FESTIVAL PUT IN SPOTLIGHT BY TOP EXHIBITIONS

From today's Leicester Mercury:

Festivals put in spotlight by top exhibitions 

Diwali displays and activities introduced museum visitors to the Festival of Light. 

Newarke Houses Museum, in Leicester, held dance exhibitions and craft classes on Friday and Monday. 

Operations officer Stefanie Tyler-Divine said: "It went very well and everyone had a good time. 

"We had a dancing group in to perform on Monday and I put on a sari for the day, which was a first. 

"We had people making Diwali candle holders they can put tea lights into, as well as greeting cards." 

Diwali, which is celebrated by Hindus and other religions, takes place today. 

Thousands of people are expected to join in the celebrations at Cossington Street recreation ground in Belgrave, Leicester, starting at 6.45pm with music and dancing. 

A firework and laser display will round off the evening's events at 8.30pm.

FAITH LEADERS LIGHT CANDLES FOR VICTIMS OF HATE CRIME

From today's Leicester Mercury:

Faith leaders light candles for victims of hate crime 

Prayers were said and candles were lit yesterday to mark the launch of anti-hate crime week. 

Faith leaders from different religions gathered at Leicester Cathedral to remember the victims and families. 

Friday is International Day Against Hate Crime. 

The week has been organised by Leicestershire Police and the Stamp It Out campaign, a community-led project committed to challenging, tackling and stamping out hate crime throughout the county. 

Cathedral chancellor David Monteith said: "The week is about remembering those who have died from hate crimes and those who continue to be victimised. 

"Yesterday, we lit candles and held silences and it was very moving. 

"It was also great to see such a variety of cultures and religions committed to working together for the campaign. 

"The victims need to have a voice and we're all working together to stamp out hate." 

The gathering was the first of a series of activities which are running throughout the county this week. 

For more information, visit: stamp-it-out.co.uk

THE PSALMS 5: JEWISH PSALM SINGING

At Christchurch, Clarendon Park, this evening for the fifth session in the Christians Aware course on the Psalms (offered as part of their Faith Awareness programme).

This course really has had the highest numbers of any which I've attended here. There are 50 attendees this evening, and once again we're in the larger Vaughan Powell Room.

Our speaker this evening is Rabbi Mark Solomon and his topic is "Jewish Psalm Singing". The central and distinctive feature of this session is the Rabbi's singing and chanting, which he does frequently.

Rabbi Solomon is Interfaith Consultant for Liberal Judaism. He is Rabbi to the Liberal and Reform congregations in Edinburgh and Manchester, each of which he visits once a month. He is also Cantor at the Great Synagogue in Sydney, Australia (where he was born and grew up - though I couldn't detect any trace of that in his accent). This is his third visit to Christians Aware in Leicester.

He distributes two handouts: one entitled "Psalms in Jewish Worship", the other, "Transliteration of Selected Hebrew Psalms". Here's some of the content of the former (keen as I am to provide records as full as possible in these blog entries, even I draw the line at transcribing two sides of transliterated Hebrew!)

• Psalms are known in Hebrew as Tehillim, "praises".
• Jewish liturgy does not include the practice of public reading of the whole book of Psalms in a liturgical cycle. Instead, set groups of Psalms, and individual Psalms, are used at fixed times in the liturgy.
• The Masoretic accents for the Psalms in printed Hebrew Bibles may originally have indicated a method of chanting (as does the different system of accents used for other books of the Bible), possibly going back to the Levites in the Temple, but if so, this method of chanting Psalms was lost long ago.
• Reading of the whole book of Psalms, either in one sitting, or over the cycle of the week or month, is a popular devotional practice among pious Jews. In certain periods, societies for the recitation of Psalms existed in Jewish communities.
• The recitation of Psalms was believed to protect from sickness and harm, and Psalms were traditionally recited by a sickbed and beside a body awaiting burial.
• Particularly popular is Psalm 119 with its eightfold alphabetical structure, and often the verse sets spelling out out the letters of a person's name are read, followed by verses spelling the words kera saten, "tear the adversary", as a prayer for recovery from illness.
• One of the oldest Psalm groupings is the list of Psalms for the days of the week., chanted by the Levites in the Temple: Sunday, Psalm 24;  Monday, Psalm 48; Tuesdaay Psalm 82; Wednesday, Psalm 94; Thursday, Psalm 81; Friday, Psalm 93; Shabbat, Psalm 92. Nowadays these are recited traditionally at the end of the morning service.
• Another ancient grouping is Hallel ("Praise"), consisting of Psalms 113-118. chanted before the reading of the Torah in the Morning Service on the Three Pilgrim Festivals (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles), the New Moon snd Hannukah and at the Passover seder (festive meal, when the "Great Hallel", Psalm 135, is also read). The general theme is thanksgiving for God's acts of salvation. Different chants are used for each festival, and Tabernacles the palm branch is waved in time with the words of certain verses of Psalm 118.
• On New Moon and the latter days of Passover a slightly abridged version of Hallel is read, the reason given (regarding Passover) that our rejoicing is diminished by the suffering of the Egyptians in the Red Sea.
• Rabbis in the Talmud assert that one who recites Psalm 145 three times every day is assured of a place in the World to Come, because it combines alphabetical structure with the verse, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living creature." (Berakhol 4b). Since ancient times, this Psalm has been framed by Psalms 84:5 and 144:15 a the beginning and 115:18 at the end, and this composition, known from the first word as Ashrey ("Happy") is said twice in the morning service and at the opening of the Afternoon Service.

