I am unfortunately unable to commence a review of the Oxford Fashion Gala without confirming that yes, I was the model who fell down the stairs on the runway. But it was worth it for the shoes.
I jumped at the chance to get involved with the fashion show: I’m graduating in a few months, and it was a great opportunity to mix with some of the most fashionable denizens of Oxford. The attendees did not disappoint clothes-wise – the call to ‘dress like Anna Wintour is watching’ was absolutely met. While some met the theme with glamourous black-tie looks, equally interesting were those who mixed high-fashion creatively with street style.
The outfit I chose to go with comprised an upcycled corset top and denim flares. I had been meaning to rework a pink velour sweater and rehabilitate the skinny jeans I had kept from my teens for a long time, and I resolved that this would be their time to shine. During the Easter vacation I got sewing, and while the corset top was a far more successful (read less frustrating) project, I ended up being happy with both pieces.
I chose to model my own pieces, as when I sew I just measure the proportions to my own body, and I had a lot of fun walking the Freud runway. Despite falling down the stairs, I like to believe I pulled it off (please don’t tell me otherwise). I channelled angry high fashion model face and loped along in my friend’s towering gothy platforms. You would never have known from the high level of professionalism that most of the models had no prior experience walking a catwalk. It was an absolute joy to see all of the hand-crafted looks on display – from patchwork crochet dresses to eighties-inspired blazers. When the designers came onstage at the end of the catwalk they received a well-deserved round of raucous applause.
Overall, the Gala was a delight – let’s hope that The Second Tuesday in Trinity 2023 lives up to the inaugural event!
The United States of America is a deeply broken country. This was driven home to me, as it was for many others, by the recent leaking of the potential Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark legal case protecting the right to abortion in the United States.
I could of course fill all the pages of this newspaper with the many sound arguments for legal and safe abortion access: studies have shown that the rate of abortion is similar whether or not they are legal, so criminalisation only prevents safe abortions; a small group of religious fundamentalists should not have the right to impose their beliefs on others, especially in a country which enshrines separation of church and state in its constitution; criminalising abortion is patently about control of bodies with uteruses rather than about protecting life, since otherwise “pro-lifers” (really pro-birthers) would also be interested in promoting policies such as free and high-quality healthcare, given that the US has a remarkably high mortality rate of birthing parents for a high-income country. But to rehearse all these arguments at length would be a waste of time, since at the end of the day it comes down to this: we either believe in bodily autonomy or we don’t.
Ultimately, no one is entitled to use your body for their own survival against your will. This is an accepted principle in ethics and in law. Regardless of whether we think that a fetus is a human being, regardless of whether we think that life begins at conception, regardless of whether the fetus would one day grow up to cure cancer: if we can accept that no one can force you to donate an organ to save someone who will otherwise die (which legally, they cannot), and we can accept that no one is allowed to take your organs from you even after death without your explicit prior permission (which again, legally they cannot), we must also accept that no one can force you to use your body to support the development of a fetus without your consent. Otherwise, we admit that people with uteruses are to us less deserving of bodily autonomy than the dead.
Infuriatingly and devastatingly, this seems to be precisely what the Supreme Court thinks.
I’m sure it barely needs pointing out that there is also a strong intersectional dimension to the fight over reproductive rights. As many have voiced, it is not rich, white, cisgender women who will be prevented from undergoing abortions – many of them will be able to travel elsewhere and pay to have the procedure carried out by a discreet professional. Banning abortion serves primarily to trap the structurally disadvantaged into a poverty cycle, fuelling the already enormous socioeconomic divide in the United States which, it should now be abundantly clear, is a product of political design. The recriminalisation of abortion, which under Roe v. Wade hinges on the right to privacy, is also likely to affect other hard-won legal protections, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community. Furthermore, it has been interesting (and disappointing) in recent months to see how it takes the threat to the legality of abortion – something which affects people of all classes and backgrounds, much as certain parties might like to pretend otherwise – to bring many white middle-class feminists out of the woodwork in fighting against criminalisation of the most vulnerable. The struggle against abortion criminalisation is inextricably connected to the wider struggle for radical reform of the criminal justice system; the prison-industrial complex and its stark inequalities and injustices in the United States is a vast and wide-reaching problem, and yet many people seem only to start to care when they feel personally threatened. Let this dark moment in American history sear into our minds once and for all, wherever we are, the necessity of standing up for each other and for what is right – for what kind of people and what kind of country we want to be – from the very beginning.
The famous assertion in the United States Declaration of Independence of the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, now rings so hollow it feels like a cruel joke.
Because whose life? Whose liberty? Whose happiness?
The speaker in Anna Cowan’s poem herself undertakes a myth-making activity in playing her harp. “It is time”, she declares, as she unshackles the spirit of her surroundings, coaxing all still things into motion. She introduces her poem: “This is a poem of the mysteries of the harp. My instrument transports me to an ancient memory of its Celtic heritage which surrounds the music and the imagination when I play. These are some tales which present themselves to me through the harp, bordering reality and the old magic, like my beloved Shropshire bridges England and Wales. I usually accompany this poem with my harp, so consider turning on some Welsh trad harp to read to! Let us begin with a Shropshire proverb.“
I am of Shropshire, my shins be sharpe.
Lay wood to the fyre and dresse me my harpe
It is time.
When I play, I pull the faeries from the woodwork
I enchant the spirits from the ceiling beams,
old oak, auld oak,
struts darkened in the farmhouse
since cows crowded the kitchen wall.
Old fireplace, do you remember the rival warmth?
Red brick hearts ticking in the heat
and the gentle must, rising
from broad threadbare backs.
Wet tongue swipes idly over the snubbed nose.
A commotion in the barn –
sudden shifting, sudden strewn hay,
A revelation of glassy eyes,
lids flicked wide in surprise.
It was only a sudden pigeon.
The herd tension subsides –
a maverick’s swaying tail,
nonchalant, switch switch
All this past
I conjure on the strings.
When I play, the fey tremble behind the oak leaves,
This Passover, I actually celebrated Passover. Sort of.
That is to say, while I was in Germany with my boyfriend’s (also Jewish) family, I participated in not one but two seders – an exemplary start to Passover for someone who usually marks the holiday by just eating some matzah and calling it a day (or eight). There were seder plates, there was reading of the Haggadah (albeit a speedy version – we were hungry), there was singing in Hebrew, there was Manischewitz, and yes, there was The Prince of Egypt, a classic Passover film. Not a crumb of chametz passed my lips.
Except, as soon as I was left to my own devices at the airport on the third day of Passover, I succumbed to the temptation presented by my last opportunity, at least for some months, to eat a German pretzel. Oh well – nothing more Jewish than guilt, anyway.
