Relatively well known in France but little beyond its borders, the history of the home for Jewish child refugees that operated in the pre-Alpine village of Izieu from May 1943 to April 1944 provides a remarkable glimpse of migration, childhood and caregiving under perilous conditions. It’s a story—history—that can resonate well beyond France, beyond an interest in the period of the Second World War, and beyond one religious group. It is a story of humanity and inhumanity for the ages.

However worthwhile the trek, one would have to travel well off the beaten track to visit the memorial and museum that now occupies the former children’s home in Izieu, located in an isolated hillside village 45 miles east of Lyon off the route to Chambery. But now, and until July 23, 2023, an exceptional and unexpectedly uplifting exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Art and History (MahJ) allows Parisians and visitors to Paris to examine the children’s drawings and words—with a paper “filmstrip” as pièce des résistance—and to learn of the remarkable efforts of their caregivers to allow them to flourish under perilous circumstances.

The former children’s home is now officially called Maison d’Izieu, Memorial to Exterminated Jewish Children, a name that speaks of the horror that came to 44 of the children who lived there and their caretakers. Yet the title of the exhibition at the Mahj—“You Will Always Remember Me,” Words and Drawings of the Children if Izieu—speaks above all of the creativity, comradery and well-being of the children who lived there and of the devoted and caring staff that enabled it.

Though far removed from Frank family’s Secret Annex in Amsterdam, there is, says Dominique Vidaud, director of the Maison d’Izieu, a parallel to be seen between the children’s collective body of work and the Diary of Anne Frank. As with Anne Frank’s writings, the drawings, stories and letters of the children of Izieu, supplemented here by archival documents and photographs, provide an intimate and universally understandable vision of their creators in their time and place and hopes for the future.

This is not a singularly French history. In fact, what makes their story and the exhibition particularly notable is how the children of Izieu and their caregivers, as well as authorities and villagers who sought to help or harm them, reflect a much wider view of European history and of childhood and childcare itself.

The arc holding together the three rooms of the exhibition is the memory of the remarkable caregiver and caretaker Sabine Zlatin, a woman trained as an artist who devoted herself to ensuring, during wartime and under constant threat, a form of normalcy for child refugees by creating an environment worthy of a healthy, active, developmental, educational and imaginative childhood, a survivor who went on to testify to condemn one of the prime hands of their extermination, and who spearheaded the drive to preserve their memory.

The historical context

The first of the three rooms of the exhibition presents the historical context for the existence and demise of the children’s home in Izieu. A map occupying one wall (shown below) is especially informative for visitors who are unclear of the geography of Jewish pre-war migration and wartime displacements or of the administrative borders of France during the German occupation and the location of major internment camps and of Izieu itself.

Sabine and Miron Zlatin were part of a wave of thousands of eastern European Jews of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Russia and having lived in Poland as a teenager, Miron Zlatin (1904-1944) emigrated to France in 1924. Sabine Chwatz (1907-1996) immigrated from Poland as a young woman and reached France in 1926. They met in Nancy, in eastern France, where she was studying art and literature and he agricultural science, and married in 1927. The couple bought a poultry farm, and a decade later Miron gained national recognition in the field. Thanks to that recognition, they were both able to obtain French citizenship in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the war. The couple had no children.

Emigrant Jews who had not obtained French nationality by the fall of 1940 or whose French nationality would be revoked were among the first in the German-occupied zone of northern France to be interned and later among the first to be deported. Yet the institution of anti-Jewish laws of 1940 and 1941 and the implementation by German occupiers and French officials of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to eliminate Jews in territories they occupied, would eventually put Jews throughout the country in peril.

Sabine, by then naturalized French, trained and worked as a nurse with the Red Cross in the unoccupied, so-called “free” zone until hardening anti-Jewish laws caused her dismissal in February 1941. She then joined the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a welfare agency for Jewish children that was already active in France in the late 1930s, as a social aid to help families interned in camps in southern France and to help with the transfer of orphaned children and children otherwise separated from their family to group homes. The children in her care reflected the pan-European, as well as pan-Mediterranean, movement of Jews in the late 1930s and during the war. Most of them were born in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria of parents who had previously immigrated from eastern Europe, and there were some German-born and Algerian-born children as well.

The first convoys of Jews from France destined for the Nazi death camps left for Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1942. By July, French authorities were actively delivering Jew to the Nazis for deportation, not only adults as Germany originally requested but children under 16 as well. Whereas Jews in the unoccupied zone, though subject to anti-Jewish laws, had been largely out of reach of Nazi occupying forces, French authorities launched round-ups in the south as well beginning in August 1942. And in November that year, after American and British forces landed in North Africa, German troops took control of the formerly unoccupied zone as well, making the situation for the Jewish refugees under the Zlatins’ care more perilous. No longer safe from possible internment or deportation, those operating homes for Jewish children needed to find more secure locations. The solution for the Zlatins and others was to move to safety in the departments in the furthest edges of southeastern France, which were occupied not by Germany but by Italy.

