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There is always so much to talk about when one comes back from a good long holiday and that is usually multiplied when the holiday has been in Israel. Not only are there the tourist adventures, the beach and the heat, food and culture. Holidaying in Israel means that one cannot escape ha’matzav, the situation.
However, I want to leave ha’matzav to another day, firstly because it is rather indulgent of me to think that you may be interested in my personal travel snapshots. Secondly and my one line on it, is that we are in somewhat of a vacuum, it is summer and little happens in summer, too hot really but also we wait for next week’s talks between George Mitchell and Bibi Netanyahu in London. Finally, I also want to leave things because having been in Israel for 3 weeks, my mind is a whirl because frankly, the society is just such a balagan, in Pesach parlance, a matzah pudding, a complete mess!
Rather, I want to focus on a phenomenon that there had been no chance me guessing I would have come back with: that after Hebrew, the second language of our holiday, was French! During the weekdays, French was totally dominant on the Tel Aviv beaches and over Shabbat every other sunbed or towel was occupied by a French Jew – many of them having already swelled the ranks in the local Synagogues, especially those that were Sephardi. The hairdressers on Ben Yehuda advertised that they spoke French and the Sabras seemed quite mild in their behaviour compared to the strength of body and mind shown by their French brothers and sisters in the check-out of SuperSol Supermarket.
The only difficulty, was working out who had already made Aliyah, who was staying in their holiday home and who was the true tourist. A few miles down the cost, Ashdod had apparently been brought-up by French Jews who were beginning to dominate the coast-line in Ashkelon as well. It was reported to me that even the Anglo towns of Netanya and Herzliya were not immune from discussions of sun, sea and politics in French.
In trying to analyse why there seemed such an increase of French Jews in Israel since my last visit 2 years ago, I delved into the history of France and its Jews. French lands were some of the earliest to report a settled Jewish presence in Europe, dating back to 6CE. Their settlements related mainly to those centres of Roman administration, located on the great commercial routes, and there the Jews possessed synagogues. In harmony with the Theodosian code, and according to an edict addressed in 331 to the decurions of Cologne by the emperor Constantine, the internal organization of the Jews seems to have been the same as in the Roman empire. They appear to have had priests (rabbis or ḥazzanim), archisynagogues, patersynagogues, and other synagogue officials. The Jews were principally merchants and slave-dealers; they were also tax-collectors, sailors, and physicians.
Until roughly 1000, the Jews seemed to have lived in harmony with their neighbours and their skills were utilised by the powers of the times. They engaged in export trade, and Isaac the Jew, was even sent by Charlemagne in 797 with two ambassadors to Harun al-Rashid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph.
However, the growing strength of Christendom affected the Jews of France just has it did across Europe. In 1010 Alduin, Bishop of Limoges, offered the Jews of his diocese the choice between baptism and exile. For a month theologians held disputations with them, but without much success, for only three or four of the Jews abjured their faith; of the rest some fled or killed themselves.
Paradoxically, this was also a period that saw the flourishing of Jewish literature, led most notably by Rashi (Solomon b. Isaac) of Troyes (1040-1106). The school which he founded at Troyes, his birthplace, after having followed the teachings of those of Worms and Mayence, immediately became famous and spawned countless other famous Rabbis to continue Rashi’s work.
As a whole, The Jews of France suffered less than other Europeans during the Crusades, with the exception of the slaughter of the Jews of Rouen. However, the First Crusade led to nearly a century of accusations of blood libel against the Jews, with many burned or attacked. Immediately after the coronation of Philip Augustus on March 14, 1181, the King ordered the Jews arrested on a Saturday, in all their synagogues, and despoiled of their money and their vestments. In the following April, 1182, he published an edict of expulsion, but accorded the Jews a delay of three months for the sale of their personal property. Immovable property confiscated and in affect, the Jews were bled dry.