Rabbi Solomon explains that chanting is repetitive, each verse of the Psalm chanted exactly the same way as every other. This is not the case with composed melodies. He demonstrates different styles of chanting (taking Psalm 95 as his example). First he performs it as a traditional Ashkenazi chant in "Friday night" mode, which would be sung to welcome Shabbat; then as a chant written by Louis Lewandowski (1821-94), one which would be used by pre-war German congregations and in Liberal and Reform communities. The same chant is used for Psalm 113, one of the Hallel Psalms. He also sings Psalm 114 (another Hallel Psalm) sung to a folk melody, probably Central European. By this point, some of the Jewish friends in the audience are joining in, starting shyly, then becoming bolder and louder.

In a synagogue with a strong musical tradition, the Hallel Psalms are each chanted to a different melody at the different festivals. This way they stay fresh throughout the year, unique to each of the festival days on which they are sung.

Psalm 91, known as the Psalm of Protection, is chanted at funerals, while walking the coffin to the grave.

At weddings, Psalms are not chanted, but sung to composed melodies. The Rabbi demonstrates three different ways of singing Psalm 150, each varying in formality, which the couple can choose between. Psalm 100 is another that is often sung at weddings, as the bride walks down the aisle.

The Rabbi ends his presentation with two different settings of Psalm 23: one ancient, mone modern (which would be sung by the family, seated together at table for the Sabbath meal).

Then, for a big finish, he leads (virtually) the whole audience in singing Psalm 133, verse 1 as a round. This is often sung by pilgrims to Jerusalem - though, hopefully, better than we do it here tonight!

Rabbi Solomon was kind enough to give me his card at the end of the evening and asked that I send him the link to this blog entry. Gladly!

In the photo above: Rabbi Mark Solomon (right) speaks with Gerry Gardiner, a regular attendee at the Christians Aware sessions. In the background, Beate Dehnen stacks chairs.

FAITHS FILM FESTIVAL FINAL FIVE

This morning the schedule for the film festival at Phoenix Square during Inter Faith Week is made public. Phoenix Square’s November brochure is published online (printed version to follow in two days). I've been particularly keen to see the finalised programme, so that I can get the details into the flyer that we’re having printed this week, listing our main activities during Inter Faith Week.

So, how does the final programme for Leicester's first Faiths Film Festival shape up against what I've been hoping for? At first sight, the result could be thought disappointing. But it ain't necessarily so.

When I first enquired about the possibility of Phoenix Square screening a short season of faith-related films at the same time last year, it was just a wish - and rather formless, as wishes tend to be. A couple of months ago, when making a more formal approach to Phoenix Square, I would have considered it a triumph to get five films on. At one point, I as discussing with Andy Jones (Programme Manager at Phoenix Square) the viability of showing as many as 14 titles: two per day throughout the week. As is the way with Leicester Council of Faiths, we were trying to represent each of our member communities equally. But as you can imagine, faithful reader, it's harder to find movies about, by or from some of those communities than others. I put out an APB, by email, social media and word of mouth, seeking recommendations for titles. Some of the suggestions were innovative, inventive, inspired – although some left me wondering if the respondents had ever been to the movies themselves or even knew what a feature film was. Sifting through a considerable amount of dross, there were a few nuggets of gold.

