That’s my motto when selecting restaurants for many visitors. And there’ve been a lot these past few weeks: friends, relatives, friends of friends, friends of relatives, classmates, fundraisers, writers doing research, travelers taking most excellent tours. We’ve had lunch together, dinner, we’ve been to wine bars, had picnics, stopped for pastries, chocolate, Bertillon sorbet.

“How do you/they stay so thin,” they ask, causing me to suck in my gut, “eating like this all the time?”

Now here’s a secret the food-bloggers won’t tell you: We don’t. At least I don’t.

Paris can be visited as a perpetual all-you-can-eat deluxe buffet but it’s lived as a city with countless venues for a shared meal or drink with friends, colleagues, clients and assorted visitors. Eating well implies choosing well, ordering well, buying well… enjoying good company. There is a form of Parisian self-control in matters of food and drink. One gets a hang of quickly enough. Spending two hours à table doesn’t mean consuming four times the amount of someone who sits for 30 minutes. And we actually eat at home sometimes. We have access to good fresh produce. We walk to shops. We do our 10,000 steps, including frequent staircases. We cook in our little kitchens. We may even exercise, gently.

However, there are times when some combination of visitors, work obligations, journalist events, birthday celebrations and ordinary social life lead me on an extended period of wining and dining. And no matter how much I protest when the dessert menu is handed out, there are quite a few crème brulées, moelleux au chocolat, pies and tarts placed on the table with an extra fork or spoon. “I’ll just have a little taste,” as my grandmother would say.

That period of indulgence can last a few days or a week or, with my most recent schedule of visitors, events and travelers on most excellent tours, a month. Indulgence, however, is not the same thing as overindulgence. Indulgence is a knowing pleasure. Overindulgence is loss of control. Admittedly, there’s a fine line of distinction at times.

A friend, in Paris for business, unsure of which side of the line we were on, said during our third straight high calorie wine-infused meal together, “My wife’s gonna kill me for putting on weight. I’m gonna tell her it’s your fault.”

If shared good living is my fault then guilty as charged. I don’t know what you’re during this afternoon, Scott, but I’m going for a run as soon as I finish this article.

10 Venues for Shared Good Living—Simple Food, Simply Good

What follows is a selection of simple, simply good restaurants and shops that have been on my eating trails of the past few weeks during this most recent bout of shared good living. It’s my food diary of the past few weeks, minus the less appealing, the less well served and the more gastronomic meals consumed along the way.

Simplicity is the theme, meaning relatively straightforward fare, meat and potatoes and the like yet unmistakably French. Some will call this restaurant fare “borrrrring,” others will call it “just what I was looking for.”

All are moderately priced, here meaning 25-50€ for 2 or 3 courses without beverages. All have good to excellent service. None require much, if any, advance reservation, though no harm calling ahead.

1. Le Sully
6 boulevard Henri IV, 4th arr. Metro Sully-Morland.
Tel. 01 42 72 94 80. Closed Sunday.

It’s easy to overlook this daytime café-brasserie (it closes at 8pm) because the intersection out front appears to be a place of transit only and not of pause. But here—between Ile Saint Louis and the Arsenal quarter of the Marais, between old blocks from the Bastille and a statue of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, between an equestrian center for the Republican Guard and the Center for information, documentation and exhibition for urban planning and architecture of Paris—Le Sully is a place with roots. The same family has operated it since 1917 and their roots still run deep into the Aveyron region of central France. Le Sully is old reliable when it comes to enjoying the café-brasserie experience in Paris thanks to the generous spirit of Robert and Dany Vidal and their son Romain and to their sense of quality. Le Sully proudly sports the government label Maitre-Restaurateur, which signifies that dishes are made in house essentially using fresh ingredients. Aubrac rump steak and other nice lunchtime brasserie fare, Languedoc wines. We linger into the afternoon.

2. La Poule au Pot
9 rue Vauvilliers, 1st arr. Metro Louvre-Rivoli
Tel. 01 42 36 32 96 Open 7pm-5am. Closed Mon.
Ever true the bistro tradition, Paul Racat has for 40 years now maintained this relaxed yet classy home for rustic bistro classics, attentively served, and an atmosphere of unpretentious chic that develops as the evening and the night move on. Come the later the better. Soupe gratinée à l’onion, blanquette de veau, white Sancerre. We linger into the night.

3. Boucherie Roulière
6 rue des Canettes, 6th arr. Metro Mabillon or Saint Germain des Près.
Tel. 01 84 15 04 47. Open daily.

Having long associated this street between Saint-Germain and Saint-Sulpice with creperies, pizzarias and pubs, I thought it a bit risky to head here for beef. But the risk paid off: the sliced rib just right, attentive service, elbow-to-elbow seating that offered up a mix of good cheer and Parisian sophistication. Mille feuilles de tomate et artichaut à l’huile de truffe; côte de boeuf, bone marrow and steak fries; Saint-Estèphe (Bordeaux).

4. 750g La Table
397 rue de Vaugirard, 15th arr. Metro Porte de Versailles.
Tel. 01 45 30 18 47. Open daily.

If I lived on the southwestern edge of the city or frequently attended trade shows at Porte de Versailles, I’d be happy to consider Damien Duquesne’s Table my neighborhood restaurant for good chicken, good beef, homey side dishes, much freshness, a judicious wine selection and friendly service. But I don’t, so I consider 750g La Table as a sign that no quarter is immune to honorable food and wine.

5. Les Petites Ecuries
40 rue des Petites Ecuries, 10 arr. Metro Château d’Eau or Bonne Nouvelle.
Tel. 01 48 24 02 90. Open daily.
Walking by on a sunny day, it was the sight of the pleasantly odd alcove lined with a living green wall that gave me pause for coffee. Though suspecting that the place might be too young and hip for the food or service to be anything but an afterthought, I nevertheless returned for dinner with a visiting friend the following evening. And good thing, too: my duck was delicious, my friend enjoyed his steak, we were kindly served and we barely noticed that we were among the oldest ones there.

6. Le Plomb de Cantal
3 rue de la Gaîté, 14th arr. Metro Edgar Quinet.
Open daily.
Why waste your waistline on the meat and potatoes at an ordinary greasy spoon when you can do some delicious gut-busting in this joyful restaurant in the Montparnasse quarter with Auvergne comfort food, from deep in the center of France? Sausage served with aligot (mashed potatoes with cheese and garlic) or truffade (sliced potatoes, cheese, garlic) is king here, but duck, tripes or beef are also options. Hearty salads as well. It’s simple, it’s delicious, it’s caloric, it’s cheerful, it’s Paris without needing to be hip or sophisticated. There’s an extension around the corner and another outlet across the city near metro Strasbourg-Saint Denis, but come evening the greatest joy is on aptly named theater- and restaurant-filled rue de la Gaîté.