The home for child refugees in Izieu

In search of a safe environment for the children, the Zaltins obtained permission from supportive French authorities (yes, there were some) in the departments of Hérault (southwest France), where they’d been living, and in Ain (southeast), where they sought to move, to occupy a large house in Izieu, within the Italian-controlled zone. Though Mussolini’s Italy had numerous parallel aims with Hitler’s Germany as a founding fellow member of the Axis powers, the Italians had little interest in applying the Nazi policies of exterminating Jews.

In May 1943 the Zlatins and a group of children left Lodève, in Hérault, to settle in Izieu. Though located in an isolated village where it would not call attention to itself, the “Colony for child refugees from Hérault,” as it was called, was neither hidden nor clandestine in Izieu. Neighbors and local authorities were well aware that it housed Jewish children and was operated by Jewish caregivers and teachers. Some villagers openly provided material assistance, and their children later told of playing with the children from the home.

The home in Izieu provided refuge for 105 children for various lengths of time during its 11 months of activity. Despite the material hardships (limited ration cards, cold in winter, lack of running water other than from a fountain outside) and while faced with the children’s the psychological and emotional trauma of having their parents taken from them, the Zlatins and staff sought to create an environment that would be as wholesome, creative and normal as possible for the children ages 3 to 16. Days were organized around schooling, domestic chores, outings into the immediate natural surroundings, preparing and eating meals, arts, craft and theater, individual (rather than collective) bedtime stories, sleep.

Instead of showing misery, the drawings, writings and photos presented in the second room of the exhibition reveal children being children: playful, imaginative, creative, laughing, mocking, singing, with an endless appetite for paper for their projects. For the children of Izieu, anti-Semitism and the war itself seemed to be kept at bay. Their drawings give no hint of current world events and lurking danger. Instead, we see colorful drawing of Puss and Boots, of American cowboys and Indians, of boys playing games, of a safari, of pleasing landscapes, of medieval tales, of valiant Cossacks. We see a list of classroom assignments for children aged 6 to 12. We see photographs that reveal outings as nature-filled as at any children’s camp, always with an air of solidarity. One senses a secular, French pedagogy.

The Gestapo raid

Yet Sabine Zlatin was aware that the situation was becoming increasingly perilous. Following the Italian surrender to the Allies in September 1943, Germans forces entered the former Italian-occupied zone of southeast France. Word came of Jews being arrested in the region. Faced with impending danger, she left for Montpellier on April 3, 1944 in search of a more secure location for the children. On April 6, the Gestapo raided the home and arrested nearly all those present: 44 children and seven adults, including Miron Zlatin. One child escaped through a window to safe hiding with a neighbor as the raid got underway. The deportation process—first to Drancy, the transit hub north of Paris, then to Auschwitz—then began under orders of Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon.” Miron Zlatin and two of the older children were killed by firing squad in Estonia. The others were gassed in Auschwitz, except for one adult who managed to escape.

Of the 60 other children who had passed though the home at various times in the 11 months prior to the raid, all but one appears to have survived the Holocaust, a testimony to the relative success of networks and of individuals protecting them and perhaps to their own fortitude. About 77,000 Jews from France perished in the Holocaust while approximately 75% of the overall Jewish population of France at the start of the war survived. More specifically 88% of French Jews, 58% of non-French Jewish and 85% of Jewish children survived. Among the survivors who had spent time at Izieu was Paul Niedermann, subject of this 2014 interview by Janet Hulstrand for France Revisited. In 1987, Klaus Barbie was sentence to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Sabine Zlatin testified at the trial, as did Paul Niedermann.

You will always remember me

I provide this outline of history as background for those who might not be aware of it. However, the focus of the exhibition at the MahJ is not actually on that full sweep of events. While our awareness of the arrestation and murder of the children or staff might darkly cloud our examination of the drawings and photographs, our view of them begins to be cleared by the exhibition’s emphasis on the efforts of the Zlatins and their staff to create an environment where the children under their care could develop under the best conditions possible: nutritionally, educationally, psychologically, creatively and fraternally. And our view is further cleared by the exhibition’s placing front and center the joy seen in the children’s drawings and words. They then appear luminous.

Upon her return to the site of the crime three weeks later, Sabine Zlatin gathered for safekeeping the drawings, letters and notebooks that had been left behind in the silenced house. A first commemorative ceremony was held there on April 7, 1946.

