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Walking Through Jewish Paris Posted June 12, 2011 Story
and photos by George Medovoy, Editor I could imagine a synagogue in Le Marais, the traditional Jewish quarter in the 4th arrondissement (or district) of the city. But Ile de la Cite, the island on the Seine?I knew of no Jewish connections here.
(The church spires of the cathedral of Notre-Dame dominated the skyline over Ile de la Cite)
But I did know it as the site of the massive Gothic church so beloved and immortalized by Victor Hugo in "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame." In the meantime, as my wife and I waited for Grant at the Brasserie des Deux Palais, we watched people pass through the Art-Nouveau ironwork portal at the Ile de la Cite Metro station. This portal was designed by the famous Parisian architect, Hector Guimard, whose work we would see later at the historic Synagogue de la rue Pavee.
(The entrance to the Metro on Ile de la Cite was designed by the architect Hector Guimard) Soon a woman came our way, walking across the square with a notebook in hand. It was Grant, a Jewish Long Island native who arrived in Paris 15 years ago with an art degree from Vassar College and plunged right in, as she put it, without even speaking a word of French at the time. Along the way, Grant has also conducted interviews of French Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Project and done the English subtitles for French films, including "La Vie en Rose," the story of French singer, Edith Piaf. Because of her interest in art history and her comfort level with tourists, she decided to take the French exam to become an official guide.
(Guide Pamela Grant, a Long Island, New York native, discusses early Jewish history in France over coffee in a cafe before starting the walking tour) "I failed it twice," she laughed over a cup of coffee, "and finally got it the third time around. It's a very rigorous exam, almost to the point of humiliation and cerebral cruelty." First Stop on the Tour The first stop on our tour was the site of a 5th-century synagogue - which has long since disappeared -- near the flower market on Allee Celestin Hennion, a stone's throw from the Metro station and the old Roman road. As
we made our way, Grant pointed to the large prefecture de police building, where
the Vichy police required Jews to register in 1941 -- a prelude to deportations
to the concentration camps.
(A plaque on a school building memorializes Jewish students arrested and sent to their death in concentration camps between 1942 and 1944 with the active complicity, as noted, of the Vichy government) Some of the Jews Grant interviewed for Spielberg's Holocaust project told her that they obeyed the order to register out of a simple desire "to be good citizens." But then there were others "who just knew and they didn't do it." At the flower market, Grant noted that by the time of the Crusades in 1096, Jewish life on the island had begun to decline "because you have this…extremist Catholic thing going on, where people are going to the Holy Land to get rid of the infidels...but it makes no sense…to leave the Jews in their midst...So they go after the Jews in France, too..." Expulsions Follow Then later on there were expulsions. When the king decided he no longer needed "the Jews as primary tax-payers," said Grant, "he would throw them out, but when he needed to sponge off their financial resources again, he would invite them back." On the day of our walk, we could only imagine all of those historical facts in the distant past. On this day, under a bright sun, we could see in the distance a big merry-go-round in front of the Hotel de Ville, the Paris city hall.
(A merry-go-round in front of the Paris city hall, the Hotel de Ville, beckons children) In time, the 5th-century synagogue Grant referred to was replaced by a church, but by the mid-19th century, the church, too, was torn down, along with a good part of the city and Ile de la Cite, by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, the city planner who gave us the modern Paris we know today. But thankfully for later generations, pockets of the old Paris still remain, like the Notre-Dame cathedral. In medieval times, Jews lived practically across the street from Notre-Dame, which, in its day, Grant said, was a kind of "skyscraper," a 20-story building if you include the towers, which made it easier "to reach heaven."