There followed centuries of recalling the Jews and then further expulsions when they were once more bled of their finances. The Jews of the French lands therefore, had experienced peaks and troughs of existence. And so their experiences continued, How did it happen that a nation that prided itself on being the first on the continent to offer Jews full citizenship, and caused the Jews to respond, “From now on, the Seine is our Jordan River, Paris is our Jerusalem;” a nation that gave rise to the Yiddish saying "as happy as God in France," is now routinely described as "the most anti-Semitic country in Europe." Although France has always taken quite seriously its position as the home of ‘liberty, fraternity and equality,’ it is also a place where a dark and resilient strain of anti-Semitism has perennially found a home.
Modern day Francophobes start with the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s, when a Jewish officer in the French army was falsely convicted of treason, amid wild anti-Semitic mob scenes. And yet non-Jews like Emile Zola, who believed that France should stand for justice for all, brought the truth to light. Despite this experience, there are still those who were completely patriotic in World War I: a French rabbi who became a national hero when he was killed by shrapnel while bringing a crucifix to a Christian soldier.
Following the war, the patriotism of the French Jews boosted their standing. They were thus nervous of the postwar influx of refugees from Eastern Europe. The “respectable” resident Jews worried that an influx of strange and “noisy” Jews from Eastern Europe would engender hostility from their fellow citizens. But it could not be denied, that the newcomers enlivened the offering to Jews, introducing Yiddish culture and theater, sports clubs, and notably, Zionist and Communist clubs.
The Depression escalated anti-Semitism in France as elsewhere. The elevation of Leon Blum to prime minister in 1936 raised the pride of some Jews, who carried Yiddish banners in Popular Front parades, among them members of the Jewish Hairdressers Union. However, more cautious Jews asked Blum not to accept the high-profile post lest any of his failures reflect on the entire Jewish community.
France’s defeat and the Nazi occupation marked the low point of Jewish life in France and the most shameful period in French history. The Vichy government beat even the Germans to the punch in enacting anti-Semitic laws.
After the war, a blanket of silence stifled any discussion of French collaboration and many French citizens refused to believe what had happened to the deportees. This view was institutionalized as for decades, the French government refused to recognize that Jews had been specially targeted during the war or acknowledge that French officials had done the actual deporting. One Jewish leader of the time wondered how one can live in a land whose police arrested your parents.
However, 1948 marked the beginning of an extended honeymoon period, when, with another paradox, France became the best friend of newly established Israel. Meanwhile, another immigration wave this time of Jews from the former French colonies in Africa added to the number and vitality of the Jewish community in France.
As the home of the largest Arab and the largest Jewish population in Europe, it was perhaps inevitable that France would become a flash point for conflict between these two groups. Israel’s victory in the Six Day War of 1967 gave French Jews a new pride and self-assurance but annoyed President Charles de Gaulle who ended the honeymoon. The Palestinian uprisings demonstrated how events in the Middle East could morph into an upswing in French anti-Semitism.
The 1980s started inauspiciously with the firebombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris, in which four people were killed and 20 injured. However, in the aftermath there was a huge anti-racist demonstration. It even became fashionable to be Jewish, and non-Jews developed a fascination with Jewish history. In 1995, Jacques Chirac became the first French president to forthrightly acknowledge his country’s guilt in the deportation and murder of French Jews.
It seems that the trend was still downwards. With the continuing influx of young Muslims from France’s former colonies and the outbreak of the Second Intifada, anti-Semitism surfaced once again, now wearing an anti-Zionist face. Antagonism sharpened when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged French Jews to move to Israel for their future safety and of course, the conflict in Gaza has heightened awareness of anti-Zionist fervour spilling over into ant-Semitism.
So generally, the French Jews, like their cousins in other countries, have asserted themselves in good times and tried to keep their heads low in stormy weather during: France’s cyclical anti- and philo-Semitism. For now once more, Robert Badinter, a former French Minister of Justice, sums things up best: "The Jews and France," he says, "are a love affair gone sour."
And so the towns and cities of Israel are beginning to seem like a safe haven for the Jews of France. Looks are deceiving, but if the impeccable dress of the French Jews we met are anything to go by in Tel Aviv, they may be of the more moneyed classes; but Israel has towns such as Ashdod and Ashkelon to welcome any foreign purse. It felt to me like the Jews of France were holding their breath to see which way the tide would turn next. France’s Jewish population at around half a million is the largest in Europe. It will be interesting to see whether this is so for much longer.
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