The ideal situation (from our point of view) would have seen two movies screened per day (half of them in Screen 2, which seats 120 and half in the Screen Room, which seats 30; half of them in English and half in another language with English sub-titles; half of them commercially proven and the other half more of a risk). Phoenix Square has whittled this down to a final five, as listed in the brochure.

I've learned a lot about how a cinema like Phoenix Square goes about its business. It's certainly not a matter of simply presenting a wishlist and expecting to get everything you want. The eventual choice was based on several factors, e.g.

• availability in suitable format for projection;
• having been passed by the British Board of Film Classification and granted an age certificate;
• ownership of current screening rights in the UK by a trading distributor (some of the proposed films have never been licensed for public screening in the UK, while screening rights for others have long lapsed).

So after all that, here's the final selection of films:

Sun 20: Little Buddha (Buddhist - obviously) 

Mon 21: A Serious Man (Jewish) 

Thu 24: Life in a Day (illustrating the Bahá'í principle of world unity) 

Fri 25: My Name is Khan (Muslim - with Hindu connections too) 

Sat 26: Lourdes (Christian)

I should stress here that the final choice was made by Phoenix Square – and in the end, they’ve gone with those films most likely to get patrons out of their homes on a cold dark November evening and parting with £7 for their ticket. Three of the five have been shown at Phoenix Square and deserve another go-round there.

I saw two of these films during their theatrical release (A Serious Man and Lourdes). I've already blogged about the latter.

We’ve been asked to write copy for the A4 cribsheets that are available free at the time of screening. On these we can say something about the relevance of the film to the respective faith communities, something about Inter Faith Week and something about the Council of Faiths. We were also offered, initially, the opportunity for an introductory talk about each film, of no more than three minutes in length. I haven't pursued this - so far.

I would like to find out if we can get a slide shown before each of the films, saying something like:

This film is being screened as part of Phoenix Square's Faiths Film Festival, presented in association with Leicester Council of Faiths, during Inter Faith Week.

A few too many "Faiths" in there? I'll work on it.

Phoenix Square's online brochure has a page devoted to the Faiths Film Festival. This web page has a slide show of still from four of the  movies, each with Leicester Council of Faiths logo added in the bottom right hand corner. That looks very nice. And there’s a paragraph of copy, written by me, linking the Faiths Film Festival with the Council of Faiths 25^th anniversary:

The third national Inter Faith Week is being celebrated from Sunday 20 to Saturday 26 November. Leicester has a positive and widespread reputation for the diverse and cohesive nature of its faith and cultural communities, so when Leicester Council of Faiths asked if Phoenix Square would host the first Faiths Film Festival – of course we said yes! This varied selection of movies showcasing faith, religion and belief also marks the 25th anniversary of Leicester Council of Faiths – which has been working to promote trust, understanding and cooperation among the city’s communities since 1986.

I hope that this is a success and that we get to do it again next year. Now it’s up to you, faithful reader. If you’re within the catchment area of Phoenix Square, then come along to one or more of these screenings during Inter Faith Week, show your support and enjoy a good film with our blessing!

WE MUST WORK TOGETHER TO ROUT OUT CHILD ABUSE

Suleman Nagdi's First Person column from today's Leicester Mercury: 

We must work together to rout [sic] out child abuse 

Protect the vulnerable and don't let evil go unchallenged, urges Suleman Nagdi 

At certain points within our lives, we are faced with dilemmas requiring us to stand up for those who are vulnerable and make a point which will safeguard them. A recent report highlighting around 400 cases of children being abused in Madrassas is one such instance. When I read about the issue, it left me feeling dismayed. 

In recent years, we have faced numerous examples of abuse against children; whether it is the tragic case of a single child such as Baby P or the systematic abuse seen at the Haut de la Garenne children's home in Jersey. We know it exists in our society and wherever we find it we must act upon it. Above all else, we must challenge the tendency to hide or bury it. 

Where Muslim religious schools or Madrassas are concerned, the need to challenge it is personal for me. This is my religious community and I know that my religion detests such abhorrent actions, as does all natural human sensibility. 

Child abuse in all its hideous guises has no place in any faith or ethnic group and should be condemned whenever and wherever it occurs. All communities in Britain value and cherish the innocence of childhood and this must be protected against those who would seek to usurp it for their own disgusting ends. 

As an active member of the British Muslim community, I am proudly a part of the local Federation of Muslim Organisations (FMO) which has for many years striven to safeguard children against possible abuse. 

