What about Paris? That’s what many friends and colleagues have been asking me, freshly arrived from academic work in the City of Lights.
They weren’t referring to my impression of the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Bâteau Mouche, French cuisine, haute couture or other icons of Gallic tourism. They meant, of course, the Jewish problem. Is there still viable Jewish life in France? Are Jews emigrating in droves, frightened by anti-Semitic events and attitudes?
Reading the news from afar, it’s difficult not to be alarmed. The horrifying massacre of Friday shoppers at a kosher supermarket that followed the murder of the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo; the attacks on Jewish residents in long-time Jewish neighbourhoods, such as Belleville; and the notoriously anti-Semitic riffs of comedian Dieudonné and his “quenelle”– a gesture described as an “inverse Nazi salute,” to mention just a few events, have rightly garnered media attention. Some Israeli officials – including the prime minister – have suggested that French Jews should simply leave. Indeed, many have – with significant numbers moving to Israel, and others to Quebec.
But it’s equally clear that many French Jews wish to remain in France – that is, they want to stay home. There’s a long history of Jews in France – ambivalent, but no more so than any other European country, and better than most. The French Revolution and its ideal of egalitarianism provided the climate and ideology for a secular civic arena where religion poses no barrier to citizenship – the political philosophy that we Canadians inherit.
France was the first country in Europe to grant Jews full rights of citizenship. During the tumultuous years in turn-of-the-20th-century Europe, Paris was a beacon for Russian, Polish and other Jews who flocked there, fleeing social, economic and political hardship. Those very immigrants were the most vulnerable of French Jews under Nazism, deported with the enthusiastic help of French police and bureaucrats, but also sheltered by fellow Frenchman, in Paris and elsewhere.
In the few weeks I spent in Paris, my broad impression is that French Jewish life goes on. Several months after the terror attack at the Hyper Cacher market, an impromptu memorial has been set up, with banners memorializing the Jews killed there and the Muslim guard who protected them. The banners proudly declare: Je suis juif, nous sommes tous Charlie, nous sommes la France. Armed police guard the store, as they do every synagogue and Jewish school I passed. Many kosher restaurants employ armed security guards. That, sadly, is the mark of Jewish life in Europe today.
But the kosher markets and eateries teem with patrons, both local and foreign. On Shabbat afternoons, I encountered clusters of young men wearing kippot. At the Holocaust memorial site in the Marais, I saw French school groups. Exhibits at the recently re-opened Museum of Jewish Art and History draws crowds. And with more than 250 kosher restaurants in Paris, one would be hard pressed to toll the death knell for French Jewish life, which remains vibrant and diverse.
One afternoon stands out for me. I was serving as a juror on a doctoral defence at a university in Paris. The student, an immigrant from Tunisia, had written a dissertation that focused on V. S. Naipul, the Trinidadian writer of Indian-Hindu descent, and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist. She worked under the supervision of a Jewish professor whose research focused on Jewish American literature. After the defence, the student’s family hosted a reception, serving French hors d’oeuvres and Tunisian pastries, but (shocking for any reception in France) no wine or other alcohol. In the hallway was a student poster exhibition on challenges facing contemporary French young people. The title poster began: “Peut-on étudier après Charlie?” – “Can we go on studying after Charlie?” The poster referenced, of course, the murder of the staff at the French weekly, but also the legacy of the Holocaust. This, too, is France – complicated and contentious, much like Canada.