7. Terminus Nord  
23 rue de Dunkerque, 10 arr. Metro Gare du Nord.
Open daily.

While the Auvergnats accompany their sausages with cheesy potatoes, brasseries of the north, wonderfully exemplified by this large and brassy restaurant across the street from Gare du Nord (the train station that links Paris with London, Lille, Brussels and Amsterdam), serve theirs with sauerkraut. But upon returning from Amsterdam (Café Loetje for lunch) we came here for the other specialties of northern brasseries: fish (cod, sea bass, salmon, sole) and seafood. A reminder that simple fare, simply good, isn’t just a beefy affair.

8. Le Village Ronsard
47 Ter Boulevard St Germain, 5th arr. Metro Maubert-Mutualité.
Tel. 01 43 25 07 95. Open daily.
There are many like it, but when in this quarter come lunchtime I’ve always felt comfortable at this perfectly, excellently ordinary café-brasserie in the Sesame Street of Paris market areas. Poulet-frites, steak-frites, salads, omelets, etc.

9. Fil’O’Fromage
12 rue Neuve Tolbiac, 13th arr. Metro Bibliothèque François Mitterrand or Quai de la Gare.
Tel. 01 53 79 13 35. Open 10am-7:30pm Mon.-Wed. 10am-10:30pm Thurs.-Sat. Closed Sunday.

Past the loud brasseries, the cavernous cafés and the undesirable restaurants that first assault the rare explorer of the new Rive Gauche quarter of the 13th arrondissement, Clément Chérif Boubrit (“I’m the Sheriff,” he says), philosopher, photographer, cheesemonger, oenologist, operates an off-beat wine and cheese shop and eatery where I recently organized a tasting for a group of eight bloggers/writers. Don’t worry, you needn’t be eight or even organized to enjoy the Sheriff’s approach to tasting wine, cheese and cold cuts vertically, horizontally, blindly or what the hell let’s just share-ingly.

10. My kitchen. Leftovers from last night’s party. Open 7/7, by invitation only.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Paris Restaurants: 10 Ways to Keep It Simple and Simply Good appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Adidas, Kookai, Minelli, Annick Goutal, Fred Perry, The Kooples, Kusmi Tea. Does that sound like the making of “the Jewish Quarter” to you? It doesn’t to me either, but those are among the signs—along with “falafel, 5€50”—that one now finds on rue des Rosiers, the 1000-foot long street in the Marais that was once a main artery of Yiddishkeit in Paris.

Even well into the 1970s a visitor, few as they were, might have peered into storefront or observed local residents gathering in the street or returning from work and sensed a neighborhood, a community, whose lifestyle and traditions were visible, alive and collective, whether Ashkenazic, Sephardic or Parisian.

Now, however, the tradition most followed on rue des Rosiers is that of a shopping mall, with a Jewish-theme food court to one end and familiar international clothing brands to the other. It can be hard to see the history for the falafels.

Jews were known to have lived on the City Island in the 6th century and later on the Left Bank, and records indicate their presence in the Marais by the 13th century. Nevertheless, due to successive expulsions and limitations on the activities of Jews, notably in the 14th century, there were in fact relatively few Jews in Paris at all between the 15th century and 18th century, when Jews began trickling back. Nevertheless, due to successive expulsions and limitations on the activities of Jews, notably in the 14th century, there were in fact relatively few Jews in Paris at all between the 15th century and 18th century, when Jews began trickling back. Still, it’s unlikely that there were any Jews in the Marais when, in 1791, during the Revolution, France became the first European country to grand Jews full rights of citizenship. By the early 1800s Jewish presence in the Marais was well established. Jewish arrivals in the quarter, and throughout Paris, took on greater amplitude in the second half of the 19th century, with large movement of Jews from Alsace and Lorraine, where more than half of the Jews of France had lived. Others arrived from Eastern Europe (Romania, Austria-Hungary, Russia), particularly between 1881 and 1914, in the same pogrom-fleeing waves that reached American shores, and Jews continued to arrive in the Paris region into the 1930s.

The Marais thus became home to a grouping of diverse Jewish communities that included Alsatian, Russian, Polish and other Ashkenazic traditions, along with Portuguese and Spanish Sephardic traditions, then in the minority here. In the initial decades of the 20th century one could therefore easily believe that the center of the Marais, comprising large swaths of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements, was Paris’s “Jewish quarter,” though there were in fact mostly non-Jews living throughout this working-class area, much of it very run down.

During the German Occupation of 1940 to 1944 the French police certainly knew how to distinguish a Jewish address from a non-Jewish address; they had identity files, now visible at by the Shoah Memorial, indicating with a large J (for juif) which were Jews. The massive round-up of Jews throughout the Paris region in July 1942, followed by mass deportations to the death camps, removed the “Jewish” from any sense that this was “a Jewish quarter.”

After the war some of those who had managed to flee in time and some of the few who survived the camps returned to the Marais, where, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they were joined by Sephardic Jews arriving from North Africa as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco gained independence from France. Though the Jewish presence in the Marais was dramatically reduced compared with the pre-war years (most Jews arriving from North Africa settled in other quarters or in the suburbs), rue des Rosiers and surroundings still visibly formed a Jewish neighborhood.

And now? Are travelers correct in thinking when coming to rue des Rosiers today that they are actually visiting “the Jewish quarter”? Is the presence of Semitic fast food and a few Judaica shops a reflection of a vibrant local community or of successful ethnic marketing or of a combination of the two?

Let’s take a look at what’s here.

Clearly there are Parisian Jews around—clearly, that is, if you walk by one of the active synagogues and religious schools just off rue des Rosiers or look into a kosher butcher shop or one of the less tourist-directed bakeries or visit on a Jewish holiday. A Jewish vocational school still operates at 4 bis rue des Rosiers. On Sundays cliques of Jewish adolescents from throughout Paris gather on the street, though they can be lost in crowd of other visitors, for every Sunday is a non-religious holiday in the Marais and the occasion for all comers to celebrate the pleasures of a stroll in the city.