The title of this exhibition comes from a phrase that appears twice in a little notebook (below) that she found in which children wrote to their friend Mina Aronawicz as they were leaving the home while Mina was staying, as one might sign a school yearbook. Born in Brussels in 1932 to Polished parents, Mina was one of the children arrested in the Gestapo raid and killed at Auschwitz. Several months earlier, her friends wrote in her notebook: Tu te souviendras de moi. You will always remember me.

The paper “filmstrips”

The exhibition’s third room presents the creative, collective pièce des résistance of the exhibition: three “filmstrips” made of sheets of paper glued together into long scrolls that bear crayon drawings and scenarios written by the children in 1943. The 2-3-yard scroll are fragments of paper “filmstrips” that were projected on a screen, as with a magic lantern, while the children provided the voices and sound effects to play out the scenarios they’d written.

The most complete of the three bands, Story of Ivan Tsarawitch, was recently made into an animated film. In 2021, the Maison d’Izieu asked Parmi les lucioles films, an animation studio based in Valence, south of Lyon, to work with students of the Emile Cohl Art School in Lyon to give movement to the crayon drawings. Students at the Aimé Césaire Middle School in suburb a Lyon provided the voices and sound effects for the film. Like the children of Izieu, the middle-school students were born to non-French parents and recently arrived in France. A documentary of the making of animated film can be viewed in that third room.

The film is a notable accomplishment in its own right. It also serves as a contemporary echo of the ideas, drawings and voices of the children of Izieu. The project, says Dominique Vidaud, director of the Maison d’Izieu, represents a prolongation of the work of the scroll’s original creators.

Of the other two bands, one lacks some text and the other lacks some drawings. Nevertheless, he says that with proper funding he who would like see them turned into animated films as well.

Sabine Zlatin eventually donated the saved material and other personal documents to the Bibliothèque National de France (BnF), the French National Library. “For the most part,” she said, “[these drawings] remained nearly forty-five years in my home. Carefully guarded, never looked at because too painful a memory.”

In 1988, she spearheaded the creation of the Museum-Memorial of the Children of Izieu, to which she donated other material. In 1994, President François Mitterrand inaugurated the museum-memorial at the former home in Izieu as a national remembrance site. Sabine Zlatin died in 1996. In 2000 the name was changed to Maison d’Izieu, Memorial to Exterminated Jewish Children.

Tu te souviendras de moi / You will always remember me, at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (MahJ), 71 rue du Temple in the Marais district of Paris, 3rd arrondissement, until July 23, 2023. Descriptive panels at the entrance to each of the rooms are in English as well as French. Otherwise, exhibition notices are in French only but the displays themselves (drawings, photographs, documents) and their dates often speak for themselves. The exhibition is organized with the assistance of the BnF and the Maison d’Izieu, with support from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Fondation Rothschild. See here for opening times.

Maison d’Izieu, Mémorial des enfants juifs exterminés, 70 route de Lambraz, Izieu. See here for opening times. In 2023 and 2024, the Maison d’Izieu commemorates the 80th anniversary of the children’s home.

© 2023, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Paris Exhibition: “You Will Always Remember Me,” Words and Drawings of the Children of Izieu appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I’ve been going to church a lot lately—for the art, the architecture, the history, the decorative flourishes, the organs, to get out of the rain, to hang out, what with museums and cafés closed during this phase of the pandemic. I’ll call a friend and say, “Hey, want to meet at church?,” though neither of us is Catholic.

We take our hats off when we go in. It’s the respectful thing to do. We respect the sign that says to remove our hats, while the clergy and worshippers respect that we’re not there for worship. Just looking. Mutual respect, of necessity and by law, since most the most notable churches of Paris—those most worth visiting for their art, architecture, organs, etc.—don’t belong to the Church, they belong to the city, to Parisians. They’re our churches. No religious litmus test is required of the visitor. Praise the secular Republic!

The fact that many churches in France don’t belong to the denomination that holds services in them may sound like an aberration, but public they are.

A bit of history will clarify before the video tour at the end of this article.

Blasphemy, Equal Rights and Vandalism

Prior to the French Revolution, under the ancien régime, the vast majority of French were Catholic by virtue of baptism—less so by faith, as the Revolution would show. Religious nationalism, as we would call it today, would not be part of the social order of the new republic. Neither would blasphemy be a crime; it was decriminalized in 1791—not just regarding the prophets, saints and objects that Catholics hold sacred, but for what Protestants and Jews revere as well, since 1791 was also the year that they were given full and equal rights of citizenship. What they held sacred could be blasphemed or ignored as well. (There weren’t many Muslims in France to speak of at the time, so the Revolution wasn’t concerned with Islam per se.)