Speaking of guilt; I should confess at long last, dear reader, that after a year of writing this column, I still feel kind of guilty about it. Why? Because deep down, some part of me really doesn’t believe I’m Jewish enough to broadcast it to the world (or at least the limited world of Cherwell’s readership – no offence to my wonderful colleagues), much less to embarrass myself by trying to educate others about Jewishness, when I can’t last three days of Passover without eating a pretzel. Jewish holidays in particular, as I have mentioned in a previous article, always rouse in me a particular discomfort, since, in the company of more ‘proper’ Jews who actually know the right traditions and can pronounce the Hebrew, I feel decidedly like I’m failing some kind of test.
Of course, I know on an intellectual level that just because I can’t read (much less speak) Hebrew, I don’t pray or pronounce blessings, and I don’t make a particular effort to keep kosher doesn’t change the fact that I’m Jewish. I was born Jewish and I’ll die Jewish; as far as I’m concerned, there’s no opt-out box on that one. I also believe that such a complex identity shouldn’t be reduced only to following a prescriptive set of ancient rules, which may not suit me anyway – I don’t believe in God (please contain your shock!), so regardless of my lack of Hebrew, saying prayers of any kind has never felt comfortable to me in any case.
As it happened, shortly before we left for Frankfurt for the first seder, I got into a conversation with an old friend of my boyfriend’s dad about Judaism, and specifically about whether it was too focused on rules. He argued that it was, and on thinking about it, I was inclined to agree, and realised that actually this pinpointed the very source of much of my discomfort – though in my view, Jewishness doesn’t have to be this way. I think that the obsession with observance derives from the sort of siege mentality which has, understandably, developed in many Jews as a result of millenia of oppression – the twin threats of antisemitism on the one hand and assimilation on the other can make us feel like we’re constantly teetering on the edge of oblivion, and so must cling ferociously to our traditions in order to ground ourselves. There is of course nothing wrong with tradition per se, but it seems to me personally that too much obsession with the particulars of the rules and their loopholes seems to distract from the overall purpose of the activity; for example, if the core message of Shabbat is rest, surely I would rest better by worrying less about whether I’m resting ‘correctly’?
The aspects of the Passover celebrations I most enjoyed were discussing our own views on theology and ethics while going for a long walk, participating in a joyful and loud family dinner, and curling up with mugs of tea to watch The Prince of Egypt. Incidentally, the film classic is much more my speed than the Haggadah, which got me thinking: does it matter how we tell the story, so long as we do? I think if I were to plan my own Pesach celebration, I would decide it didn’t; why stumble over words I don’t understand in praise of a God I don’t believe in, when I could interpret the story in my own words, on terms that make it meaningful for me? Perhaps the question of how we can connect to traditions authentically, without doing things we don’t believe in for the sake of it or giving up on truly living our Jewishness, is a universal diasporic and/or secular conundrum. But as far as I’m concerned, family, friends, food, storytelling, and yes, also critical thinking, are the real Jewish values I want to hold on to.
Passover terms
Seder: the ritual dinner which takes place on the first night (or two nights) of Passover.
Haggadah: the text recited at Seder, which includes the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.
Manischewitz: sweet kosher wine.
Chametz: foods containing leavening agents, which cannot be eaten during Passover.
Boris Johnson was wrong when he said Vladimir Putin was in a “total panic” about revolution at home. Olaf Scholz was also wrong in saying that the war was about ‘individuals,’ that the war was ‘Putin’s war’, and his alone. These are fantasies, encouraged by the complacency of democracy and a stubborn misunderstanding of the Russian state. Their words imply that the war in Ukraine has been launched against the true wishes of the Russian people who were, hitherto, cowed by state repression into backing the war. This robs them of the only agency that remains to them in Putin’s wartime Russia – the choice of what to think. In Russia, we are now seeing the population deciding to align with state propaganda. The mass of the population is standing with Putin and becoming more firm in their anti-Western viewpoints. The success of Putinism in this regard relies on Russians’ lost faith in democracy and capitalism dating from three decades ago. Putin’s kleptocracy becomes the best of two bad options. Failure to recognise this when the war ends condemns the West to commit the same mistakes it made thirty years ago when the USSR fell, which have led us to where we are today.
The threshold of responsibility
All available polling in Russia suggests at least passive support for the “special military operation”. Nowhere is it called a war, and any such reference incurs the wrath of the state. Russian police in February even arrested one woman from Nizhnii Novgorod for standing with a blank placard. The effect of this repression – and the influence of state propaganda – further submerges the Russian people into catatonic political passivity. State-run polls find strong support from ordinary Russians, as high as 80%. Of course these organisations are set up to produce results in support of government policy. Historically, they have done this by asking loaded questions, altering the figures (for example by including “neutral” respondents in “positive” or “negative” categories depending on if this supports the official line). But polls conducted last month by the Levada Centre (the last among Russia’s independent pollsters) also found similar results. 60% blamed the US and NATO for any escalation. Another poll by Savanta ComRes, a British firm, found that half the Russian population thought it right to intervene militarily in the ex-Soviet states or against Ukraine to pre-empt the threat from NATO.
Some commentators have turned on Russians as categorically complicit in the war. “Russian communities around the world are as dangerous as ISIS”, writes Ukraine’s former Deputy Minister of Culture. “Good Russians do not exist”. The 15,000 arrests for anti-war demonstrating gives the lie to this claim. Furthermore, limited access to social media in Russia means it has become easier to consolidate the line that there is no general “invasion” of Ukraine, but a war in defence of Russians in the East against a proclaimed Nazi enemy. It is harder to decry an entire people as complicit in a criminal war of aggression if they do not believe they are fighting one.
But Russians, as post-Soviet citizens, know as well as any people the lies that are told during wartime. Government perfidy was fundamental to the Soviet-Afghan War, where news coverage remained euphemistically doctrinaire eight years into the war. After 1987, glasnost exposed the disparity between government narratives and the war’s reality, contributing to the demise of the Communist Party’s credibility in the popular eye, and thus the efficacy of using force to defend it. Despite tepid support for the wars in Chechnya, the government was able to maintain sufficient support by describing it as a necessary sacrifice against terrorism, rather than a brutal resolution to a civil conflict. Casualties were also covered up by the government. Moscow has cravenly lied to the Russian people in every war it has waged. The Russian people – not just Petersburg and Muscovite intelligentsia, but the mothers of killed rural conscripts – know this. At some point, every person makes the choice to swallow the newest war propaganda whole. At its most tragic, this has led Russians to ignore their cognitive dissonance and reject the accounts of their Russian-speaking relatives suffering in Ukraine. Marina Ovsyannikova (the Channel Oneeditor who demonstrated with an anti-war sign during live broadcast) has described the Russian populace as “zombified.” But this is not just a passive process – Russian people have played a role in their own political self-neutralisation.
The outcome of this state of affairs is both farce and genocide. As has been successfully argued elsewhere, silent assent allows the continued butchering of civilians in Ukraine. This is doomer politics.
Doomer politics
The “doomer” subculture was born as an American climate-apocalypse-prepper thread on 4chan in 2018. It was then later adopted on some Russian social media, where it took on an even more nihilistic character. Fatalism melded with post-Soviet dereliction aesthetics and punk, as predominantly young men frequented online threads to cope with lives they felt were stymied by failure or lack of opportunity. Doomers lament lack of choice in their own lives, and a reality which is otherwise unbearable.