Otherwise one is more likely to catch a glimpse not of neighborhood life today but of the neighborhood that is no longer here: The façade of the old  baths (closed in 1989); a plaque indicating that an attack was carried out against Jewish targets by a Palestinian terror cell on August 9, 1982 at the restaurant Jo Goldenberg , killing 6 and wounding 22 (the space is now occupied by a clothing shop); a sign in the middle of the street stating that this was the Pletzl or little square, the crossroads of the old urban Jewish village (in 1900), and signs here and on neighboring streets (rue des Ecouffes, rue des Hospitalières-Saint-Gervais) telling of deportations to death camps.

Synagogues of the Marais

Attesting to the centuries-old presence of Jews in the Marais, specifically the former parish of Saint Gervais, rue Ferdinand-Duval came to be called rue des Juifs (Street of the Jews) in the late Middle Ages. It was briefly a closed street, though not a ghetto per se since Jews also lived elsewhere in the city. An unsuspecting visitor is unlikely to walk up that little street today thinking that it might ever have been “a Jewish street,” until arriving at its northern end, where it spills into rue des Rosiers. You’ll find more by going one parallel street over in either direction, to rue Pavée or to rue des Ecouffes, where the neighborhood’s Jewish religiosity is more readily visible.

For security reasons, you’ll have to settle for an outer view of the Art Nouveau synagogue at 10 rue Pavée and the religious school across the street. The Pavée Synagogue (the synagogues in Paris are generally referred to by the street on which they’re located) was built in 1913 for the Union of Communities (Agoudas Hakehilos), largely comprised of Orthodox Jews of Russian origin. This high, narrow synagogue was designed by Hector Guimard, the architect famous for designing the entrances to the first Paris metro stations. The Pavée Synagogue, the only religious building to his credit, is less exuberantly Art Nouveau than the metro work, but the rising curves are undeniably his. It was dynamited on the eve of Yom Kippur 1941 by French Nazi sympathizers at the same time as several other synagogues in Paris. Guimard wasn’t Jewish but was married to a Jew—an American at that. Already in 1938 Guimard and his wife had fled Paris at the specter of war and moved to New York City, where he died in 1942. The Pavee Synagogue was restored after the war and is now listed as a Historical Monument. The building also houses aid services for the Orthodox community.

With a kind word and perhaps a small donation, visitors may be able to enter one of the smaller synagogues just off rue des Rosiers on rue des Ecouffes.

The largest synagogue in the Marais is at the district’s eastern edge, on rue des Tournelles, between Place de la Bastille and Place des Vosges. The Tournelles Synagogue, also listed as a Historical Monument, isn’t open for impromptu visits. Those interested in visiting this beautiful structure, built 1867-1876 with Gustave Eiffel’s company involved in the creation of its metallic skeleton, can contact the synagogue in advance to request permission (Synagogue de la rue des Tournelles, 21 bis rue des Tournelles, 75004 Paris). The Tournelles Synagogue backs up to the Vosges Synagogue whose entrance is at 14 place des Vosges. During the Jewish harvest-time holiday of Sukkot passersby will see a hut or sukkah installed on the balcony above the arcade on the square. There’s another handsome synagogue, built in the 1850s, in the northern part of the Marais, at 5 Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth. Taken together, these synagogues attest to the diverse community of Jews had spread throughout the Marais by the end of the 19th century, a century that saw the number of Jews in Paris increase six- or seven-fold. Many more would arrive in the following decades

Neither Rue des Rosiers nor any other area of the Marais was a closed ghetto, though portions might be considered a ghetto in the sense of being extremely run down. Jews were clearly a sizable presence in the Marais by the end of the 19th century, their numbers continuing to climb, however Jews lived throughout Paris in varying density. Rue de la Roquette (past the Bastille just east of the Marais) and Belleville were also had noticeably dense Jewish populations. While some who had distinguished themselves on the social ladder remained in the Marais, others preferred to live in the city’s upscale quarters, such as near the boulevards and quarters being modernized by Haussmann’s transformations of Paris. (Read about the Rothchild family here and the de Camondo family here.)

Wealth in the Marais

Even when Jews returned to the Marais after the war the strong Jewish presence had existed on the southern side of rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine was, by the late 1940s, largely absent; the homes of French and foreign Jews and non-Jews had been expropriated for the purposes of rehabilitating an “insalubrious” zone. Little by little the Marais lost its craftsmen and its peddlers as it became home to the middle class and to government projects. Yiddish, so frequently heard and read in the Marais prior to the war, had largely disappeared by the end of the 1950s. Another accent arose, that of Sephardic Jews arriving in numbers from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Sephardic rituals replace Ashkenasic rituals in certain synagogues, notably the synagogue on rue des Tournelles that was split in two to accommodate the distinct ritual interests of the Marais. On rue des Rosiers and nearby streets the neighborhood’s Jewish presence remained clear in the cafés and restaurants, local grocers and shops, with some now preferring couscous and bricks over herring and latkes. But the Marais as a whole was on the way upscale. “The Marais” wasn’t yet a call to stroll and shop, to see and be seen, but by the 1980s public funding was pouring into the area to restore its noble historical buildings—the 17th-century mansions and the town houses on Place des Vosges—and poverty, the hallmark of pre-war Jews in the Marais, no longer had a place here; the working class had been pushed to the edge of the city and into the suburbs. The Picasso Museum opened in one of those mansions in 1985, a turning point in terms of the neighborhoods visibility to visitors to Paris. The decade witnessed an acceleration of a transformation of the district’s local population, in the use of its storefronts and in the way in which the Marais was viewed from outside the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. Visitors from elsewhere in Paris and from abroad began to arrive. Gay bars and businesses opened just west of rue des Rosiers and within a few block of rue des Archives.

With rising real estate prices and an increasing number of visitors through the 1990s, shops began catering to clients from beyond the neighborhood. Rue des Rosiers, the remaining portion of the Marais to stake a claim to being the Pletzl—the ever shifting center of “the Jewish Quarter—, once again began to lose its local Jewish identity, though this time without anyone being murdered. Briefly Paris had the distinction of having side by side a Jewish village by day and a gay village by night. That held for about a decade, but as the Marais gained in desirability for increasingly upscale residents and visitors, any sense of neighborhood anywhere in the district largely evaporated.

Of course, Addidas, Kookai and Fred Perry shops on rue des Rosiers can be Jewish operated, as can the real estate on rue des Rosiers, but only foreign Jewish visitors and native anti-Semites consider this a Jewish quarter anymore. Similarly, only visiting LGBTQ individuals and French homophobes consider the area around rue des Archives a gay quarter. Otherwise, visitors are unlikely to have any idea who actually lives in these areas.