Freed of the domination of Catholicism, some also felt free to desecrate religious art, architecture and burial sites that were reminders of pre-Revolutionary repression. The term “vandalism” was coined in 1794 to describe willful destruction worthy of the Vandals, but the government soon put a stop to that, for it wasn’t Church property that was being damaged but public property. Indeed, property once considered to belong to the Church or to nobility now belonged to the State. Hadn’t it all been created on the backs of the people?

But what to do with all that property? How to allow the Church to function on public property? How to pay for its maintenance? After the revolutionary decade, the Napoleonic era went a long way in sorting that out with a heavy hand, but throughout the 19th century there were doubts, conflicts and upheavals with respect to the separation of Church and State, even while new churches and now temples and synagogues were being built. Sacrilege–sacrilège!—even became a punishable offense for a time, though no longer, hallelujah. Of course, it’s one thing to disrespect a worshipper’s divine mysteries or Biblical bluster, while another to slander the worshipper or incite hate.

It’s a complicated story, as it is everywhere, but if there’s one chapter that’s particular to France and of which all visitors should be aware, it’s the one entitled “The Law of December 9, 1905 Concerning the Separation of Churches and the State”—the Law of 1905, for short.

The Law of 1905 Concerning the Separation of Churches and the State

The Law of 1905 establishes the principles of secularism (laïcité), guarantees freedom of worship, and defines (along with subsequent texts) the ownership and use of previously built religious edifices and their contents. Here’s the actual law in French. Here’s a good overview in English, including the historical context.

Generally speaking, as a result of the law and the Vatican’s response to it, municipalities own churches, parish chapels and presbyteries built prior to 1905 along with most of the furnishing, decorative elements and artworks existing at the time. State-sponsored temples and synagogues, too, fall under the law, though there were far fewer of them at the time. The State, meanwhile, has ownership and responsibility for cathedrals (at least those originally built as cathedrals prior to the Revolution, since some have changed roles and others have since been built) and chapels on state-owned property. Notre-Dame, the cathedral of Paris, is therefore owned by the State.

(The Orthodox church was scarcely present in Paris in 1905. And other than a small building that went up in the 1850s for Muslim funeral services in the city-run Père Lachaise Cemetery, there was no purposely built mosque in Paris until the construction in the 1920s of the Great Mosque of Paris.)

Not Eternal Damnation but Endless Restoration

France has 42,258 parish churches and chapels, of which only 1951 belong the dioceses, according to a 2016 inventory of the nation’s Conference of Bishops. The City of Paris owns a whopping 96 religious buildings: 85 churches, 9 Protestant temples, and two synagogues. Among these, 68 are officially designated as Historical Monuments and benefit from certain protections and measures of preservation as such. The Catholic Church or a Protestant or Jewish association has been granted use but does not own those places of worship.

While “The Republic neither recognizes, nor pays salaries for, nor subsidizes any form of worship” (Article 2 of the Law of 1905), the maintenance and restoration of State- and city-owned property falls upon its owner. Contrary to when many of these religious edifices were built, no one dare argue that tax money will help save souls and steer sheep to heaven. Lofty enough is the ambition of ensuring that the roof doesn’t leak and that fine works of art don’t fall apart. The Law of 1905 didn’t send France to eternal damnation, but it did set the nation on the path to endless restoration.

Instead of looking to heaven for answer, we look to the budget. As you can imagine, a sizable budget is required to maintain and restore the 96 city-owned religious edifices, 40,000 works of art, 130 organs, acres of stained glass and decorative painting and much liturgical furnishing. The City of Paris earmarks 10-15€ million (about $12-18 million) per year for these projects. (The City of Paris did not return repeated requests for the specific figure in the current budget.) Contributions from the state (through the Ministry of Culture), foundations (this, for example), corporate sponsors and private donors add a few million to the budget each year, assigned to specific project, from structural work to the restoration of a chapel or a work of art.

As examples of major maintenance and restoration projects: The recently completed restoration of the interior of Saint-Germain-des-Prés cost 6.4 million euros. Cleaning and repairing the southern façade of Saint Eustache at Les Halles cost 2.3 million, with a large wish-list yet to go inside. The Trinity Church in the 9th arrondissement is now in the midst of a 26-million-euro facelift. The city has earmarked 6.6 million for work on the belltower and northern transept of Saint Gervais, behind City Hall. Etcetera, etcetera.

As noted above, Notre-Dame belongs to the State so restoration efforts there are typically minimal on the Paris budget. However, the cathedral was still smoldering from the fire of April 15, 2019 when the mayor of Paris pledged a public contribution of 50 million euros on behalf of Parisians. (Overall pledges, public and private, eventually approached one billion.)