Most Russians are not familiar with “doomer culture”. Nevertheless, it serves as an epitome for their current state. Key to reluctant support for Putin, apathy in opposition as a population, and decision to believe state propaganda is a persistent narrative that there is no better option. “The post-modern authoritarian”, writes Professor Mark Galeotti, “knows that love can be fickle and fear destructive, such that apathy is better than both.”
Surely, once the benighted Russian public is freed from the propaganda, they will come round to our way of viewing things? In short, no. The current system brings repression and economic stagnation, but the alternative – Western capitalism – is remembered by the average Russian as one of corruption, poverty and humiliation. 1990s ‘shock therapy’ brought an inefficient but more stable Soviet system crashing down. Between 1990 and 2003, the Russian suicide rate doubled. By 1999, the life expectancy of Russian men had fallen to 58. ‘Gangster capitalism’ saw businessmen and journalists killed in their homes in front of their families, and high-ranking mobsters afforded lavish public funerals in full view of ordinary people eking out meagre livelihoods. Russians witnessed the true glory of liberal democracy in the murky 1996 general election, the result of which – Yeltsin’s re-election against a resurgent Communist Party – many contest to this day. Even by the early 2000s, this era was labelled the ‘Dark Past’.
The absence of hope for change breeds apathy and inaction. Tellingly, 56% of Russians surveyed in February declared they were not really following events in Ukraine. The tragic vacuum of hope for credible alternatives breed in submission to the official narrative. Putin’s 21st February “Century of Betrayal” speech epitomises this kind of thinking.
Belarussian author and dissident Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history of the post-Soviet era, Secondhand Time, provides a heart-rending and insightful look at the lived experience of doomer politics. The account of one woman, Marina Tikhonova Isaichik, the neighbour of Aleksandr Porfirievich Sharpilo, a 63-year-old retiree who succumbed to suicide, epitomises the sentiment so well it is worth repeating in full.
“On the radio, they’d said that after the war was over, we would all be happy, and Khrushchev, I remember, promised… he said that communism would soon be upon us. Gorbachev swore it, too, and he spoke so beautifully… Now Yeltsin’s making the same promises… I waited and waited for the good life to come. When I was little, I waited for it… and then when I got a little older… Now I’m old. To make a long story short, everyone lied and things only ever got worse. Wait and see, wait and suffer… Our Sashka… He waited and waited and then he couldn’t take it any longer… People have started believing in God again because there is no other hope… [We] defeated Hitler!… But what am I today? Who are we now?… I watch TV, I never miss the news… we’re the electorate now. Our job is to go and vote for the right candidate and then call it a day. I was sick one time and didn’t make it to the polling station, so they drove over here themselves. With a red box. That’s the one day they actually remember us… Sashka made the decision to stop living… Returned his ticket back to God himself.”
When asked in 2021, half of the Russian population surveyed declared they were against democracy. So, few will risk death or imprisonment trying to replace the current system for something they could not guarantee would be any better.
The death spiral
Doomer politics has ensured that the kids of the perestroika years and the 1990s are permanently lost to the West. Can the Russian youth arrest this process? This demographic is the country’s most-democratically minded and Western-facing. One survey by the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2017 found that the share of those under 25 who support human rights is almost twice as high as the share of supporters of the priority of state interests. Among those 61 and older, that ratio was the reverse. However, those surveyed were predominantly educated urbanites who are now fleeing Russia in droves. Denis Volkov, Navalny’s campaign manager, is not so optimistic. Volkov concedes that his boss’s campaign had to compete with the fact that most Russians under 25 remain loyal to the regime (including the many young soldiers dying in Ukraine). In “deep Russia”, the small towns and villages far away from Moscow or St Petersburg, the usage of television – and thus reach of state propaganda – is demonstrably higher than in the larger cities. Those with democratic or anti-Putin inclinations are now mainly imprisoned, emigrating, or living in self-imposed silence.
It may already be too late. For those who stay, the suffering of war will leave ample chance for doomer politics to capture the youth as well. The apathy that empowers Putin and resentment that governs Russian attitudes toward the West and fuel the war in Ukraine take root in a generation which looked like it might be the first to buck the trend. The new generation morphs into its predecessors.
The Russian public is closing ranks with the government and hunkering down for the sacrifices the country requires of them. Already, in view of food shortages, people are fatalistically discussing a return to Soviet conditions. Comprehensive trade embargos designed to truly explode the Russian economy will first impact the poor and disadvantaged who constitute Putin’s most reliable constituencies, pushing the two closer together. Putin’s extensive purges, mass arrests, and crackdown on independent media are foreboding signs of an impending spiral of violence in Russia if the war continues as badly as it currently is. Russian civil society is figuratively and literally entering into a death spiral.
Potentially, there is a breaking point where the populace rejects the government line in view of rising casualties and an imploding economy. It happened in the First World War. Like in 2022, 1914 saw mass support for war and expressions of Russian nationalism. Huge casualties and military failure intensified public opposition, and the Tsar was ousted in the February Revolution of 1917. But the First World War is not the only parallel. More recent Russian history reveals a different pattern. The true narratives about the Soviet War in Afghanistan proliferated when they were eventually allowed to by the government. Equally, as historians acknowledge, the fall of the Soviet empire and demise of the Communist Party was not forced by internal opposition, but by the decisions of Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides to abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine (military repression of internal dissent) and their move toward open expression. There is no indication the Putin regime will do anything similar. Moreover, the dissent of 1917 and 1989 reached its apogee when desirable political alternatives presented themselves. Doomer politics may preclude this happening now.
The end
The end of doomer politics will require the ideal scenario of regime change, and then that the West actually demonstrate to Russians that there is a workable alternative to the way their country is run. Democracy here is not the first answer: the first answer is eliminating institutionalised corruption, the only issue which truly unites ordinary Russians in political opposition. Only by eliminating corruption can any government in turn show that liberal democracy can accommodate political pluralism, and crucially, that it will reflect their input, as many believe it failed to do in 1996 and thereafter. Russians will have to be persuaded that their nation does not benefit from the anti-intellectual, unconditional nationalism they currently espouse; and that economic change will not force ordinary citizens to choose again between the zombifying repression of the forever powerful or the cut-throat chaos of the newly wealthy. It is hard to see how Russian civil society will achieve this itself, considering its post-Soviet experience. It is even more difficult to imagine acceptance of foreign involvement in bringing this about, since in present-day Russia any unrest is readily denounced as a foreign plot.