The 2000s saw the arrival of something new on rue des Rosiers and perpendicular streets, a new kind of Diaspora. This time it wasn’t a wave of Jewish immigrants arriving but of Jewish recipes, from New York—deli fare, pastrami sandwiches and the like. Oh, there had been pastrami sold here before, but the new deli restaurants marked the transformation of this small portion of the Marais into a Jewish-theme food court.

Though regrettable for those expecting to be visiting a Jewish enclave and a local community, this is simply part of the evolution of the city, just one of many formerly distinct neighborhoods that have been transformed by market forces in recent decades. The neighborhoods of Paris can still be distinguished by architecture, monuments, museums and history, but they are increasingly homogenous with regards to populations living and visiting there.

Wealth is the historical feature that the central Marais most recalls. After all, nobility and financiers began buying up lots here in the second half of the 16th century, and during the 17th century this became the most fashionable quarter of Paris thanks to the construction of Place des Vosges and of dozens of noble mansions. That was before there was a significant Jewish population here. It was the downfall of French nobility during the Revolution that gave Jews the freedom and elbow room to increase in numbers in the Marais. It was persecution elsewhere, hope for a better life and a need for community that caused the number of Jews in the Marais to swell in the late 19th century. It was also sense of security, hope and community (along with fun) that led to the opening of gay bars and businesses nearby in the late 20th century. The Marais was less desirable for business ventures then. Now, 400 years after the royal inauguration of Places des Vosges, the re-establishment of the Marais as a prized destination and residential area is a sign not such much that it has lost its Jewishness as that it has regained its lettres de noblesse—at least de bourgeoisie.

The Jewish Food Court

French and foreign visitors from beyond the quarter now frequent rue des Rosiers primarily for the shopping and the falafels—falafels, enjoyable as they may be, aren’t a reflection of local community or agriculture or known-how but of what visitors are happy to purchase. Hungry visitors will line up at the falafel window at L’As du Falafel as though the several other similar stands on the street had all failed their latest health test or lost the recipe for frying chickpea balls and slicing cabbage. The devotion to queuing there, particularly on Sunday, is partially due to the perverse lingering effect of an old article in the New York Times, partially due to the hawkers out front (once you’ve paid you’re stuck waiting), partially due to the fact that it’s kosher, whatever the latter may mean to the vast majority of those in line. As to quality, if you’re a serious student of fried chickpea balls and sliced cabbage in Paris then you should try them all. But if you simply want to eat a falafel pita sandwich any stand will suffice.

The street’s other hotspot is Chez Marianne, which takes its French republicanism seriously enough to present itself as French first, Jewish second. Chez Marianne, at the corner of rue des Rosiers and rue de l’Hospitalières Saint-Gervais, serves all kinds of delicious Mediterranean mush (eggplant, hummus, tzatziki, tarama, tapenade, etc.) as well as falafel, so there’s something for everyone. It isn’t kosher and so is open daily noon to 11pm. There are other choices in the area for a decent pastrami sandwich and well-oiled latkes, as well as some fine Ashkenazic bakeries. And there’s one remaining café that on weekdays still maintains a neighborhood feel, Les Rosiers, at #2 on the rue. Meanwhile, while fast foodies are now able to enjoy pastrami sandwiches and other New York imports in other quarters of Paris as well (e.g. meaty Freddies Deli in the 11th or vegan MOB in the 13th), while falafels are more common than crepes on some streets.

But I digress. The purpose of this article is not to recommend specific eateries in the Jewish food court or to speak of recent influences to the Paris fast food scene but rather to encourage those interested in Jewish history to look beyond the 20 years of Marais history represented by the Mediterrean-meets-NY-deli food offerings on rue des Rosiers. Enjoy them, enjoy that lingering scent and that occasional glimpse of the Pletzl and an old Jewish quarter—and why not enjoy them insightfully after working up an appetite at more instructive sights? The Deportation Memorial, the Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center would be fine places to start. You can begin by reading about them in this next article.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

The post In Search of a Jewish Quarter: Rue des Rosiers and the Jewish Food Court of Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Jewish quarters come and go, but anti-Semitism never goes out of fashion. Most recently in France—we are in 2014—there’s been a growing attraction (patent yet limited) of the “quenelle,” a down-turned Nazi salute now understood by most to be an anti-Semitic, anti-establishment gesture. It has gained favor among individuals and groups who believe that Jewish concerns, interests and history get too much airplay, in the way that some in France and elsewhere will unify in their antagonism against homosexuals, gypsies or others.

The Deportation Memorial

Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, political opponents and others were among the 200, 000 men, women and children deported from France to Nazi concentration camps between 1940 and 1944 who did not return. The French Deportation Memorial that honors their memory lies at the eastern tip of Ile de la Cité, behind Notre-Dame Cathedral.

At the back of quiet little park, steep stairs lead to a high-walled triangular courtyard where the Seine can be seen flowing toward barbed iron. A first-time visitor might think that itself is the monument before noticing a narrow passage formed by two blocks of stone leading into the memorial crypt.

Inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, the memorial crypt contains the Tomb of the Unknown Deportee. The remains placed in the tomb are those of an individual who died in the concentration camp of Neustadt. A long alley containing 200,000 points of light extends beyond the tomb. Triangular urns inscribed with the names of concentration camps contain earth from the camps and ashes from their crematoria. Lines of poetry inscribed on the walls speak of pain, loss and tragedy. The entrance is barred to the cells to either side the alley. We peer into these cells unable to see the dark corners, unable to fathom what suffering they might hold.

An annual ceremony is held here on the last Sunday in April. That has, since 1954, been designated as the National Day of Memory of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Deportation, which is close to the date of the Hebrew calendar on which Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah, is commemorated.

The Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center

Of the 200,000 individuals memorialized at the Deportation Memorial, about 77,000 were born Jewish, and they were specifically targeted to be exterminated because of that. The majority of those Jews were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Several thousand died in internment camps and some thousand others were otherwise executed or killed in France. The memorial to their memory is in the Marais, a large district (broadly the 3rd and 4th arrondissements) that had sizeable Jewish population at the outbreak of the war. The Shoah Memorial/Holocaust Center building is situated within a 10-minute walk of the Deportation Memorial to one side and rue des Rosiers to the other.