Guide to Church Visits

Paris isn’t Rome, of course. The City of Light has neither the breath nor depth nor intricacy of the ecclesiastic (dis)order of the Eternal City. Nevertheless, to take measure of the churchscape of Paris, residents and visitors can pick up a booklet entitled Guide des Visites d’Eglises (Guide to Church Visits). Available free in many churches and at the Paris Tourist Office, it indicates 112 churches and places of worship and provides brief descriptions—in French and in English—of their history and architectural and artistic points of interest. The booklet is published by the Catholic organization Art Culture et Foi / Paris (foi means faith, not to be confused with foie, meaning liver, as in foie gras).

Created in 1989, the organization’s mission is to undertake, encourage and support cultural and artistic activities in the diocese of Paris. The booklet therefore only concerns Christian places of worship. In addition to Catholic churches, it lists some Protestant temples and Orthodox churches, the more historic of which were built as Catholic churches then later designated by the State or the city for use by the other Christian denominations.

The city-owned synagogues naturally have no place in the booklet. For information about visiting the Great Synagogue, la Grande Synagogue de Paris, see here. For information on visiting the Great Mosque, la Grande Mosquée de Paris, see here.

Not all those listed in the booklet are property of the City of Paris since it also includes churches and chapels built after 1905. Most are open daily while others can be visited on a regular bases, though they may have special requirements for security reasons. (Smaller churches may consider walking around during mass as an intrusion, though you’re generally able to stand in the back if you don’t feel like taking a seat.) Not all are worth the detour. However, all offer free guided tours (whether rarely, occasionally or often), conducted by volunteers, parishioners or members of Art Culture et Foi / Paris. Times and dates are indicated. Thirty-eight of the listings have QR codes, which are also posted in the churches, for further information on your smartphone. (The few Paris churches and chapels worth visiting but not found the booklet are absent because they don’t offer guided tours, such as Sacré Coeur.)

With or without further information, curiosity is rewarded. If a church door is open, why not remove your hat and walk in? I do. As I say, I’ve been going to church a lot lately. Here are some that I’ve visited:

Video: Gary Goes to Church

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Gary Goes To Church in Paris, and So Should You (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

It was the synagogue’s cleaning woman, a Muslim of Moroccan origin, who called the rabbi in a panic to tell him that eight soldiers, heavily armed and carrying duffel bags, had arrived with orders to protect the synagogue. And they were hungry, having been shipped out from their base southwest France without provisions.

The previous day, in response to the terror attacks of January 7 and 9, Prime Minister Manuel Valls had made a stirring speech to the National Assembly in which he reaffirmed an earlier declaration that “without the Jews of France, France would no longer be France.”

Kehilat Gesher, a small bilingual (French-English) synagogue of 160 families, was now one of the sites where a total of more than 10,000 soldiers would be affected to “ensure the permanent protection of sensitive points and of public spaces, with priority given to Jewish schools, synagogues and mosques,” as the prime minister declared the night before.

Cohen, the founding rabbi of Kehilat Gesher, quickly left his home in the Marais to meet the men.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Pauline Bebe, Cohen’s wife, who is French, discovered that a squad had also been sent to protect the Centre Mayaan, the community center and synagogue of the Communauté Juive Libérale d’Ile de France located in the 11th arrondissement.

Rabbis Cohen and Bebe form a unique couple in Judaism in France and worldwide. They are both ordained in the Jewish movement called “Libérale” in French which corresponds to the Reform movement in the UK and the US, though for some Americans its approach might appear to be midway between Reform and Conservative. The Reform movement upholds the equality of men and women in religious practice and leadership. Reform Jews represent about 5% of the France’s Jewish population, which is estimated at 500-600,000. Most Jews in France are not affiliated with any synagogue, while the majority of those who are belong to Orthodox synagogues. The third major current of Judaism in France is the Conservative or Massorti movement.

The synagogue and the soldiers

For three months after they first arrived, squads of eight lived at Kehilat Gescher 24/7, in rotation, as at other sensitive sites. “Everyone, even a little hole in the wall synagogue like ours, had eight,” said Cohen.

After a time their presence became the new normal, but the initial weeks provided a learning experience for the rabbi, the members of the synagogue and the soldiers. The first three weeks Kahilat Gesher hosted and was guarded by a platoon from the Montauban-Toulouse area. That’s the area from which three soldiers were killed in the terrorist attacks of March 2012 that also included the murder of a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse.

“This group knew that the first people that Muslim extremists were killing [in France] were soldiers,” said Cohen, “so they knew they were in the line of fire. And they were trying to figure out ‘What’s the connection between Jews and soldiers?’”

What is the connection?

“The soldiers and the government represent the authority… and the Jews… are the easiest way to get a lot of bang for your buck. That’s the short answer, while there are a lot of ands, ifs and buts that I could add to that.”

