Toni L. Kamins
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From the Paris chapter... a walking tour of the Marais quarter.

Podcasts of Jewish Paris walking tours coming soon.

When you walk around Paris Jewish history is all around. Visitors already may be familiar with the Pletzl, the area of narrow streets on and around rue des Rosiers. It’s a good place to begin, but look farther than that.

This neighborhood in Paris’ 4th arrondissement (district) has been Jewish on and off since the thirteenth century. Today, though gentrification has made this one of the city’s most fashionable quarters, it is still heavily Jewish and has been for nearly one hundred years.

At 10 rue Pavée, near rue de Rivoli, is Agudath Hakehilot the largest synagogue in the Pletzl. Built in 1914, it was designed by Hector Guimard, the Art Nouveau architect famous for Paris Metro’s green vegetal archways. Guimard's American wife was Jewish and with the rise of Nazism they left France for the United States. On Yom Kippur 1940 the synagogue was dynamited by the Germans, but has since been restored and is now a national monument.

Walk up rue Pavée to rue des Rosiers, and turn left. Along this narrow, ancient street you will find kosher and Jewish style restaurants cheek by jowl with Jewish bookshops, synagogues, shtiebels, and kosher boulangeries and charcuteries.

Off rue des Rosiers is rue Ferdinand Duval, until 1900 rue des Juifs. In the rear of the courtyard of number 20 is a sixteenth century Hotel Particulier (private house) known as the Hotel des Juifs. Now owned by an artist, it is a remnant of a Jewish community of the eighteenth century composed of Jews from Alsace, Lorraine, and Germany.

The next street off rue des Rosiers is rue des Ecouffes--street of kites, a bird of prey and an archaic and derisive term for pawnbroker.

Nearby at 6, rue des Hospitalières-St.-Gervais is a plaque commemorating the 165 students and headmaster of this Jewish school who were deported to Auschwitz via the transit camp at Drancy. And at 17, rue Geoffroy-l'Asnier is the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Marty with its invaluable archives of World War II documents.

The Jews of Paris and of France have the task of perpetuating Judaism while living with some very unpleasant and constant reminders of a history as outsiders that started way before the German occupation in the 1940s. For centuries the Jewish community lived within France at the sufferance of the king. Expulsions were common, as were all manner of physical, social, and economic degradations.

When you wander the ancient streets of the Pletzl, think about Jonathan, a Jewish moneylender in the thirteenth century. In 1290, Jonathan loaned money to a neighbor who gave her clothing as collateral. She repaid the loan, but spread rumors that he wouldn’t return her clothing unless she gave him the communion host from the local church. According to her story, she gave it to him and he hacked it with a knife until it bled. Then he threw it into a vat of boiling water, which turned red.

According to the woman’s tale, the host rose out of the vat and hovered in the air. She told this to the entire neighborhood, and Jonathan was burnt at the stake. Later, a chapel was built on the site--now the Protestant church of Les Billettes (22-24 rue des Archives). Jonathan and his family were not the only ones to suffer in this incident, the whole Jewish community was accused along with him, and it could very well have contributed to the expulsion of all Jews from France in 1306.

Nearby, Place de l’Hotel de Ville was once known as Place de Grève. In 1240 an infamous trial of the Talmud took place there followed by the burning of some twenty-four cartloads of Jewish books two years later. So traumatic was this trial and its outcome that it has been ever since included in the roster of disasters that are recalled each year on Tisha B'Av.

Walk over to Ile de la Cité. In the twelfth century a Jewish quarter was delineated by the present rue de la Cité (known then as rue des Juifs), the Quai de la Corse, and rue de Lutece. The synagogue was on Place Louis Lepine, the site of today’s Marché aux Fleurs.

Other than the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame is Paris’ most identifiable landmark. This symbol of French Catholicism also is emblematic of the centuries old conflict between Christianity and Judaism. On either side of the central portal, in tall niches, are two female figures, Ecclesia and Synagoga. On the left as you face it is Ecclesia, a beautiful woman wearing a crown. She represents the Roman Church. On the right is Synagoga, a woman blinded by a serpent around her eyes, with her head bowed, and her staff shattered; the tablets of the law slip from her hand. She represents Judaism. Variations of these figures are common in church architecture all over Europe and in medieval art as well.