Roundups and Deportations

Following Germany’s defeat of France and the Armistice of June 22, 1940, the Germans occupied the northern half of France and a wide swatch down the country’s Atlantic coast. With Paris occupied, the French government, having originally decamped to Bordeaux, made the spa town of Vichy its headquarter. There, on July 10, 1940 Marshal Philippe Pétain, a hero of WWI, was voted full governmental power, hence reference to the French government from then until the Liberation of France in 1944 as the Vichy government.

An estimated 270,000 to 300,000 Jews were living in France in the late 1930s. Within several months after France’s armistice with Germany, the policies of the German occupiers and new French laws led to Jews being progressively excluded from professional life and dispossessed of property. Jews, defined by French officials as individuals with at least two Jewish grandparents, were required to register with the local police, constituting files that would eventually be used to round up Jews for deportation.

In collaboration with Germans and on their own, the French government along with local and state French police began rounding up Jews in 1941, first primarily foreign Jews then increasingly French Jewish men. Jews were required to wear a yellow star as of June 1942. The massive and all-inclusive round-ups in the Occupied Zone would follow.

During the mass round-up (rafle in French) of July 16-17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the Paris region. The event was exceptional not only for the number of Jews that were arrested in a single well-organized sweep but for also the fact that it embodied a clear shift in policy to the deportation of women and children along with men. Many of those arrested were corralled at the winter cycling stadium—the Vélodrome d’Hiver, commonly known as the Vél d’Hiv—that then stood just beyond the Eiffel Tower. From there they were moved to the transit camp at Drancy, northeast of the city, and then by train to Auschwitz.

Though not the only round-ups of the war period in France, those of July 1942 have come to represent the injustice and horrors of deportations throughout that period in France.

In 1995, at the site of the Vélodrome, President Jacques Chirac officially recognized on behalf of the nation France’s responsibility, under the authority of the Vichy Government and in collaboration with the Germans occupying the country, in the deportation of French Jews.

While the sculptural group shown above has been placed near the river, a memorial stands by the site of the former velodrome at 8 boulevard de Grenelle.

The Wall of the Righteous

Of the 270,000-300,000 Jews in France prior to the start of the war, nearly 75% survived by their own means, through the help of Jewish resistance organizations and/or through the assistance of non-Jewish French, through efforts both individual and collective.

For a variety of reasons, a larger percentage of French Jews escaped the Shoah than Jews from most other European countries. That partially explains why France now has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe. (Another reason for its size is the many Jews who arrived from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco as those countries gained independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s.)

Righteous Among the Nations is a title granted since 1963 by the State of Israel via the Memorial Museum of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to non-Jewish men and women who helped save Jews from persecution during the war. The names of over 3300 Righteous, whether French or acting in France, are inscribed in bronze plaques along the alley, now named  Allée des Justes (Alley of the Righteous), that borders the north side of the memorial. Inaugurated in 2006, the Wall of the Righteous also contains the name of the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon, a largely Protestant village whose religious leaders and villagers, some of whom are individually designated as Righteous, helped save numerous Jews. French Protestants had known periods of tremendous intolerance and murder at the hands of the Catholic majority and nobility from the 16th to the 18th centuries.

On the opposite side of the Allée des Justes can be seen a plaque indicating that more than 11,000 Jewish children were sent to the camps from France, including more than 500 from this, the 4th, arrondissement. Such plaques are now found on schools in districts throughout Paris where Jews lived. Some 6100 of those children lived in Paris. A sign facing the playground in Square du Temple, a park on the northern edge of the Marais, lists the names of 87 children (les tout-petits) from the 3rd arrondissement who weren’t yet old enough to attend school before being sent to the camps.

Entrance to the Shoah Memorial

Ten years after his speech at the site of the Vél d’Hiv, President Chirac inaugurated the Shoah Memorial and Holocaust Center on January 27, 2005, on the Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and for the Prevention of Crimes against Humanity, marking that year the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Security here is attentive, humorless and direct, as at the entrance to other major Jewish sights, notably the Great Synagogue on rue de la Victoire (9th arrondissement), but one can nevertheless freely enter the memorial (if without a weapon), whereas the synagogue requires prior arrangement for those who aren’t normally affiliated with it.

The names of death camps are written on a circular memorial in the courtyard, above the memorial crypt. Along the nearby wall seven bas-reliefs (1982) by the sculptor Arbit Blatas symbolize the camps. Text on the façade of the building written in Hebrew from poet Zalman Schnoeur’s adaptation of a line from Deuteronomy 25:17 is translated by the center as follows: “Remember what Amalek did unto our Generation exterminating 600 myriad bodies and souls, in the absence of war.”

Below that is written in French the words of Justin Godard, former government minister, Honorary President of the Committee for the Unknown Jewish Martyr: “Before the unknown Jewish martyr, incline your head in piety and respect for all the martyrs; incline your thoughts to accompany them along their path of sorrow. They will lead you to the highest pinnacle of justice and truth.”

History of the Shoah Memorial

The Shoah Memorial and the Holocaust Center form a single entity whose mission is “understanding the past to illuminate the future.” The building combines a museum, a documentation center and reading room, France’s largest (by number of titles) physical bookstore on the subject of the Holocaust, an auditorium for screenings, symposia, debates and presentations, offices and a memorial crypt. Though the building, as a Holocaust center, was inaugurated in 2005, the memorial itself had already existed.

Already in 1943 there was awareness among some Jews in France that evidence and testimony of their persecution would be necessary for the time when justice would be demanded. In April of that year Isaac Schneersohn invited 40 militant leaders of the various political factions in the Jewish community to his home in Grenoble, in the unoccupied zone, to set up the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation. But in September of that year the Germans entered into the unoccupied zone (referred to as the Free Zone by the Vichy government), causing Schneersohn and others to go underground as part of the Resistance. There, efforts continued to collect secret archives, including those held by the Vichy government and by the Gestapo in France.

After the war the CDJC began classifying these archives and established a publishing house to publish books and journals about the Shoah. The CDJC was soon called upon by the French government to provide evidence for the Nuremberg Trials.

Still under Schneersohn, the CDJC in 1951 sought to create a memorial to the victims of the Shoah and eventually obtained this plot of land owned by the City of Paris. Schneersohn passed away in 1969.

The Wall of Names

An estimated 78,000-80,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported from France between 1942 and 1944. Of them, some 76-77,000 did not return. (The round numbers in this article are approximate as figures vary among the most serious sources. Those given in this article are generally those presented at the center.) Past the security box at the entrance from the street, one approaches the building through the narrow passage between walls inscribed with the names and dates of birth of these individuals, listed alphabetically by year in which they were deported.