(The spires of Notre-Dame cathedral peek out at present-day Paris from the Ile de la Cite)
We paid close attention to the statuary on the church exterior, whose Old and New Testament scenes carry revealing religious messages. The scenes were originally painted bright blue, yellow, and red, Grant said, because "they wanted to make it educational, colorful, and you can imagine that the…priest was out here with his pointer stick, telling…stories of the Old and the New Testament, mostly the New Testament." But the visual message, Grant reminded us, paints a negative picture of Judaism: the Old Testament is clearly portrayed as being in retreat, represented by a blindfolded woman, her staff broken, and the Ten Commandments at her feet. By contrast, the woman representing the New Testament stands proudly with a crown on her head. "Who do you want to believe?" Grant asked rhetorically, "the Old Testament or the New Testament…" Memorial to the Deportations As we approached the very edge of the island, I looked back at the church spires dominating the French memorial to the deportations just in front of us, its narrow stairway leading downstairs, as if into a prison. The memorial recalls the deportation of 200,000 French citizens to concentration camps, of whom 76,000 were Jews.
(The memorial to the deportations)
As you cross over to Ile St-Louis, another small island in the Seine, all of this darkness is justaposed ironically against ice cream shops on the island. From Ile St-Louis, we continued on to Le Marais on the Right Bank of the Seine, where 17th-century nobles built hotels particuliers, imposing mansions embellished with large courtyards and meticulously-embroidered gardens. Expropriated during the Revolution, these mansions eventually fell into disrepair, and by the 19th century, the poor had begun to move in, including Eastern European Jewish immigrants.
(The lovely courtyard of a hotel particulier in Le Marais. A young Beethoven had stayed here on a visit with his father in 1763) But one of the mansions, the Hotel de Sens, underwent a different kind of transformation, becoming an award-winning jam factory! While these mansions are well represented in Le Marais, we also came upon a half-timbered 14th-century home still standing, providing a reminder of yet earlier generations of Parisians.
(A half-timbered building in Le Marais)
This is the same general area where the Memorial to the Shoah stands behind a high metal fence, through which one sees a large, symbolic bronze urn. Located on rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, the memorial was built on land donated by the French government. Inside the memorial building we stood for some time looking at an exhibit of photographs of Jewish children deported to the concentration camps. The photographs were collected by Serge Klarsfeld, the famous hunter of Nazi war criminals.
(The "Wall of the Just")
Outside, we stopped at the "Wall of the Just" to read the names of ordinary French citizens who saved Jews during the German occupation at great cost to their own safety. Arriving in the Pletzl When we finally arrived in the center of the pletzl, the city's traditional Jewish neighborhood whose Yiddish name means "small place," we found Hebrew and French signs on storefronts on the narrow streets.
(The pletzl is where one finds some of Jewish life today on narrow streets) There were small synagogues, religious bookstores, and kosher eateries -- including great falafel places -- next to chic clothing boutiques (an obvious sign of the pletzl's steady gentrification).
Pitzman Delicatessen, very crowded and quite good, is where we stopped for lunch, but the most inventive food sign we saw was at Sacha Finkelsztajn, a kosher bakery advertising "Yiddish Sandwiches." The Agoudas Hakehilos Synagogue, a tall structure at 10 rue Pavee and closed to the public, is the largest synagogue in the pletzl. Known
as the Synagogue de la rue Pavee, it was built in 1913, dynamited by the Germans
on Yom Kippur 1941, and later restored.
(A portion of the front of the Synagogue de la rue Pavee) When you visit the pletzl, it's worth the short walk to the Jewish Museum of Art and History in the Hotel de Saint-Aignan, another 17th-century mansion on rue du Temple. During our stay in Paris, the museum featured an exhibit of Chagall's paintings. An unexpected, really surprising find came just before lunch, hidden behind an over-sized door without any external identification on rue des Rosiers.
(A mezuzah affixed to a door in the pletzl) Grant rang the bell and someone released to lock electronically to let us in. We walked upstairs, and what we found was a small synagogue dating back to1780, when Jews still were not officially recognized or allowed in the city, though about 500 of them, Grant told us, apparently were living there clandestinely. It was a fitting end to our walk, which had taken us from 5th-century Jewish life along the Seine to Parisian Jewish life today. IF
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