The Biden Administration shows foresight in committing to an Anti-Corruption Strategy in the years ahead. Yet eliminating corruption is a task incomplete even in our own country, and an extremely difficult one in the Russian klepto-state, which perpetuates an age-old culture of corruption that would require decades of work – at minimum – to eradicate. It is hard to imagine the Ukrainians will have the forgiveness for any such scheme. Meanwhile, the EU is already straining politically under the internal pressure of Orban’s pro-Putin illiberalism and the threat of a far-right government in France. Washington is preparing to square up against a rising China and possibly even a resurgent Trump in 2024. These would probably be higher priorities. Even if Russia lost the war completely, Putin fell from power and was replaced by a more benign leadership, and the Ukrainians acquiesced to a conciliatory post-war settlement, there is no guarantee Western leaders would possess the attention, patience or consistency to see such a project to its conclusion.
I, and the Russians whom I know, hope that there will be some turn in the Russian population against the war and the genocidal aggression they are led to support by the state. Sadly, they do not represent the general sentiment back home. Putin’s war-mongering is as much the fuel behind the death spiral as the hopeless acquiescence of a nation of Marina Isaichiks. To Johnson and Scholz, I say that it is better to see things as they are rather than how we would want them to be.
Meanwhile, Russian civil society continues on its death spiral.
Many gay people go through their teenage years realising who they are and, more often than not, coming to believe that it makes them flawed, maybe fatally. We are taught by society to keep our identity hidden because it is something ‘bad’ and ‘different’. It takes an awful lot of struggle, hard work, and courage to get to the point where you not only accept your identity but are proud of it and make the decision to be open about yourself. It’s a long, hard journey with many difficulties. And so, when I see the news that Warner Bros has censored a gay scene from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore for screening in China, my stomach turns. I know how it would have felt for a younger me to come across the article and be reminded, yet again, of how ‘unacceptable’ I was; it would have reinforced my belief that I had to, in effect, censure my gayness from the image I projected onto the world. I feel for those queer people in China, who will now miss a rare chance to see their identity portrayed on screen and to feel included.
Though I am mindful of superficially imposing Western morals and attitudes on other cultures, I believe the LGBTQ+ community in the UK must utilise our comparably privileged position to empower and embolden fellow members of our community who are persecuted by law to push for change. The fact that this cinematic decision was so widely publicised and condemned indicates increasing calls for justice in today’s media; however, given that a US company approved the censorship, it is evident the battle for representation is far from over. A refusal to censor would have been a powerful message, giving a much needed boost to queer communities both in China and worldwide. Instead, the decision is emblematic of the current domestic climate in US politics, where prejudice is firmly imprinting itself in the mainstream. I cannot help but see that once again money and profits have taken precedence over persecuted people.
It is likely that Warner Bros made the decision to include a gay couple in Fantastic Beasts for a US audience because they thought that this would appeal to a wider viewing demographic, which equates to more revenue. It is wishful thinking to suggest it was decided on purely to increase representation and acceptance of Queer people, for the same kind of calculation likely factored into their decision to censor the film in China. While corporations need to be financially viable, they clearly have great influence over individuals when it comes to social responsibility. In my view, it is wrong to hold financial profits in a higher regard than equality.
The film has struggled at the box office when compared to previous instalments of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, but has still has achieved turnover of £360 million worldwide (as of May 2022); far more than the production cost. The two previous films did well at the Chinese box office, generating $85.9 million in 2016 and $57.8 million in 2018, and it seems that Warner wanted to capitalise on this. But in a country grappling with a COVID-19 outbreak, the opening weekend turned over ‘just’ $9.7 million – which actually represents a 63% market share. Overseas viewership has kept this franchise viable, with Variety magazine identifying that 75% of the revenue from the previous two films was outside the US. It is then no surprise that the film is also due to be released in other countries where homosexuality is criminalised; the censorship is expected to extend far beyond China. Yet, the film was withheld from release in Russia in response to the Ukraine War: a clear example of morals influencing business decisions.
Some may argue that the gay storyline is not central to the main plot of the film, and the drive of the overall story remains intact. But for many queer people across the world, their identity is simultaneously a part and a life-changing aspect of them. We must therefore consider whether it is more beneficial for a queer Chinese audience to see subtle allusions to a queer relationship or not to see the film altogether. Arguably, some queer inclusion, even if censored, is better than none. On the other hand, we should bear in mind that the two gay characters in this film, Dumbledore (Jude Law) and Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen), were both portrayed by cisgender male actors who are in heterosexual marriages. I believe that the portrayal of those characters as gay was hollow to begin with, and verges on queer-baiting. Seeing gay characters on screen is one thing, but seeing authentic, successful gay actors achieving representation would be more helpful and empowering to the community. While some may argue that a character’s queerness does not have to be at the forefront of how they are represented, the likely less than pure motives for this storyline cannot be overlooked – and neither can the writer of the film’s screenplay and the franchise’s founder.
J.K Rowling revealed that Dumbledore was gay, and that he had as a teenager experienced the relationship with Grindelwald portrayed in this film, in 2007, a few weeks after the last Harry Potter book, Deathly Hallows, was published. The exclusion of Dumbledore’s sexuality from the books allowed them to forgo any censorship and instead Rowling maximised book sales worldwide. Therefore Rowling’s decision, through this film, to capitalise on a gay storyline is morally questionable. If she can allow her work to be censored for financial gain, then what is the real motive, representation or profits? Many questioned her motives at the time, and in light of her notorious comments on transgender rights it seems that she is trying to use Dumbledore’s gayness to claw back moral ground and a veneer of progressivism on LGBTQ+ issues. I and fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community I have spoken to concurred even before the censorship debacle that we would hesitate to watch this film precisely for these reasons; every ticket sold is, in effect, an endorsement of the JK Rowling brand and her transphobia.
Perhaps the initial source of this debate is then the tip of the iceberg for every questionable idea that this film represents. The motives of individual authors and filmmakers are only part of a wider controversy surrounding the motives and execution of queer portrayal in the film industry and contemporary popular culture as a whole. All the same, it would have been a powerful statement to gay teens worldwide if the studio had refused to censor the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald: a loud message of solitary and support. For a gay teen who isn’t out, as I know too well, this would be a glimmer in a world that too often seems shrouded in hopelessness.
Image credit: Tim White / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 via flickr
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of students across this university who have committed months and years of their degree to effecting change, and dozens of organisations and committees established to advocate for marginalised groups. And yet Oxford remains an institution gilded in privilege, clinging to its own traditions, and each year grinding out a fresh supply of new scandals and statistics for Guardian columnists to write op-eds about.
Every university has problems; racism, classism and misogyny are obviously not unique to Oxford (although, as in so many other things, our global reputation precedes us). But Oxford is perhaps unique in how successfully it has managed to co-opt, sideline, and subdue the movements that could force the institution into any genuine change. The constant cycling of students through the university structure combined with the perpetual, barely manageable workload means students simply do not have the energy or the capacity to fight for reform. Across colleges and outside them, Oxford relies on the rapid turnover and continual exhaustion of potential student activists to insulate itself from the possibility of actually having to improve.