Crucial to the FMO's safeguarding work is the "Madrassa Project", a collaborative effort with the local authority to ensure the safeguarding of children in Madrassas. 

The FMO acts as a bridge between its various partners including the local authority as well as the police and the local Madrassas in Leicester. The aim of the project is to prevent child abuse in Madrassas by providing Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks, child protection training, whistle blowing and education to individuals and groups working with children. 

The project seeks to investigate any instances of child abuse in collaboration with its partners. Having now run for a few years, the project has been highly successful, garnering praise from its various partners. This project is our stand against all forms of child abuse, and the recent reports tell us that we must press the project even further forward. 

Just as mainstream schools have spent decades ensuring that children are safe from mindless, repulsive individuals, the Madrassas are walking the same path but with some way to go. 

The key to our success is to ensure that whenever we come across anything suspicious, we report it. This is the only means for routing out this evil and providing our children with the childhoods they deserve. Children are our wealth and prosperity.

Suleman Nagdi is spokesman for the Federation of Muslim Organisations

KANDINSKY IN GOVAN

Alastair McIntosh's Face to faith column from today's Guardian:

A century ago this month, Wassily Kandinsky finished a little book called Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Today in Govan, a hard-pressed part of Glasgow, we are celebrating the Russian artist's ideas in a conference on art, spirituality and the future.

What was Kandinsky then, and why is it as relevant as ever today? 

Born in 1866 and living until 1944, Kandinsky grew up in a Russia where the consequences of modernity and nihilistic thought were hotly debated. 

The old certainties of state, church and the soul in the human condition were in turmoil. At the same time, there was excited hope of a spiritual renaissance led by the influx of new ideas from the east. As Kandinsky said: "The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip." 

As if in anticipation of some of today's Britart, he deplored art that "becomes the satisfaction of vanity and greed … a scramble for good things … of excessive competition, of over-production … this aimless, materialist art". 

He denounced the narcissistic wallow of "art for art's sake" – "this neglect of inner meanings … this vain squandering of artistic power" with its consequence that "hungry souls go hungry away". 

Instead, he urged, art must "feed the spirit" by revealing "the internal truth of art, the soul". This is its prophetic calling in serving society. The artist must "be priest of beauty". Beauty itself is that "which springs from the soul", being anchored in the sacred. 

It was Kandinsky's friend Paul Klee who said that "art does not render the visible; it renders visible". But how? 

Kandinsky's answer was through abstraction. Here I find myself more critical of him. The role of the artist, he suggested, is to separate out the spiritual from the material. Art should be an "advance into the kingdom of the abstract". 

We see this in the geometric abstraction of his later work. Largely gone are the scintillating salsas of dancing colour that made his earlier paintings so magical. 

We might ask: can the spiritual be abstracted from the material? Kandinsky, to his enduring credit, affirms the spiritual on the artistic map, but did he, at the same time, lose the plot by going too far down the road of abstraction? 

Can the incarnate – the infusion of spirit and matter – really be rendered disincarnate? Or has the time come to move towards a new spiritual realism – to art that can represent the outer world (and be able to paint and draw!), but which simultaneously reveals its interiority, its spirituality? 

But why does this matter? There is a local saying that if you throw a stone over a wall in Govan you'll hit an artist. 

The most vulnerable to suffering and with it, to evasions like addiction, are often the sensitive souls, the canaries down the toxic coalmines of our society. 

Such people need art – not pretentious elite art that is up its own backside – but art that recovers meaning, that calls back the soul. 

When I ask hard-pressed folks what they want of art I don't hear calls for the likes of Damien Hirst's For the Love of God with 8,601 diamonds glued to a human skull as "bling on bone". 

I hear people yearning for what Kandinsky saw as prophetic art. Art that reveals hope. Art that breathes the flow of life into the veins.

Alastair McIntosh (photo above) is a Quaker, writer and curator of Kandinsky in Govan.

Talk about bad timing, faithful reader! I have long loved Kandinsky and I used to live in Govan (it’s my ancestral homeland, if you like – as well as being the first place I lived in as a married man). I just came back from a week in Glasgow yesterday! I hadn't heard of this conference, nor had I heard of Govan Folk University, which is hosting it. Might have been a bit hard to persuad Harry (11) and Grace (9) to tag along though.

THIS WEEK'S VISITORS (1,267)

Regular update on the number of pageviews received from different parts of the world in the week just ending.