The Memorial Crypt

The building housing The Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr was inaugurated in October 1956, three years after the laying of its cornerstone, and in February 1957 ashes of victims from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Mauthausen and from the Warsaw Ghetto, placed in earth from Israel, were buried in the memorial crypt.

A Biblical quote in Hebrew on the back wall of the crypt reads: “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. Young and old, our sons and daughters were cut down by the sword.”

A map of the Warsaw Ghetto and an actual door from the Ghetto are now on the opposite wall. Off to the side, behind Plexiglas, are the “Jewish Files,” the index cards created between 1941 and 1944 under orders of the Vichy government and the will of the police department of the Paris region indicating the identification of Jews. These are the files that were used by French police in complicity with the Nazi occupier to know the identity and address of Jews to be rounded up for eventual deportation. Though present here for their association with the memorial, the files belong to the National Archives of France.

The Permanent Exhibition

The Shoah Memorial was officially listed on the register of historic buildings in 1991. But it soon became evident that of the need to enlarge the building and bring the CDJC and the Shoah Memorial together a single entity. A major transformation of the building led to its reopening in early 2005. The facades and the crypt of the original building were integrated into the new structure.

Other than to coming pay homage to the memory of victims of the Shoah, the permanent exhibition in the sub-basement museum is the most instructive aspect of the memorial and center for first-time visitors. Through photographs, texts, documents, films and recordings, the exhibition provides an excellent overview of the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and the events of the war period, followed by evidence and testimony gathered during the post-war period. While the films and recordings are in French only, the texts are in both French and English.

The center’s board of directors includes a number of well-known Jewish figures in French political, intellectual and economic life, currently among them Eric de Rothschild (president), Robert Badinter, chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim, Alain Finkielkraut, Serge Klarsfeld and Simone Veil. Among the memorial’s partners are the City of Paris, the Paris region (Ile de France), the Ministry of Education and the French train company SNCF.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

The Shoah Memorial, 17 rue Geoffroy-l’Asnier, 4th arr. Tel. 01 42 77 44 72. Metro Saint-Paul or Pont-Marie. Open Sunday to Friday 10am-6pm, until 10pm on Thursday. Closed for certain Jewish holidays as well as Jan. 1 and Dec. 25. Admission is free except for the auditorium and some educational activities. Free guided tours for individuals are given Sundays at 3pm in French and the second Sunday of each month in English.

The 7000+ titles available through the center’s bookshop are listed online at www.librairie-memorialdelashoah.org.

The Museum of Jewish Art and History, is also in the Marais at 71 rue du Temple, 3rd arrondissement. Metro Rambuteau or Hôtel de Ville. Open Monday to Friday 11am-6pm, Sunday 10am-6pm. Exhibitions open until 9pm on Wednesday. A 15-minute walk from the Shoah Memorial and also in the Marais, this museum is housed in a 17th-century mansion called the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, a building occupied in 1942 by number of Jews, 13 of which died in the camps. The permanent collection shows glimpses of Jewish life in France through the centuries and mounts notable temporary exhibitions.

Related articles on France Revisited:
– Paul Niedermann: Interview with a Holocaust Survivor and Witness in France
– In Search of a Jewish Quarter:  Rue des Rosiers and the Jewish Food Court of Paris

The post Jewish Paris: Deportation Memorial, Shoah Memorial, Vel d’Hiv Memorial appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

By Melinda Mayor

“Wait ’til you taste it.”

I slip on an oven mitt and take out the tray. My mouth is watering at the smell, and I’ve eaten two (okay, three) already today. I only put them in the oven long enough to warm them up a bit. I slide the tray’s contents onto a plate. Excitedly, I turn around, only to find my husband checking the mail.

“Don’t you want to try them?”

“What? Oh yeah, sure.”

I cannot comprehend this indifference when it comes to something so important, so delicious. He picks up one of the two on his plate and casually takes a bite. It takes every drop of willpower I possess not to leap onto the plate and scarf down the remaining one. He chews. I wait.

“Well?”

“It’s good,” he says unconvincingly.

“You don’t like it?”

“I said I like it.”

“It didn’t sound like you like it.”

“I said I like it!” A pause. “But it’s kind of…”

“Oily, right? I mean, it’s supposed to be oily, all our food is about the oil and the temple and blah-dee-blah-blah, but it’s…saltier, don’t you think? I was really thirsty after I ate a couple this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

I smile at him. “Nothing compares to yours, but what could I do? You were at work, and I needed latkes. He raises his eyebrows at me. “Yes,” I say icily. “I NEEDED them.” I hold his gaze with all the wide-eyed melodrama of an afternoon soap, and we both laugh.

My gentile husband cooks latkes. It’s one of the many things he didn’t do before meeting me, along with lighting Hanukkah candles and saying, “Oy” (though he argues with me about that last one). I told him how much I loved latkes—who doesn’t?—and he looked up a recipe online. The first time he made potato pancakes they turned out more pancake than potato. But now he’s a pro. When he selfishly goes to work, however, I have to make other arrangements: The latkes I just heated up were from the deli on rue des Rosiers in the Marais. That’s where I fail as a Jewish mother: I ask my kids, “Are you sure you had enough to eat?” but I don’t know how to cook. Well, I can make an egg. But who wants eggs all the time?

Getting latkes from the Jewish deli is a schlep worth making, especially if you get a pastrami sandwich to go with them (I also enjoy the turkey). In addition to the Jewish food on rue des Rosiers, the Marais is also known for its gay and Chinese communities, respectively. This means Jews can easily go for their typical Christmas dinner—Chinese food—while taking in the well groomed, smartly dressed men strolling by.

The first time I was on rue des Rosiers, I knew this was going to be something special. I was just visiting Paris then, and I was excited to be surrounded by “my people.” Surely I would feel at home in this foreign land once I was immersed in my natural habitat. I walked into a shop that sold everything from meats to pastries. As usual, I had trouble deciding what I wanted. And once I’d finally chosen from the vast array, I realized I could barely pronounce the words. I couldn’t even make a joke about how long I’d taken to decide. These weren’t my people. They were French.