JCR presidents and representatives do not serve longer than a year, which is rarely enough time to make significant changes to an institution almost a millennium old – but more than enough time for them to burn out. Societies set up to advocate for causes from decolonisation to fighting sexual assault similarly face rapid turnover of members and the fleeting attention of the student body. And students are, foremost, just that – students, who can only engage in activism as an unpaid, passion-driven commitment alongside a full-time degree. They have to balance hammering against institutional inertia with writing essays and applying for internships and making it to morning practice. And going to Plush.
The Student Union, with its stated mission of advocating for Oxford’s students and a sizeable budget with which to do so, might be another source of genuine efforts for change. In Oxford’s case, however, it wavers between benignly irrelevant and near- invisible to actively harmful, staffed by bureaucratic professionals with almost no understanding of how the university actually operates. The sabbatical officers, who in many cases are genuinely passionate about changing the university, end up being absorbed into institutional structure, paid by the university to attend dozens of meaningless committee meetings and perhaps organise a coffee and cake social, or give away free condoms.
It’s not as if the demands are unreasonable. Consider putting an actual person of colour on your syllabus. Stop hiring rapists. Take down literally one statue. But for the old, almost invariably white, and often phenomenally wealthy heads of houses and university leaders calling the shots, these asks are often too much to contemplate. All they have to do is say no and keep going. The earnest, enthusiastic students emailing them petitions and passing JCR motions are going to be at this university likely for three or four years at most. The Dean who thinks Rhodes Must Fall is a fascist organisation run by quivering blue-haired teenagers or that Andy Orchard is the victim of a terrible witch-hunt is going to be here for decades.
As someone who has been in Oxford’s activist spaces for the better part of my degree, it is difficult not to be pessimistic. And at times it is difficult to rationalise caring so much about Oxford beyond the fact that it is the community we have the (mis)fortune to be a part of. Advocating for change implies some vision of a changed future to strive for, a diversified, decolonised Oxford, equal-access and equal-opportunity. But there is no broken system to be fixed. Oxford is doing what it is designed to do: reconstruct and renew Britain’s elite first, act as an educational institution second.
This is not to prescribe hopelessness. I can say without irony that activism, done genuinely, has been the source of some of the richest, most valuable and most deeply fulfilling experiences I’ve had, and I have found and connected with people I would never otherwise have had the privilege to meet. But if there is a piece of unsolicited advice I can give as someone leaving Oxford next month to the more earnest first-years who are getting involved with OULC or FemSoc, or trying to diversify their curricula or, God forbid, trying to make positive change at the Union, it is to understand where your goals should lie. Do not define your victories by your capacity to alter fundamentally a place older than the Aztec Empire. Have meaningful conversations with your peers, foster spaces of genuine solidarity and care, engage with the community outside the University. Understand that an increase in energy is not always going to translate into an increase in results. Most importantly, do not exhaust yourself with the fantasy that there is some egalitarian, diverse, liberal Oxford hiding behind the university’s walls, if only we could work together to tear them down. Oxford is and always has been less about promoting education than reproducing the privilege that sustains it. Conservatism is not a symptom of some healable sickness within the body of Oxford. It is in its bones.
Like many other state school students at Oxford, I genuinely attribute my university place to outreach initiatives. For me it was UNIQ, a summer residential, that finally convinced me that I wanted to go here. Meeting student ambassadors who were helpful and kind, but most importantly, normal, hugely demystified the media-fuelled stereotypes I previously associated with Oxford.
Knowing that I would have never applied without the confidence that UNIQ instilled in me made me realise that I wanted to be involved with access and outreach when I was finally at Oxford. To be that same person for a quiet but bright prospective student was, to me, a way that I could demystify Oxford for someone else. As both a Student Ambassador and the Access and Outreach Representative for my college, St Peter’s, I have helped to run countless school tours, Q&As, interview support sessions, open days, and most recently the Aspire Liverpool residential for students considering applying here.
Outreach work is pivotal. It gives prospective students, from all backgrounds, the opportunity to immerse themselves in Oxford life – to look at shelves upon shelves of books about a subject they love, to ask questions that they simply haven’t had the chance to ask before. Most of the time, it’s a matter of boosting confidence and making sure they can make an informed choice when filling out UCAS.
Something I have realised recently, though, is that my own feelings towards outreach are a lot more complex than they were when I first started. Beneath the awareness that I am doing something both important and rewarding lie hints of guilt and fatigue.
This is because while I can speak honestly about some of the amazing things about Oxford to these prospective students – the tutorial system, the opportunities, the people you meet, the academic rigour – I am also aware that there is a less positive side. Many students from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds occasionally come up against uncomfortable situations at Oxford, solely because of their identity.
These moments tend to occur on a small scale, in conversations with friends or acquaintances. One of the most prominent examples of this is the relentless name-dropping of private and public schools. I completely understand being proud of where you went to school and having it be part of your identity. But at the same time, it feels exhausting when people constantly remind you that they went to one of the top fee-paying schools in the country, often whilst pointing out people in the street who also happened to go there. It just functions as a reminder that I didn’t go to one. Anna Fairweather’s recent article ‘What’s in a Name’ explores the ramifications of this even more deeply, and how it exacerbates social divides.
I’ve been explicitly told I only got my place to fulfil a ‘state school quota’ by one of my peers. I have also felt intense imposter syndrome for several terms, with lack of support from the university. These experiences are not unique. They are mere by-products of Oxford’s wider culture, inherited from its past as an institution which was characterised by snobbery, admitting only the elite. Even though there has been undeniable progress from when the university was founded, these examples alone demonstrate that there is so much further to go. They also show that the purpose of outreach shouldn’t end when we get here. Getting disadvantaged students into Oxford should involve looking after them too.
My own experience with outreach work makes me feel guilty. I recognise that this seems both backwards and contradictory – but let me explain. I feel like I’m empowering these students, only to let them down eventually. When speaking to prospective students, even though I can tell them about Oxford’s good side, I know what their experience is likely to be if they do end up getting a place. They will find themselves trapped in similar conversations about money and background, ultimately finding it harder to assimilate than some of their peers. This is a cyclical problem, as these conversations would be so much less common if Oxford was truly accessible. A problem that is solved through outreach schemes themselves.
Aside from guilt, I have felt intense responsibility. Another issue that is complex due to its inherent circularity is that it is mainly state school individuals who volunteer to help with access and outreach work. This is in large part because we feel indebted to outreach efforts ourselves, having hugely benefited from it, or because we identify with the obstacles faced by the students applying. However, the opposite often happens for privately educated students – perhaps they feel that their own experience means that they would not be qualified for outreach work, or just that they are ‘too privileged’. I can completely understand this. It’s true that we need to be careful, especially when our ultimate goal is to undercut Oxford stereotypes. But on the flip side, should this solely be the responsibility of certain people, who are predominantly from a particular background?
This is undoubtedly a fine line to tread, but I think speaking to privately educated students at outreach events could have been helpful for me when I was applying. Student ambassadors being helpful and kind, regardless of background, makes the path to Oxford a lot easier.
