The rue Pavée Synagogue (Guimard 1913) in the 4th Arrondissement.

Sea Change - The Jewish Community of Paris

By Abbott Katz

Paris Kiosque - May 1996 - Volume 3, Number 5
Copyright (c) 1996 Abbott Katz - Used with permission

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There have been Jews in Paris for 1500 years, but that venerable population has been renewed and refreshed of late by Mediterranean currents, from whose waters have beached a disparate, new, Jewish stream. Once a storied mainstay of European Jewry, Jewish Paris today - numbering 350,000 denizens - presents an increasingly North African cast to its visitors, one confirmed by its shops, synagogues, and eateries.

When France's rule over its North African colonies in the 50s and 60s disengaged and shifted to indigenous Moslem regimes, a good many of the region's Sephardi (or very loosely denoted, Oriental) Jews read in the change an augury to move on. Some headed east to Israel; but others transported their French fluency - and citizenship - to the home of their erstwhile rulers, and the residue of that decision has been emblazoned in the signage of stores such as Nathan de Tunis on Rue Richer in the Ninth Arrondissment, where a long string of Jewish establishments can be essayed.

Seekers of the Sephardi presence need only consider the Jewish slice of the Marais district, the famed, teeming nexus of food shops, restaurants, bookstores, and an occasional synagogue. The area is often described by American Jews as the Pletzel; yet I have never heard that Yiddish name invoked by Parisian Jews. Indeed, it was Arabic that held second place as the tongue preferred by the Jews I overhead during my last visit.

Moreover, the Sephardi wave in Paris has incited a small but piquant religious effulgence among its Jews, long noted for their lassitude in matters of faith (the great 19th century Lithuanian Rabbi Israel Salanter came here expressly to exhort his brothers into the fold). This New Yorker was struck by the welter of kosher restaurants beaded through the city; and while none are likely to loose a star from the Michelin firmament, kosher they are, nevertheless. A yeshiva on Rue Pavee established in the mid-60s in an old Polish synagogue is heavily, if not overwhelmingly Sephardi, and the shelves of other established Ashkenaz synagogues are nowadays stacked with Sephardi prayerbooks.

The synagogues in Paris tend to be low-profile, a twin obeisance, I suspect, to both the city's architectural and political realities. The courtyards that front some Paris buildings have pushed some of these sites far into the properties on which they are set; and I am told by someone in a position to know that the old Congregation Adas Yereim on Rue Cadet is so deeply recessed into its space that the Nazis missed it altogether, although the same cannot be said for those congregants whose names are incised into the facade of its balcony in memoriam. And because the Middle East is never very far from Paris, however the distance be reckoned, I suspect it is also a concern with veering from harm's way that explains the studied diffidence of many synagogues here. You have to look hard to find some of them.

Such is the Jewish community of Paris today - among the largest in Europe, and more visible, healthy, and polyglot than before. It is worth a look. Shalom -- or perhaps, salaam.

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Abbott Katz is a PC support analyst who lives in Brooklyn and has written for New York Newsday and other publications. He will be sure to let you all know when he plans to be in Paris next, and can be reached in the meantime at akatz@juno.com.