The next time I was on rue des Rosiers I was pushing a baby in a stroller. We sat down at a restaurant and I ordered him his first latke. When it arrived, my excitement was palpable. I cut him off a piece, and he examined it for a while before finally putting it in his mouth. He loved it. Seeing my little mensch chow down on his potato pancake (more potato than pancake) warmed me almost as much as the food did. Later he broke out around his mouth in a reaction to the oil, and I broke out in guilt. Oily food and guilt: Maybe my Jewish mother instincts aren’t so off after all.

Now, in the kitchen, I eye the untouched latke left on my husband’s plate. I look at him, then back at the latke, then at him again. I broach the subject slowly, carefully: “So…are you going to eat that?”

His head is in the fridge, rifling through the vegetable drawer as he figures out what to make for dinner. “What?”

I sigh and roll my eyes. “I said, Are. You. Going. To. Eat. That.”

He glances over at the plate on the countertop. “Yeah, I’m saving it for later.”

I look at him incredulously. “I’m sorry, what is this ‘later’ that you speak of?”

He grins at me. “It’s called self-control.”

I have a look of utter confusion on my face. “I don’t understand you.”

He closes the fridge, shaking his head with a smile.

“Oy.”

The last time I was on rue des Rosiers we were celebrating Father’s Day. We went to the Jewish deli where I first got the latkes, and the four of us—me and him plus the four-year-old and the three-year-old—all indulged in giant deli sandwiches and, of course, latkes. It was a very Jewish meal, and I didn’t have to make it. The gentile husband was in his element. The kids whined slightly less than usual. And I knew who my people were.

© 2013, Melinda Mayor

Melinda Mayor is a writer-performer whose works include her one-woman show, “Jew! (A Musical),” various monologues and Meshugeneh Mama, her regular column for Message magazine. For more of her work see www.MelindaMayor.com.

For other work by Melinda Mayor on France Revisited see The Cranky Parent in Paris: Maman, Bébé and Unsolicited Advice.

The post Love and Latkes appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The lucky few who are able to reserve before September 15 for a Friday-to-Sunday a slot to climb the 300 steps (about 16 stories) of the Tour Saint Jacques, the flamboyant Gothic bell tower near Chatelet, will be rewarded with a view that rivals that from the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral but with the added value of giving a more sweeping eyeful of the heart of the Paris and a 360° panorama from the center of the city.

For a view of the view click here.

The tower is the only remnant of the Church of Saint James of the Butchery, which was a point of departure for pilgrimages on the route (via Tours) to Compostalla, Spain.

Built 1509 to 1523,  the tower owes its current clean and visitor-friendly state to a restoration completed in 2009, 150 years after its last major restoration. The church itself was demolished and its stone blocks sold off in 1797. Now, in a test-run, the tower is open to visitors by reservation Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 10am to 5pm, from July 5 to September 15.

Claustrophobics and those suffering from vertigo should abstain and therefore won’t then get a chance to see the view or the symbols of four Evangelists and of Saint James the Greater atop the 177-foot tower, but all passersby admire the tower from its base, where the mathematician-scientist-philosopher-theologian Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) stands guard. Pascal, a pioneer in the development of the barometer, conducted studies on air pressure and gravity at the tower. A weather station was installed atop the tower in 1891, which is around the time that Gustave Eiffel began studying air resistance and meteorology at his own tower further down the river.

The City of Paris has authorized the association that operates the lesser-known Tour Jean sans Peur / John the Fearless Tower to organize and conduct the visits at the Saint James Tower.

The visits last about 50 minutes for groups of 17 people a time. You can reserve:

– as an individual by getting in line (very early) on the day you wish to visit. Entrance: 6€ per person, free during Heritage Days, Sept 14 and 15.

– as a pre-constituted group of up to 17 people by making a request to tjsp@wanadoo.fr. Group fee: 100€.

Children under 10 are now allowed up. Visits can be cancelled due to inclement weather. The tower is located at 39 rue de Rivoli, 4th arr., metro ChateletComplete information in French can be found here.

If all goes smoothly this summer, subsequent plans will be made to open the tower to the public.

Though less spectacular, the Tour Jean Sans Peur, built 1409-1411, is remarkable as the last vestige of the Paris palace of the powerful Dukes of Burgundy. That tower is located at 20 rue Etienne Marcel (near rue Montorgeuil) in the 2nd arrondissement. With a guide or proper documentation (available on site) it provides a wonderful introduction to 15th-century French politics, the Hundred Years War with the English and the civil war between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, and the association that operates the tower organizes fascinating temporary exhibits there about various aspects of medieval life (warning: the exhibits are heavy on reading, light on displays). Those suffering from claustrophobia or vertigo will be at ease in this tower, but uncurious travelers willing to use their historical imagination might wish to abstain. You might test your own curiosity beforehand by deciding whether or not you’re impressed by this stone “outgrowth” from the stairwell:

Or this 15th-century toilet.

See www.tourjeansanspeur.com for opening dates and times and information about the current exhibition.

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Catherine de Beauvais was a premier lady in waiting and confidante to Anne of Austria, Louis XIV’s mother and regent during his minority. Some historians claim the queen mother put Catherine up to a seductive encounter in the stairwell of the Louvre. Catherine was about 40, Louis 16. Their age difference and the fact that Catherine is said to have been an unattractive but hot-blooded woman with a bad eye (the court nicknamed her Cateau la Bornesse, One-Eye Catty) only make the story that much more plausible. In contemporary terms we would call this the encounter of a winner of American Idol with someone quickly eliminated from Cougars and Kittens.

Nowadays a parent can get arrested for being so devoted to a boy’s needs. But if Anne had indeed been pulling the strings then she may have had the lofty desire to keep the young king from getting involved with the wrong sort of kitten, or perhaps to simply test the boy’s manhood. Modern rumor-mongers would note that the king was at the time rather dubiously fond of ballet.

Whatever the truth, Catherine’s devotion to Anne earned Catherine and her understanding husband Pierre elevation to the status of baroness and baron de Beauvais, along with funds sufficient enough that they could join the 17th-century carriage-set by building a mansion in the Marais.

* * *

Anyway, as I was saying, I was headed there the other day to take some pictures of Catherine’s house, when, well, you know how it goes, you set out to see a sight on the right side of the street but something on the left side of the street catches your eye. In this case it was the tiles in the window of Villa Paris and a view of Olivier Mangnez, the shop owner, at his drafting board.