(The initial interview with Rabbi Cohen for this article was conducted one week prior to the attacks of November 13, 2015 that killed 130 people in Paris.)

Though Cohen wasn’t aware of any soldiers assigned to Kehilat Gesher being of Jewish faith, the soldiers sometimes did take special part in the Saturday morning service.

“I did things during that time that I, as a foreigner, could get away with but that other rabbis, including my wife, would not even think of or do because they grew up in this culture… Every Saturday morning we have at the end of the Torah reading of our service a prayer for France, as synagogues everywhere around the world have a prayer for the government. So Saturday mornings I would ask the soldiers [who were off duty inside] if one of them wouldn’t mind reading the prayer for France. Having a guy come here in full metal jacket reading [this prayer], for the community, especially at that time period when everyone was shaken, was very moving, and extremely moving for the soldiers as well.… They would sometimes tremble when reading it.”

Some, he adds, would also sit in on one of the various classes given in French at Kehilat Gesher, discussions about the Torah, the Talmud or questions of Jewish life and ethics.

That, he said, is “at least one thing that can be pulled out of the dark days of January. Generally those who join the army tend to be more patriotic, nationalistic than most other citizens. Therefore politically the more nationalistic parties reach out to them and they’re more attracted to those parties. So to have almost 10% of the French army living in close quarters, mainly with the Jewish community, for three months… I hope that somewhere along the line those seeds will bear fruit… Everyone, in all of the communities, treated them like their own kids…”

Every Saturday afternoon 20 sushi meals were anonymously ordered for the soldiers at Kahilat Gesher. Congregants were ordering pizzas for them. A woman from the neighborhood who wasn’t a member of the synagogue knocked on the door one day and offered them a large pot of couscous, saying it was kosher.

After three month the rhythm changed and the army stood guard only whenever activities taking place. Cohen assumed that that, too, would slow down or stop as the year went on, but the rhythm continued.

“The government is in for the long-haul,” he said, “which is a good thing, I guess… That’s one thing I always point out to [those] who say ‘This is 1933 [in France], the brown shirts and Kristalnacht are around the corner.’ There are two major differences: one of them is that there is [the existence of] Israel, the other is that it’s the government that’s been taking the lead to try to protect us.”

Making Aliyah: Moving to Israel

The Jewish Agency for Israel, an Israeli organization operating internationally to assist those interested in moving to Israel and “to rescue Jews from countries where they are at risk,” reported for 2014 “a dramatic increase in Aliyah [the Hebrew term for immigration to Israel] from France. That year saw the arrival in Israel of 7,000 new immigrants from France, more than double the 3,400 who arrived in 2013 and triple the 1,900 who came in 2012.” That made 2014 the first year in which more immigrants came from France than from any other country. France has the largest Jewish population in Europe and the third-largest in the world after Israel and the United States.

Within days of the January attacks Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency, estimated that 15,000 French Jews could immigrate to Israel in 2015. In fact, about 7800 French Jews made Aliyah that year, according to the Jewish Agency. [Post-note: In Jan. 2017 the Jewish Agency announced that under 5000 French Jews immigrated to Israel in 2016.]

In early 2015, in the wake of anti-Semitic acts in Paris and then in Copenhagen, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Natanyahu’s call on Jews to leave France and Europe overall was widely condemned in Europe as unhelpful, even insulting. Asked a year later (May 2016) to describe Israel’s policy toward immigration from France, Israeli Ambassador Aliza Bin-Noun said that the official Israeli position was that immigration to Israel was a personal matter and that Israel would do all that it could to help those who want to establish themselves in Israel to do so. The ambassador qualified that by quoting her father: “When he heard that there was an anti-Semitic event anywhere in the world he always told me, ‘I think they deserve it because now we have a Jewish country… so if something happens to Jews in the world it’s their responsibility… Now we have a Jewish country, a country that can protect all of the Jews in the world.’”

Said Cohen: “Somebody who wants to move to Israel because they have a project and for a fuller Jewish life, I think, especially as a rabbi, that’s great, I want to help you out. Someone who’s running away because 10% of the population of France is Muslim and you’re scared is something else… It [fear] is one those things that doesn’t become the primary reason but it’s an additional reason for someone to leave.”

[Estimates of the number of people of Muslim faith or heritage in France vary from about 6 to 10% of an overall population of 66 million.]

Cohen cautions that what the numbers of those moving to Israel do not indicate is the return rate, particularly for those who leave over the age of 40, when “integration is much more difficult than when you go right after your studies.”

