For my urban anthropology of Paris class, we were supposed to choose a place for an
enquete de terrain, a mini investigation in which we could combine history, observation and interviews. The first place that popped into my head was Place des Vosges, my favorite
lieu in Paris. However, I finally settled on a different place, not too far away--the street known as
la rue des Juifs, or the street of the Jews, Rue des Rosiers.
Despite the fact that the non-formal celebration of Passover and Chanukah is about the extent of my Judaism, I have nonetheless always had soft spot for Jewish history, and my friends and family are well aware of my morbid fascination with the Holocaust. In college, my roommate Julie would get excited for me when I took a class on "my peeps" and she really enjoyed taking a surreptitious shot of me with some Orthodox Jews in the old Venetian ghetto--the first in the world--that I forced her to find with me (no easy feat in Venice). I haven't yet had an opportunity in my masters program to write a paper on Jews in France, so I figured it was now or never.
This street has been the heart of Paris' most famous Jewish quarter since the middle ages. Despite expulsions from the city, they always come back--and some accounts even attest to a continuous presence. Thus this street tells the history of Parisian Jews as one of
longue duree, or "long term," which refers to the continuous presence of certain basic structures despite larger changes in history.
One aspect that becomes immediately clear, at least to a student of Paris, is that this street, and in fact much of the Marais, escaped the face-lift given to the city in the mid-19th century by Baron Haussmann under Napoleon III. He was the one who created the wide boulevards and the stereotypical grayish-white, blue-roofed buildings found throughout the city. Here, the streets are still short and narrow and a mish-mash of architectural styles.
As for the Jewish presence itself, though it is not what it once was, with many of the spaces now filled with clothing stores and boutiques, it is still the defining characteristic of this street. Any day of the week (besides Saturday), you'll see any number of yamakas making their way through the crowd, as well as a whole range of other traditional Jewish headgear and clothing, often being immortalized on some tourist's digital camera, for the slide show back home.
Every other shop is still firmly Jewish. Besides the falafel places, there are at least 5 bakery/cafes selling Central and Eastern European
gastronomie--latkas, parogies, knish, strudel and more. There are bookstores, an
imprimerie (paper/printing store), art galleries, jewelry stores, judaica shops--even an alterations place. On the side streets (rue des Ecouffes, rue Pavee, rue F. Duval, rue des Hospitalieres St. Gervais), the trend continues, with a number of delis, butchers and other miscellaneous shops and restaurants.
If you take a closer look, you'll notice plaques all along the street and on some of the side streets as well. Each one is in memory of Jews deported during WWII, several of them children (165 from the primary school just of Rue des Rosiers on Rue des Hospitalieres St. Gervais). The memory of the Holocaust is never very far from any Jewish community, and this is certainly no exception. Important to note on the different plaques is whether or not they admit the collaboration of the Vichy government (the official French government during Occupation). It took France decades to finally begin to accept that the majority of the French were not in fact part of the Resistance, a myth inspired by Charles De Gaulle and clung to until the overwhelming evidence proved otherwise (namely through the Robert Paxton's
Vichy France). Once again, Jews came back to this
quartier after the war. Millions of years of persecution has taught them great resilience and persistence.
Here's a slideshow of some pics I snapped during my
enquete. I took most of them on a Saturday (the sabbath), so it looks a little dead. Normally it is much more lively, especially on Sundays. Click on it for a better look and to read my captions!