Villa Paris isn’t a tile shop per se but rather Olivier Mangnez’s showroom. He specializes in old-fashion, artisan-made tiles of terracotta, stone, and enamel, including collections of delft, azulejos, marble marquetry, mosaics, and others. They are made à l’ancienne in the countries where the individual styles originated or where bygone traditions of production are maintained: France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Morocco. Though numerous examples can be seen in the showroom, Villa Paris isn’t actually a place for browsing but for playing with ideas and making informed choices. Most of Mr. Mangnez’s visitors are either decorators seeking a particular style or homeowners seeking high-quality, customized work for a specific space.

In addition to projects throughout France, Mr. Mangnez works with decorators involved in high-end projects overseas. His American credentials include tiles for a Cuban-style home in Miami, terracotta in Boston, and mosaic in New York. He has also worked with Americans decorating their Paris pied-à-terres.

* * *

Rue François Miron, the street on which Villa Paris is located, is a wonderful cross-section of the charms of Paris, both for its 17th- and 18th-century buildings and for storefront activities. On a relatively short street high, you’ll find, reading start to finish, i.e. from behind Hôtel de Ville/City Hall to rue de Rivoli: a little-visited church, some pretty wrought iron, a hip café-bar, two half-timbered buildings (a rarity in Paris), a swinger’s club (common in Paris), a sleepy local café that you know someone is dying to turn chic and international, an old spice shop, a pretty bakery, several restaurants, Villa Paris, the Hôtel de Beauvais, a historical society, a Scottish pub, a cross-street where you can get run over, and a row of picture-perfect food shops. It’s enough to make you want to buy an apartment right away on that very street and ask Olivier Mangnez to create a mosaic for your bathroom, design marble marquetry for your entrance, and pose tiles showing old food trades in your kitchen!

Though now an attractive side-street, rue François Miron is in fact the historical road into the heart of Paris from the west, paved when this was the entrance to the Roman city and heavily trafficked with medieval commerce entering Paris via the barrier by the Bastille. (The street was eventually bypassed with the development in the 19th century of rue de Rivoli). In the 17th century Catherine and Pierre’s house was so well situated to watch the traffic entering the city that in 1660, six year after Catherine’s alleged moment in the Sun King (or vice versa), Anne of Austria again honored her loyalty by choosing that balcony as the place from which to witness, along with an A-list of guests, the entrance of Louis XIV and his cousin-bride Maria Teresa into Paris.

The Hôtel de Beauvais, one of the last mansions in the Marais to have been completely renovated (completed in 2003), is now occupied by the Court of Appeals for administrative matters, but the courtyard can be visited upon innocent smile to the guard. You’ll notice the ram and lion heads above the ground floor; the ram (belier) makes reference to Catherine’s maiden name, Bellier. It’s best to ignore the fact that Catherine died at 75 under the weight of debt, forgotten (if ever truly known) by the king, and instead to think of her as she was known to her peers: a mature, hot-blooded baroness, willing to pay for it.

A plaque in the courtyard indicates that 7-year-old Mozart stayed here (at the time residence of the ambassador from Bavaria) while in Paris for several months in 1763, during which he was taken to Versailles to wow the Court of Louis XV.

I meant to take pictures of the Hôtel de Beauvais to show some details but by the time I left Villa Paris the sun had set and it was already closed. The Scottish pub a few doors down was just coming alive.

Villa Paris, 31 rue François Miron, 4^th arr. Tel. 01 42 74 07 05. E-mail villa-paris@cegetel.net. Site www.villa-paris.com. Open Mon.-Fri. 10am-1pm and 2:30pm-6:30pm.

© 2007 by Gary Lee Kraut

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You might also think that she was off her rocker. She’ll laugh wildly as she turns the handle of a wooden automaton whose mechanism causes the blue elephant to jump when the mouse appears. She’ll study your expression like a maniacal scientist as you try to figure out how to open a highly crafted Japanese puzzle box, before she reveals the precise 7 (or 12 or 27!) manipulations.

You may actually have to be a bit nutty and maniacal yourself to appreciate the unique offerings at Tumbleweed.

To call Tumbleweed a toy shop would be to miss the beauty and cleverness of the articles that Lynn Rovida has gathered from around the world. These aren’t children’s toys so much as playthings and decorative toys for big kids, ages 9 to 99.

The colorful wooden tops from Austria are intended for collecting as much as for spinning. The cardboard animated cutouts require delicate assembly before the (British) humor is revealed in the form of a flying pig, a surfing dog, a ewe boat.

You might offer a bright child a three-layered jigsaw puzzle from Wales, but the finely cut puzzle paintings from Prague have an artful sophistication that you’ll want to keep for yourself. A bright teenager could enjoy one of the brainteasers, though he probably won’t figure it out until he finishes college. Even the tin wind-up circus figures that were created as children’s toys in the 1930s now come with an obligatory safety warning, “Only for decoration, not for children.”

Lynn defines the spirit of Tumbleweed as “quirky, playful, and beautiful.” She is in continual search for finely handcrafted articles that fulfill those criteria. As to the zoomorphic baby slippers she sells, she confesses that they’ve earned a home at Tumbleweed simply because “they’re so cute and funny.” They also make for great gifts for infants.

Lynn likes to think of her finds as bits of poetry, and she has a special affection for people who share that point of view. Handing back and forth the poetry from her meticulously organized display cases, she treats such individuals not simply as customers, but as playmates as well. On the other hand, she can be visibly frustrated when someone enters her 160-square-foot shop looking for a quick fix of cheap mass-market humor, pulling apart 3-D puzzles with appreciation for neither the workmanship nor the challenge of putting them back together. Like a child giving away puppies, Lynn wants to be sure her merchandise find a good home.

As poetic handcrafted goods, the articles available at Tumbleweed don’t come at mass-produced prices.

In keeping with its name, Tumbleweed, created in 1989, is an uprooted concept in constant evolution. Lynn, who hails from Western Pennsylvania and has lived in France since 1977, initially promoted traditional and contemporary American crafts. The focus of her store has since evolved, yet the emphasis on natural materials and good craftsmanship remains.

In 1993, Lynn moved Tumbleweed into the Marais, around the corner from Place des Vosges. Since then, the Marais, following in the multinational footsteps of its Left Bank cousin the Saint Germain Quarter, has witnessed the arrival of chains, international brands, and shops emphasizing fashion over originality.

Tumbleweed, meanwhile, follows the beat of a different drummer.

Tumbleweed
19 rue de Turenne
75004 Paris.
Tel 01 42 78 06 10.

Open daily 11am-7pm.
Lynn Rovida is typically in the shop on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, othewise her assistant is on hand.

© 2004, 2005, 2008, 2011 by Gary Lee Kraut

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