1. United States 504
2. United Kingdom 498
3. Russia 84
4. Poland 51
5. Germany 34
6. Ukraine 24
7. India 20
8. Romania 19
9. Ecuador 18
10. France 16

This week's total: 1,267 (last week's: 1,932). These are aggregates of figures from the top ten countries only. Blogger's stats software doesn't show me numbers of pageviews below the tenth-ranking country.

Not a bad score, considering I've been off the grid for a week. I have a lot of catching up to do!

The world map at the top of this post is the graphic that I see on the stats page. The darker the green, the more pageviews from that country. I can see different versions of that map for "now" (whenever that is), "today", "this week", "this month" and "all time" (which seems to mean the last 12 months). They're updated each time I look at them.

WISE WORDS?

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Wise words?

I cannot understand why Allan Hayes, of Leicester, describes the Bishop of Leicester's description that the atheist position is a tale told by an idiot, as an unfortunate remark (Mailbox, October 7). It was not an unfortunate remark. Of course, the atheist position is a tale told by an idiot.

In St Matthew's Gospel chapter 25 is a parable of the 10 virgins. Five were wise and five were foolish. Humanists, atheists and the secular people, are all like the foolish virgins.

At the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, if they do not get baptised and believe in Him, they will not go to heaven.

Frank Evans, Enderby

MOSQUE ARSONIST

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Mosque arsonist

An arsonist who endangered lives when he set fire to a city mosque has appeared in court.

Somali-national Saleebaan Sheikh-Omar admitted setting fire to the Alforqan mosque, in St Matthews, on June 21 this year.

The Leicester Crown Court case was adjourned until December 14, for the preparation of a psychiatric report.

The 42-year-old defendant, of Claremont Street, Leicester, was remanded back into custody.

MAPPING FAITH & PLACE: 1st SEMINAR

Faithful reader, won't you welcome please, guest blogger Rosemarie Fitton:

I attended the first seminar of a project, Mapping Faith and Place, run by Leicester University, "investigating the significance of South Asian religious and cultural heritage in Leicester's urban landscape." This took place at New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. There are two further seminars to run next year followed by a public conference. I was wearing a number of hats, firstly as the creative director of Heterarchy, my interior design practice, based here in Leicester, secondly as an academic from DeMontfort university and thirdly, after George had asked me to write a blog about the seminar, as a member of the Leicester Council of Faiths. 

The seminar was organised by Dr Deirdre O'Sullivan and Dr Ruth Young, both from the School of Archaeology & Ancient History at Leicester University. 

There were a series of talks which were preceded by an introduction to the project by Dr Chris King, who had originally conceived and obtained funding for the research; Dr King, formerly of Leicester University, is now based at Nottingham University.

Dr King outlined the purpose of the project which is for academics and non-academics to work together to share knowledge and insights in order to gain an understanding of Leicester's cultural and religious landscape. In this series of seminars we will be looking at ways to take the project forward and how to best connect with people from the different communities. 

Dr Deirdre O'Sullivan and Dr Ruth Young talked about the work that had already taken place, which has resulted in The Faith Trail, most of the work for which was carried out by students at Leicester university. There is a website and booklet which accompanies this part of the project.

We then had a talk by Linda Monkton of English Heritage, who is head of research policy for places of worship. She spoke about the National Heritage list for England which includes an on-line database of all nationally designated heritage assets and the National Heritage Protection Plan, which is a framework for the key priorities for research over protection issues. She was very interested in finding out ways that English Heritage could foster good relationships with local contacts in the different faith communities. 

I then gave a talk on the work my company had carried out on the interiors for the new Swaminarayan Hindu temple on Gypsy Lane, which opened on the 8th-9th October. Describing how we had become involved in the project and how we set about the design process, to create interiors which reflected the rich cultural heritage of the Swaminarayan faith yet in a more contemporary style.

Rupert Allen, Assistant Church Buildings Development Officer for the Diocese of Coventry and Leicester spoke about the re-use of historically significant buildings and ways in which these could be sympathetically re-ordered to accommodate the new occupants.
In the afternoon we had lively discussions which initially looked at the issue of the Leicester orthodox synagogue which has recently been put up for sale, and the significance of religious buildings and their heritage as "sustainable sacred space".

This was followed by looking at ways to move the project forward and what the major issues were for the different faith communities in terms of buildings and the built environment and other groups who had an interest such as English heritage and academics.

Thanks Rosemarie, your contribution is much appreciated. I look forward to you having future stints as guest blogger.