In recent years, Oxford has come far in improving its diversity, but this work is nowhere near done. It can only be considered complete when the university represents the potential and drive of students from all backgrounds. I can only hope that in fifty years’ time, someone like me will be able to experience Oxford – in all its strange traditions, challenging workload, and beautiful architecture – without having to wonder when they will next walk away from a conversation having felt like an outsider, or have their ability challenged solely because of the school they went to.
CW: Sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, victim-blaming, rape culture
A five-month long Cherwell investigation indicates that there have been a minimum total of 93 complaints of sexual harassment across the University of Oxford since the beginning of the 2017/18 academic year.
The investigation exclusively reveals data and information on formal complaints of sexual harassment from each Oxford college.The data reflects the number of allegations or complaints made between the beginning of the 2017/18 academic year and the date at which Cherwell received a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) response from each college respectively. The dates of these responses range from early January 2022 to early May 2022.
The central University administration recorded a total of 28 sexual harassment complaints between the beginning of the 2017/18 academic year and 2nd February 2022. There may have been duplication between college and central administration figures.
This investigation did not account for sexual assault, unless stated otherwise by colleges. Sexual harassment can consist of “inappropriate body language”, “sexually explicit remarks or innuendoes”, and/or “unwanted sexual advances and touching”, according to the University’s harassment policy.
The actual total figure of reports across the University and its colleges is likely to be higher than 93, as various colleges withheld data and information in the interest of protecting the privacy of individual students. In addition, many students who have suffered sexual harassment may not have made formal complaints to colleges. Students are able to seek support through college welfare programs without submitting a formal complaint.
Further, a 2021 investigation by UN Women UK found that 97% of women aged 19-24 have been sexually harassed, with only 4% of women reporting incidents of sexual harassment. The remaining 96% were dubious about the ability of UK authorities to handle such incidents. 45% of women who would not report sexual harassment say that this is due to the belief that nothing would change.
It Happens Here, an Oxford SU campaign group against sexual violence, told Cherwell that these numbers only show “the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how prevalent sexual assault is at this university”.
They added: “Even though we strongly believe that the number of cases at the university is higher than 93, this ‘lower’ number is still unacceptable. These 93 incidents should not have happened in the first place. No survivor should have had to go through such trauma. This demonstrates the work that still needs to be done by all members of the university, including It Happens Here, to end the prevalence of sexual assault.”
A University spokesperson said that they are “aware that incidents of sexual harassment and violence are under-reported at Oxford” and recognised that they have “more to do”. They also told Cherwell that they take “any allegation of sexual misconduct extremely seriously”.
Magdalen College recorded the highest number of sexual harassment complaints of any college that provided data, totalling 14 over the last five years. Worcester College and Lincoln College recorded the second highest number of sexual harassment complaints with a total of nine each.
Among the colleges not to have recorded any complaints of sexual harassment in the given time frame are Jesus and St Catherine’s. Some graduate colleges, such as Kellogg and St Cross, also did not record any complaints of sexual harassment in this period of time.
It Happens Here highlighted that the differences in reported incidents between colleges may be attributed to the differing cultures or procedures at different colleges.
They told Cherwell: “For example, colleges that mandate effective consent training for their students may foster a culture where people feel more confident identifying and correcting problematic behaviour in themselves and others. Nevertheless, the main and probably most influential factor is reporting. A survivor may fear backlash from the perpetrator. They may be discouraged by rape myths, such as the idea that survivors must respond in a certain way to be legitimate or that men cannot be assaulted. There may be confusion and apprehension due to a lack of transparency around the reporting process or distrust of the college due to knowledge of previously mishandled cases.”
As the practice of universities using ‘gagging clauses’ in cases of sexual harassment has recently come under fire nationwide, some colleges withheld all data on sexual harassment in their FoI responses, citing a risk of compromising “confidentiality obligations”. Colleges also stated that public release of information in some cases could lead to the identification of individuals.
One of the eight colleges to have withheld information was Lady Margaret Hall, which was accused of having “silenced and mistreated a victim of rape” according to a recent article by The Times.
St Benet’s Hall did not provide any information as the Permanent Private Hall is not a public authority and is “hence not obliged to respond to FoI requests such as these”.
The reason which University College gave for not providing the specific data requested was that it did not collect data solely on ‘sexual harassment’ between the 2017/18 academic year and 2021. Instead, its records show more general data for ‘harassment’ rather than for specific types of harassment. The College recorded 20 complaints of ‘harassment’ since the beginning of 2017/18 year.
A spokesperson said that the University of Oxford was “working hard in recent years on building a culture where our students can feel safe and where sexual violence and harassment will not be tolerated”.
The University spokesperson stated: “We would like to reassure students that anyone bringing forward complaints of this nature will always be listened to and supported, and would urge any student who has experienced sexual harassment and violence to contact the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service.”
Cherwell’s FoI requests also asked for data on what action colleges took and what welfare support was provided. Fewer than five of Magdalen’s total of 14 cases led to a formal investigation by a College Disciplinary Panel. Some cases led to formal expulsion or termination of contract.
Discipline for perpetrators of sexual harassment differed greatly across the University. At colleges such as Corpus Christi, University, Regent’s Park, Magdalen, and St Peter’s, students and staff members investigated for incidents of sexual harassment were suspended or banned from college premises for a period of time. In other instances, students were asked to undertake community service, and in some cases students or staff members were ultimately removed from the University.
Mansfield, Lincoln, and Linacre noted that some cases involved students from another college, in which case they were unable to take disciplinary action themselves. In these cases, University Proctors intervened. Various colleges chose not to disclose information on investigations or discipline.
An investigation was led “by an external party” in each New College case of student-on-student sexual harassment. In most other cases, a Dean or other appropriate College Officer would oversee the investigation.
In Michaelmas Term 2019, the University introduced the No Contact Arrangement Policy. The No Contact Arrangement Policy limits contact between students while allowing academic studies to continue. The University states that the policy was brought in to “address misconduct by students, rather than to resolve disputes between individuals”.
A University spokesperson also told Cherwell that they appointed a “specialist investigator for disciplinary sexual misconduct cases”. The University spokesperson added that each case is handled sensitively by specialist investigators.
In 2017, an investigation into sexual harassment by The Guardiansaw Oxford record the highest number of allegations of staff-on-student sexual harassment out of 120 different universities between the beginning of the 2011-12 academic year and 2012, with eleven received by the central University and ten by colleges. There may have been duplication between college and central administration figures.
Cherwell can newly reveal that, since the beginning of the academic year 2017/18, the total number of allegations of staff-on-student sexual harassment across Oxford’s colleges is eight, while the central University administration recorded five cases. While these figures show a reduction from the period in which The Guardian investigated, the total figure is likely to be higher as some data was not disclosed.
Trinity College received one “historical” complaint of staff-on-student sexual harassment in the last five years. However, no action was taken against the alleged perpetrator as they “died several decades ago”.