Furthermore, he said, “It’s very hard to discern how many people are actually leaving because of their fear of anti-Semitism [and] how many of them—especially if you’re younger and you have a degree and you haven’t been able to get a job for a long time in France…—are leaving for economic reasons. Those who have some connection to go to the United States—that’s the golden ring. But for French who do not have the American connection, if you’re Jewish, Israel is the easy place to go. Otherwise the other ambitious entrepreneurs of that age who are not Jewish and are not going to think of going to Israel tend to go to London, which is now the seventh largest ‘French’ city.”

“Economic Aliyah [from France] is very important, much more important, I think, than the anti-Semitic Aliyah,” he said. “And on top of it there’s the third element which is financial Aliyah. In the past several years… there is a huge financial drain going on in France. The highly wealthy [have moved to] London, Brussels, Luxembourg. They take the train in to work here, but they’ve established tax residencies in other countries. You have a large group of Jews doing that as well. [There are] many [Jewish] French businessmen who moved their families to Israel but come to France to work during the week. They’ve established their tax residence there but they live out their financial life here.”

In his own synagogue, he said, “I have a handful leave each year and they tend to be all in their mid to late 20s. The families that I’m aware of leaving had left over the past year or two [before the January attacks] for financial reasons.” He said that he hasn’t had any Anglo-Saxon families leave France to return home out of fear, but rather because the time of their mission in Paris was up.

Could it be that Reform Jews feel less threatened than Orthodox Jews, among which the men wear skullcaps and the children may attend Jewish schools?

“You can’t deny that there’s anti-Semitism that’s within certain aspects of society here.”

Have you seen any change in that in the more than 20 years that you’ve been in Paris?

“What has changed for me is that starting around 2000, 2001, for the first time the people in polite society who would not have said something [anti-Semitic], though they may have always thought it, they no longer felt the societal pressure to be quiet. So there’s then a loosening of tongues which then creates an atmosphere that permits things. They’ve given themselves permission to say things that they wouldn’t have said beforehand. But I don’t think the actual number of anti-Semites has necessarily changed, certainly within what are called the French ‘de souche’ [old stock French]… In a way you can say that the French are far less anti-Semitic than they’ve ever been. But within a subgroup, specifically with an Islamic subgroup of radical Islam, it’s off the charts.”

According to the American Jewish Committee, a global Jewish advocacy group that occasionally reports on public opinion surveys with regards to anti-Semitism, “Three distinct groups in France are noticeably more anti-Jewish than the overall population… The groups are supporters of the National Front party (extreme right), to a lesser extent supporters of the Left Front coalition (extreme left), and members of the Muslim community.” Surveys conducted by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League regarding anti-Semitism in Europe found “a dramatic decrease” in anti-Semitic attitudes in France between the fall of 2014 and the spring of 2015, with 77 of those polled agreeing that “violence against Jews in this country affects everyone and is an attack on our way of life.” It concluded that “concern about violence against Jews increased by 20 percent in France, 31 percent in Belgium, and 33 percent in Germany.” While the ADL’s “anti-Semitism” index revealed scores that were “extremely high for Muslims,” the lowest level was recorded in France, at 49% compared to 17% percent in the population overall. The United Kingdom, for example, Muslims scored at 54% on the index compared to 17% in the overall British population.

The first few Sabbaths after the attacks of January an imam friend of the Rabbi Cohen came to every service to show his support. “He asked me if he could come and I said ‘Of course.’ I do a lot of interfaith dialogue. However, one of the things that I as well as other leaders who are involved in any sort of outreach, we’re very wary of creating problems for our interlocutor” due to a backlash in their own religious communities. In order to support the more moderate voices among Muslim leaders, he said, the Catholic Church has been helpful because “it’s less of a sin to have a dialogue with Catholics.” Catholics can then initiate interfaith dialogues with imams and “once that starts happening you can bring in the back door and start bringing in some rabbis.”

Paris’s bilingual synagogue

Tom Cohen and Pauline Bebe met when they were students in Israel in the late 1980s. Originally from Oak Grove, Oregon, near Portland, Cohen attended the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, the West Coast affiliate of the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) in New York. He then completed his seminary studies in New York while Bebe complete hers at Leo Baeck College in London. In 1990 Bebe became the first woman from continental Europe to be ordained as a rabbi since Regina Jonas was ordained in Germany in 1938. (Jonas was later assassinated at Auschwitz.) Women were ordained in the United Kingdom as early as 1975 at Leo Baeck College. Today she is the doyenne of the three female rabbis of France.

For several years Cohen and Bebe racked up high cross-Atlantic telephone bills, the both moved to Paris, to marry and to work.

