and throws money in the direction of his bride.

The sweating groom is lowered and four men rush towards him with a table and start fanning him with it. Someone starts break-dancing but not very well.

Bresler is charging more glasses. "I cannot stand up," he shouts. "I'm too drunk."

I'd expected something more serious and more sombre from such devoutly religious people.

But as one guest put it, "you can feel it in the air, how much people are loving". At the celebration filled with people I had little in common with and barely knew, I had that feeling as well.

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The world behind your £3 cup of coffee

19 May 2011 Last updated at 10:30 GMT Most people don't give much thought to where the coffee process starts, but what is behind your ?3 cup of coffee, asks actress Hayley Atwell.

When I was 18, I worked in a coffee shop in central London. I would open the shop at 7am and serve coffee until four in the afternoon.

The boss taught me how to foam the milk so thick that the neck of the spoon rested on top, and took 30 seconds to sink into the coffee below. I still don't know if that's how a cappuccino should be made, but I thought it was pretty fancy at the time.

That experience paid for part of a RADA Shakespeare course - and a ticket to LA. This is the part coffee has played in my life. A decade later, I'm still hankering after a cup of the stuff most afternoons. It's about ?3 and it adds up.

Until last month, when I was invited to Nicaragua with Christian Aid, I hadn't really given that much thought to where the coffee process starts - where coffee is grown and produced, and who profits from that ?3.

The first thing that struck me about the country was how lush and green it was. How then, if it was abundant with natural resources like coffee and banana plants, was it the second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti?

Struggling farmers

The conclusion I came to was this: disparity - the gap between the richness of its land and the material poverty of its people.

Hayley Atwell partly funded a drama course by working in a coffee shop

At the turn of the century, cheap imports drove down the world coffee market to nearly a third of its value. As a result, farmers were struggling to recoup their costs.

Soppexcca, a collective of 18 co-operatives founded 12 years ago to help coffee producers back on their feet, changed all that.

The way the co-operative works is simple: a small loan is given to a farmer who then buys land, seeds, fertiliser and employs labourers to work that land. The coffee they produce is processed further and sold by Soppexcca, mostly to overseas traders at a fair price.

We set off on a week-long journey through two communities. The first was La Paz del Tuma in the region of Jinotega. They have no running water, no toilets and no health centre. The children are schooled in an old room that once stored harmful chemicals.

Farmers have only been working as a co-operative for a short time and already a plot of land has been marked out for a new school the parents hope to build with the money they make through the scheme one day.

The second community, Los Alpes, has been working with Soppexcca for 12 years and the difference is astonishing. A leader, Gustavo Adolfo Talavera, took charge of his failing community by educating the children in his own back garden until the community had enough money and put in their labour to build a school, from the proceeds of their coffee.

Soppexcca also funds clubs such as "Coffee Kids" which teaches children agriculture and later offers them the chance to become expert coffee tasters and baristas.

I met a lot of local heroes on this trip, individuals who strive to move their communities forward so their children have a better quality of life.

It's extraordinary to meet Beatriz Alvarez, one of the very few women in Nicaragua brave enough to start her own coffee business, despite the lack of support and education usually offered to women. A petite and beautiful lady who had once lived in a shack of mud and plastic now has her own house and coffee plantation.

I'd love to say my taste buds also changed in that week. After a coffee-tasting lesson with one of the best baristas in the country, I was still none the wiser about whether one cup is a citrus-burst or an earthy oak. But I did know it was delicious and that I'll continue to drink coffee.

Now the next cup I drink will remind me how we are all in some way connected and responsible for the choices we make.

Before you know it, your daily choices in something as simple as a cup of coffee contribute to the well-being, or to the destruction of, coffee-producing communities around the world.

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