The University told Cherwell that they are currently reviewing the University’s staff-student policy. Student-staff relationships are not banned outright across the University. The University-wide policy states that “any close personal or intimate relationship with a student for whom a staff member has any responsibility is brought to the attention of the member of staff’s Head of Department as soon as such a relationship commences”.
Several colleges do not have any student-staff relationship policy, such as New College, The Queen’s College, and Merton. Other colleges, such as Jesus and Balliol, strongly advise against close and intimate relationships between staff and students.
Some colleges take strong actions against student-staff relationships. Linacre, a graduate college, explicitly “prohibits such staff from engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with students for whom they hold any such responsibility”. The policy adds: “Such relationships are always inappropriate irrespective of whether the student did not appear to object, appeared to give consent, gave consent or even instigated the behaviour”.
Across the colleges, there was a minimum total of eight complaints of staff-on-staff sexual harassment, while the central administration only recorded two.
All colleges for undergraduates have harassment policies and codes of conduct which contain information on sexual harassment. Some graduate colleges, such as St Cross, follow the University policy, which similarly contains a section on forms of sexual harassment. Welfare resources are also listed.
Brasenose College commented that each person who reported an incident of sexual harassment was “responded to in their context– there is no single route of support”. University College stated that “students are reminded about members of college staff from whom they may receive support and about sources of support from outside the College”.
It Happens Here commented that their Oxford SU campaign “sees that the level and quality of support that is given to students varies substantially between colleges”. They urged all colleges to “critically examine the systems they have in place and question whether it is accessible, trauma-informed and effective at safeguarding vulnerable people”.
An Oxford University spokesperson informed Cherwell that the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service is seeing an increasing number of students come forward, with 223 students seeking support from the University service in the 2020-21 academic year. They also told Cherwell that they would like to reassure students that anyone bringing complaints forward will be listened to and supported.
The University stated that they are currently “refreshing our consent training” and “providing more welfare support for students” through the provision of more resources.
A group of University of Oxford students under the name ‘Not Here. Not Anymore’ has recently organised a protest on 22nd May at the Radcliffe Camera to address the “University’s abhorrent treatment of victims of sexual harassment and fighting for new protective procedures”.
A spokesperson for the group told Cherwell: “This protest is about showing solidarity with all victims of sexual assualt and harassment across the university. We are demanding that the University does better rather than silencing victims and protecting sexual assaulters over the victims themselves. The protest is also a way to make some noise because something has to be done, and each moment this university delays the conversation another student is left vulnerable to sexual assault or sexual harassment.”
It Happens Here concluded: “These statistics are only the beginning of the story. Although we cannot claim to know the reasons behind these numbers, we can see that the real extent and impact of sexual assault at Oxford University is far beyond the scope of these statistics. We can say that we have seen survivors who found support immediately and survivors who have been afraid to disclose for years, survivors who have reported to the police and survivors who have not even told their friends, survivors whose experiences disrupted their studies and careers, and survivors of all genders, backgrounds and colleges. Every case is unique but the patterns are startling: people who experience sexual violence are prevented from reporting, are silenced and become invisible. From rape culture and victim-blaming to spiking to silencing survivors with NDAs, it happens here and it does not end here: the patterns we create and tolerate at university then reproduce and are tolerated in the homes and workplaces that we leave to. This is why it is important to make a stand now.”
An Oxford University spokesperson provided Cherwell with a full statement: “Oxford University has been working hard in recent years on building a culture where our students can feel safe and where sexual violence and harassment will not be tolerated.”
“We know we have more to do, and are currently refreshing our consent training, reviewing the University’s policy on staff-student relationships, and providing more welfare support for students.”
“The University takes any allegation of sexual misconduct extremely seriously, but in line with the national picture, we are aware that incidents of sexual harassment and violence are under-reported at Oxford. We would like to reassure students that anyone bringing forward complaints of this nature will always be listened to and supported, and would urge any student who has experienced sexual harassment and violence to contact the Support Service.”
Join us at It Happens Here if you need support or want to learn more about what you can do to help the cause.
We run weekly wellbeing sessions for survivors and their allies (Safe Spaces project), which you can sign up for here.
If you have been affected by any of what has been raised in this article, please consult https://www.ithappenshere.co.uk/ where you can find a list of resources, ranging all the way from college level based support to national support services. We also have a short quiz you can take to signpost you to the most useful support service.
I think it’s important to preface my retrospective on Pesach with one crucial caveat: my experience could not have been more different to Leah’s. Leah spoke of coming to the realisation that the minutiae of observance can make Judaism cumbersome to the detriment of the original intent of the holiday. I spent my Pesach eight days getting more familiarly acquainted with the tiny nuances of observance than I ever have before.
My family’s celebration of Pesach has always been more on the minimalist end of the spectrum. My family are all Ashkenazi Jews who live in the diaspora, which is important to the version of Pesach we ought to observe, as different groups of Jews observe Pesach in different ways. The starkest difference is that between the dietary restrictions of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. Typically, Ashkenazi Jews will avoid the food groups known as ‘chametz’ and ‘kitniyot’. The prohibition of kitniyot was put in place by Ashkenazi rabbis in the Middle Ages and was not an original part of the holiday. The reason for the decision to prohibit kitniyot is not agreed upon but my personal favourite explanation is that rabbis were worried that Ashkenazi Jews would not be able to distinguish between chametz and kitniyot in their raw form and so might accidentally use barley, which is chametz, thinking it was rice or some similar mix-up. The vast majority of Sephardi Jews did not accept this rabbinic ruling and continued to use kitniyot on Pesach. Interestingly, the recent consensus amongst the non-Orthodox movements within Ashkenazi Judaism has been that Ashkenazi Jews are indeed able to tell these grains apart and should be able to consume kitniyot on Pesach. It may be the case that in the future more within the Ashkenazi community will change their position on kitniyot and eventually overturn the Middle Ages ruling on the subject, but we shall have to wait and see on that question.
The other important difference in observance is between those Jews who are physically in the historic land of Israel and those Jews who live outside Israel in the diaspora. In Israel, the holiday lasts seven days with only one Seder at the beginning. In the diaspora there is a second Seder night extending the holiday to eight days. With this knowledge in mind, perhaps you the reader can understand why my grandma took the executive decision many years ago to celebrate this holiday as if we were Sephardi Jews who live in Israel (eating rice with one less day sans bread) rather than Ashkenazi Jews who live outside of Israel. And even then, we barely observed those restrictions. We would have matzah symbolically while still eating some bread. Some of you may call this ‘cheating’ or ‘picking and choosing traditions to have the most enjoyable version of Pesach’ and I won’t lie to you, there is a part of me that agrees and so, with the greatest of respect to my grandma’s ruling and my parents’ observance, I decided to spend this Pesach as what I am: an Ashkenazi Jew in the diaspora. This was certainly an enlightening experience.
