A Jewish Crossroads

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!





Rue des Rosiers is the place to be on Sundays. When the rest of Paris closes its doors for a day off--according to Christian tradition--the Jewish establishments lining this street welcome you with open arms. Apparently, this is no secret, as my Sunday experience was not unlike a day at Disneyland or a New York street fair. What it certainly was not, was another dead Sunday in Paris.

The second you get to the intersection of Rue des Rosiers and Rue des Ecouffes, you are plunged into the ceaseless falafel war between the famous L'As du Falafel and its unfortunate neighbor just across the narrow street, Mi-Va-Mi. The desperate employees of the latter establishment fling a basket of their fresh falafel in your face, begging you to choose them instead this time. On either side of the street, employees reach farther out into the intersection attempting to grab customers before the other can pounce. As both offer a bottomless basket of warm samples to tempt the confused and fumbling tourist into their line, the best strategy is to take a bite before choosing sides. Everyone has their opinion. While Lenny Kravitz, any number of websites, and salivating customers in the mile-long line swear by L'As, Mi-Va-Mi has its cheerleaders as well. Personally, I found their falafel has too much cilantro for my taste. The round, older man of L'As, who has turned customer-grabbing into an art form, won my heart along with their delicious falafel. Between puffs on his cigar, he calls out to passersby, whom he assumes MUST be on their way to L'As, "Falafel? Falafel? Vous voulez du falafel? A emporter ou sur place! To take away or eat here!" Yet somehow, he still found time to smilingly bring me a chair and a fork, without me even asking.

This magical street, a street that seems to be hors de Paris (outside of Paris) is, I have decided, a sort of crossroads, where everything comes together and shakes hands before heading off in another direction. Historically, this neighborhood was often a stopping point for new Jewish immigrants, just arrived from Eastern Europe, before they became established enough to move on up (toooo the east side...oh wrong city). Today it is where history meets memory, the past meets the present, tourist meets the local, religious meets the profane, private meets public, East meets West (Europe that is), and even where meet Jews of all different backgrounds. My North African falafel sandwich and Eastern European linzer torte can attest to that.