As a third stage of our visit to Paris, Jenny and I combined more focused explorations of the city's histories of Christian and Jewish communities. Beyond the whole trip overlapping with Christmas and Hanukkah, we planned two activities to delve a bit deeper: first, Christmas Eve celebrations at Sacré Coeur in Montmartre; and second, on the following day, a guided tour of Jewish Paris.
Knowing that a lot was coming, though, and after our busy Monday, we started with leisurely time around 'home.' That Tuesday morning dawned bright and clear, and the neighborhood shone: the buildings visible out our windows glowed in reflected light, and a well-placed parking regulation let our patisserie pun on the city's two 'lights' with ... pain au raison?
... let them eat cake, Voltaire?
Midday Tuesday, we had lunch at Café des Deux Moulins, the one featured in Amélie, and then took in a movie--a French-historical drama--at the character's neighborhood theater, a fun cinefan-feeling one-room venue called Studio 28. (We would later seek out the city's film-history museum, a bonanza!)
Thus refreshed with the secular and very modern, we turned our attention to the religious and ancient--equally brightly lit, a kind of cinema or 'moving picture' of stories past. That evening we joined some hundreds of other celebrants to climb la butte to Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre for a musical performance for Le réveillon de Noël. The interior of that glowing travertine fantasia is a wonder:
In a way the cathedral itself was the best part of the evening: sadly, members of the audience talked continuously through the music, so J and I, fed up with the thoughtless 'idea' that your own nimrod chattering could be more significant than a joyful communal ceremony, went home for the night looking forward to Jewish Paris the next day. Ignoring timing, for art's sake I'll juxtapose the cathedral's interior, above, here with the exterior of the final synagogue we saw, Agoudas Hakehilos, the only sacred building designed by my beloved Hector Guimard, he of the art-nouveau métro:
The tour itself was wonderful--and the group is highly recommended--centered physically on le Marais but ranging from the city's Romanized history as Lutetia (including typically regular-stoned streets) through the early Frankish kings and the Medieval period to Jewish life in the present day. A major recurring theme was France's status as a secular state, in which culturally religion is a private matter--as well as, sadly, was the Shoah, emphasizing France's historical responsibility for deporting citizens in collaboration with the Third Reich; that dark history is represented in an official Memorial and some dozen or more plaques on schools and private residences, none of them mincing words about Jews exterminated in the death-camps.
The overall result, though, was a vivid picture of a longstanding and vibrantly ongoing culture, a real highlight of the trip:
And as it happened, our tour guide was 1) also named Benjamin and 2) the same guide who'd led my dad and his wife on a tour not long before! Le monde, il est petit!
Refreshed by falafel, we returned to Montmartre and rounded out the day with a combination evening, lighting the Hanukkah candles and enjoying a home-cooked meal capped by a splendid bright bûche de Noël aux framboises! All in all, a marvelous two days of Christian and Jewish life in Paris.
Comments