Oral Histories: Angelo

My name’s Ivor Kallin and I’ve lived in London for about forty years but I grew up in Glasgow, in a part of Glasgow called Strathbungo, which since I left has become very fashionable apparently. Because I left? I don’t know. But it’s the place to be in the South Side of Glasgow.

I’m from a Jewish family which I wouldn’t call Orthodox but my parents were quite observant. Interesting thing about Glasgow is that it’s very much a city divided by religion, in terms of Catholics and Protestants, and you know if somebody’s from Glasgow and you say “oh what school did you go to” the question is not trying to find out what school you went to, it’s what religion are you. And that determined which football team you supported and often which part of the city you lived in. And it could be quite nasty at times. You know, sectarianism. Being Jewish meant that you were marginalised right from the beginning and we went to the local primary school because my parents - particularly my dad - felt that (although there was a Jewish primary school which was not quite where we lived) if we’re growing up in the local community we should mix with the local children.

In terms of my name, the tradition is, in Jewish culture, is that you’re named after someone, a member of the family, who’s died. My dad’s [dad] name was Israel. My parents thought “not a very cool name to give a boy growing up in Glasgow”. And for that, I am grateful.

Um… so when we went to school people would ask you questions like “So, are you a Protestant or a Catholic?” and I’d say “well actually. I’m Jewish”. And they’d say “What? Yeah but are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew? And I’d say “No, no, no. you don’t quite get it. I’m not one or the other”. “What?!’` And I still meet people who say “What do you mean you’re Scottish and Jewish? You can’t be both!” I say “Oh yes. Yes you can”.

So I’ve always felt marginalised, I’ve always felt “other”. That, you know, in Glasgow, I didn’t quite fit in. In London, being Scottish, you feel a bit “other”, you’ve got a funny accent. And being Jewish, I didn’t fit in with the religious orthodoxy either. And quite early on rejected that. Even though we did the rituals - Friday night my mum would light the candles and we’d do some of the prayers and stuff on a Saturday. And you know my mum would go to Synagogue on a Saturday but had this weird, sort of liberal, notion that if the boys needed to sleep, they had to sleep. So we would always pretend to be asleep until we heard the door close. “Great she’s gone! We can get up now and put the telly on!”. So I, from quite an early age, didn’t really want to have much to do with the religious thing but was actually very good at reading Hebrew and singing this stuff. And I could get away with it. I’ve got loads of records of this stuff. I’m not religious but you know the music is… it’s like listening to John Coltrane or to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, it takes you at a different level.

I think, certainly growing up in Glasgow and feeling a sense of otherness and being aware that I maybe looked a bit different and took off the Jewish holidays… there was a little bit of antisemitism, I remember once being tied to a lamppost by this sort of local bully…that was wee bit unpleasant. But I also remember walking home and being verbally abused by this other guy in the class - might have been the same guy. But I had one friend who was from Pakistan. And at that time there weren’t many Asian kids in the school - in fact he’s the only one I can remember - and he became a really good friend and he stood up for me. He sort of threatened this guy. You know “leave him alone”. He protected me in a sense.

And then when I came to London, I was very anti-religious and also anti-Zionist, from a very early age, quite anti-Zionist. I sit quite well with the otherness actually. I wear it as a badge of pride. And about fifteen years ago, I got a job in Hackney working as an Early Years consultant and that meant working very closely with the Charedi [orthodox Jewish] community in Stamford Hill and that was really quite an interesting thing. Because some of them could see that I looked like I was part of the tribe. Not all of them would quite believe it because I didn’t wear the same clothes, I didn’t even cover my head or whatever. Um, I’d go into nursery and kids would ask me “Are you Jewish”. I can’t do it in Yiddish but I could understand a bit of the Yiddish because my parents used to speak it when they didn’t want us to understand something! And because I could read Hebrew I could work out what the Yiddish was saying because it’s using the same lettering but without vowels and I had a rough idea, oh and I studied German. I got talking to this guy, he’d say well “where’d you pray?” I said “Well I don’t. I listen to music.” “Oh what do you mean?” “Well I feel that I can get the same from listening to Ornette Coleman or John Coltrane, you know, that’s enough. I don’t need drugs, I don’t need religion. This is what elevates me”. And we had a good conversation and I thought this is quite interesting cause they’d say “oh you must come along to one of these things” I never quite did, but you could get the sense of it being a transcendental experience - for the men! - that there’s so much chanting, devotion, the swaying, it becomes a transformative experience.

I recently went to an event at the church across the road. I was invited by a nursery I work with. They were taking part in this Windrush allies event. There was a film being shown by this black woman interviewing this local orthodox rabbi. And I thought this is curious… Both sitting on the same sofa. What he was talking about was that when a lot of the community came over from the Caribbean and the signs would say “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish” Hackney was one of the only places where they could get accommodation mainly from the Jewish community and there were these strong links. You know you could have a cynical opinion (you might think what’s that all about). His line was this was because we understand what people had suffered, we’d been through it ourselves - this was not long after the Holocaust - and so it was a real sense of empathy and support from one immigrant community to another immigrant community and that was a really nice link which I didn’t really know much about.

Early Years education was something that came about from me realising pretty soon after doing teacher training that I didn’t want to work in a school. And I did my teaching practice in Ladbroke Grove where the teacher would say to me “Here's your class. If there’s any trouble, send them to me, I’ll sort them out.

Some of the kids were Year Six, about ten years old, about to leave primary school, and they’d say “Sir, look, you need to shout at us a bit, you really need to shout, or we’re not going to listen. And maybe hit us now and again. And the kids were requesting…”if you want us to behave you’re going to have to get tough”. And then one of the kids nicked my wallet and I had my stuff strewn all over the estate and I had to get the locks changed. The headmaster was seen running up and down the corridor chasing after kids. People were sharing joints in the staff room, you know. And I just thought “I don’t want to be part of this culture where it’s all about power. It’s not about tuning into children.” And I thought it seems to be the only place where you can be creative and child-centred is in Early Years unless you’re completely outside the system and I thought, let me explore Eastly Years.

I got a job in a nursery. I suppose there was a bit of a novelty factor. Bloke with big hair and a beard. And a bloke. Not many blokes working in Early Years. It was quite a progressive place. First of all being a man working in Early Years is a challenge to the stereotype so I felt that was an anti-sexist statement in a sense, and I think for me it was important to give a model to children that men could be caring and could be fun. I certainly remember going back years, a mum who had three boys and she was a single parent, had had an abusive partner and I remember her saying to me “It’s been so important you being here because it’s given my boys an alternative model of what a man can be”. And I thought - that validates the work for me.