I went to two Seders for the first time this year. The first was a large event and it was interesting to chat and compare prior Seder experiences with others there as we all came from vastly different family traditions. The second was more like the Seders I am used to at home – nine people gathered around one table in the Chaplains’ house. It was nice to have a Seder similar to the ones I had in my childhood as I have not been able to be home for one in a couple of years. However the larger change to my normal Pesach experience came with taking on the food restrictions of Ashkenazi Jews.
My Pesach food experience began a couple of weeks before the start of the holiday when I heard at a Shabbat lunch that there would be a trip to Kosher Kingdom. Kosher Kingdom is a kosher supermarket in London and an essential trip for anyone preparing for a fully observant Pesach as they sell many items that cannot be found in Oxford. I’ll confess now that I did not have anything I needed to buy beyond almond milk and matzah which I could have easily found in Oxford. I just went along hoping that I’d learn some valuable things along the way about Pesach kashrut and to experience a Pesach food section that went beyond the Aberdeen standard of the local Sainsbury’s having a few boxes of not-for-Passover-use matzah.
I began to realise that Pesach shopping was not a relaxed endeavour when Pammy, the other student on the trip, got out her spreadsheet in which she had meticulously planned what items she would be buying in Kosher Kingdom and Oxford in the run up to Pesach. As we sat in the back of the car on the drive to London I learned I had vastly underestimated what I would need to buy to feed myself and be fully observant of Pesach kosher standards. Thankfully, my woeful lack of planning didn’t hinder me too much as Pammy kindly agreed to go around the shop together and point out what I might need.
As I was talking to Pammy in the car and realised I was in way over my head, I texted another friend to ask his advice on what I should buy. This friend told me he was not the best person to ask about this as his family keeps even stricter stringencies than the average Orthodox Ashkenazi family. I wondered how bad it could possibly be until I sent him a picture of what I had bought in the specially-kashered-ish drawer I had prepared for it (it ended up being five bags of groceries) and he told me his family would consider maybe two items as kosher enough for their Pesach standards.
“My family’s celebration of Pesach has always been more on the minimalist end of the spectrum. “
This is the point where I was introduced to the next level of Pesach stringencies: those followed by Hasidic Jews. My friend told me about the concept of not eating ‘gebrochts’ or ‘wet matzah’ (products made by combining matzah with water to cook it into classic Passover dishes like matzah brei, matzah pizza, and matzah balls. The logic given is that there is a risk that some of the matzah may be undercooked and thus by combining it with water a leavened substance could inadvertently be produced which would break the prohibition on chametz). He would also typically avoid processed foods to prevent any possibility of them being contaminated with chametz, even to the point of only seasoning food with salt, pepper and paprika for spices. It is also customary for Hasidic Jews to only eat food from their own house during Pesach as the level of stringency observed can vary greatly even between individual families. I learned this for myself when I asked the local Chabad Rebbetzin Freidy about what my friend had said and she informed me that even his family’s Pesach kosher standards are lenient compared to hers, since her family would only use salt, even processed pepper and paprika were a step too far. It is important to note that my friend comes from a different Hasidic group from Freidy and this explains some of the difference in custom, but I discovered throughout the week that even between families within the exact same Jewish group there are subtle differences over things like salt, sugar, and tea that while being miniscule differences can delineate a total difference in stringency that makes one family’s kosher for Pesach meals not kosher enough for another family. The Hasidic custom of only eating your own food during Pesach made a lot more sense with this context.
At this point you are probably wondering where I fitted myself in on this spectrum of stringency within Orthodox Ashkenazi food customs. I found myself caught between two levels of Orthodox observance; I shopped with Pammy who observed the standard Modern Orthodox custom of avoiding chametz and kitniyot while eating gebrochts and processed foods, but I ended up eating almost daily at the Chabad house where Hasidic rules were observed. There were no gebrochts, all fruit and vegetables (even cucumbers) had to be peeled just in case the peel had been in contact with chametz, and even tea had to be kosher-ified for Pesach use before the holiday started and was in the form of a diluting juice rather than the standard teabag. Every meal was a creative combination of meat, potatoes, butternut squash, and eggs with a large number of avocados and mangos on the side, but they were delicious despite the strict parameters that had to be operated within and I was incredibly grateful to have them.
As this was my first time properly observing Pesach, it was very useful to have a guarantee of at least one substantial meal a day if I had completely failed to scrape together food for myself that day. On Monday especially I realised how much I relied on buying coffees and sandwiches as my main energy source every day and was truly running on empty by the time dinner rolled around. Luckily by Tuesday I had bought some Pesach-approved instant coffee and some fruit and vegetables so I could at least have matzah, cream cheese, and cucumber sandwiches. I had also bought some non-gebrochts potato pasta and pasta sauce that I could make into a decent meal. On Wednesday I was able to get by on my own food alone without going to Chabad which was, admittedly, a small accomplishment but quite a feat compared to Monday where I had felt close to fainting on their doorstep by the time I reached the Chabad house that evening.
I chose not to make gebrochts like matzah pizza but I had no qualms about putting processed cream cheese on matzah, so I suppose I could be classified as gebrochts-flexible. I also did not peel my cucumber or pre-process my tea. The extent of the Chabad Pesach stringency was truly encapsulated to me on the last day of Pesach which coincided with Shabbat. One of the children at the Chabad house wanted to eat a strawberry. I then watched my friend Musia meticulously peel an individual strawberry to give to him. At that moment I thought to myself that while I greatly respect this hardcore level of observance, I don’t think I’m quite up for that just yet. There is a degree of beauty in this level of stringency whereby even in eating the smallest item like a strawberry, one has the holiday at the forefront of their mind. The spirit of Pesach necessarily permeates every action when it dictates everything down to the minutiae. I like that this is also felt across the spectrum of Orthodox Jews I encountered throughout the week. From Pammy with her precisely-crafted spreadsheets to Musia peeling everything down to a single strawberry, everyone fitted their whole lives to strict Pesach restrictions for a week.
While I can’t see myself taking on the level of observance that Hasidic Jews do anytime soon, I definitely felt a greater level of spiritual connection to the holiday of Passover than I ever have before. Judging solely based on my own experience I would say that a greater level of observance does translate to a greater level of immersion in the holiday and a fuller experience of this aspect of Jewish life. There is naturally disagreement on this but one of the brilliant aspects of Judaism is that everyone is free to have their own relationship with it; there is room for pluralism and no ‘wrong’ way of going about things. The feeling of the holiday being all around me for want of a better description was something special to experience and I hope to replicate that feeling again in the future .
Glossary
‘Chametz’ = Any product that contains wheat, barley, rye, oats or spelt e.g, breads, cakes, and pasta. Matzah can contain these as it is carefully controlled to ensure it doesn’t become leavened.
‘Kitniyot’ = Legumes including rice, corn, and peas that are traditionally permitted by Sephardi but not Ashkenazi Jews.
‘Kashrut’ = A system of rules that dictates which foods can be eaten by Jews and how foods should be prepared.
‘Kashering’ = A process by which utensils and storage areas are ritually prepared for kosher food.