In the fall of 1992 Rabbi Cohen was appointed at the synagogue on Rue Copernic (Union Libérale Israélite de France, 16th arrondissement of Paris), Paris’s oldest Reform synagogue, to second Rabbi Michael Williams, a Brit. (That synagogue was already officiated by Williams in 1980 when it was the site of a terrorist attack, the first such attack against Jews in France since WWII.)

In 1993 Cohen was approached by “four or five” bilingual (English-French) Jewish families in the western suburbs of Paris to assist them in teaching and understanding Jewish life. He described the families as comprised of Jewish women from New York married Frenchmen—“half Sephardic Jewish guys who threw the tefillin off of the boat as they entered Marseille to be more French than the French and the other half fallen Catholics.” In particular the women wanted to know how and what to transmit to their children in terms of a Jewish education. “They came up with the idea of starting a light Friday-night service in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and their friends then heard about it in Paris and also wanted to join.”

As the number of participants grew Cohen developed the structure of a formal synagogue by founding Kehilat Gesher. For a while services were held alternately in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Paris, but Rabbi Cohen soon realized that all of the growth was in Paris.

Kehilat Gesher holds services in French and English along with Hebrew prayer. Cohen himself is bilingual, as are many of the congregants. For Torah study, parents can have their children educated in either English or French.

Warm, voluble and good-humored, Cohen has developed Kehilat Gesher into a religious center that is a reflection of his own personality and of the diverse backgrounds of its members. Sixty percent of the families at Kehilat Gesher are French, while 40% are mixed French-English-speaking natives or fully English-speaking native families. The congregation brings together Ashkenazic and Sephardic cultures. Most of the native English-speakers are American, while “a handful” are British and there are also other foreign nations (Dutch, Swedish, etc.). Of the English-speakers, “the Brits tend to be the more involved,” said Rabbi Cohen. “All of them have them have taken on some kind of responsibility to make the community function, not just in a user mode but also in a provider mode.” The synagogue currently has 160 member families, a “family” meaning an individual, a couple or a family with children for membership purposes.

For the past decade Kehilat Gesher has been renting space in the 17th arrondissement, near the Courcelles metro station, and has recently been looking to expand to a more permanent setting. “We’re looking to have a place of about 500m2 [5400 sq. ft] and we want to stay in the 17th because this is our historic home.”

They now have 125m2 [1350 sq. ft.] for a variety of activities, including a 40m2 multipurpose rooms where religious services are held. To accommodate services for a “lifecyle event” such as a bar- or bat-mitzvah, Kehilat Gesher must to rent an alternate space.

“We’ve reached saturation point,” said Cohen. “A lot of the French families who come to see the place love the community but can’t join because it seems like a fly-by-night operation in a storefront. I was never a brick person, I was person oriented, but I realize that bricks have their place.”

Rabbi Cohen is hoping to find a place soon and then to begin fundraising. The synagogue survives by membership and donations. Kehilat Gesher USA is a U.S.-based non-profit organization through which Americans can give to the synagogue. Kehilat Gesher also participates with Rabbi Bebe’s synagogue in the Fondation Maayan, which enables tax deductions for donations.

Centre Maayan

While Rabbi Cohen was developing Kehilat Gesher in the mid-90s, Rabbi Bebe was created her own synagogue, the Communauté juive libérale (CJL) Ile de France, which she founded in 1995. Formerly housed in a space near Place de Cliché similar to Kehilat Gesher’s today, the CJL now occupies a large space in the 11th arrondissement that Bebe dubbed the Centre Maayan (Maayan means source of water in Hebrew). With the move membership quickly grew from 170 families to 400 families, an evolution that Cohen hopes to emulate when Kehilat Gesher moves to a large space. Bebe is fluent is English, as Cohen is in French, and while some native English-speakers and bilingual families do attend CJL—and visitors are welcome—the services and instruction are in French, with French and Hebrew prayer.

Bebe’s synagogue is a luminous space with light beige wood seating in a semi-circle around the bema, as the raised podium on which the rabbi stands is called. A tree bearing colorful leaves decorates the ark, the ornamental closet where the torahs are kept. A playful chandelier of dancing metal and colored glass lightens the area around it. Bebe stands at a podium on which a fabric is embroidered with curving stems in flower.

On the Friday after the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks that killed 130 people and wounded many others, about an equal number of congregants were in attendance, filling about half the room. About one quarter of the women and girls wear skullcaps; nearly all of the men do.

A piano by the podium, played by an elderly congregant, accompanies the chanting during the service. There is warmth to the service but not exuberance. The banter between the congregants appears to be more restrained than that at Rabbi Cohen’s synagogue across the city, the reflection of both cultural differences and the approaches of each rabbi.

The Centre Maayan is located near the offices of Charlie Hebdo that were attacked on January 7 and near the Bataclan concert hall attacked on Nov. 13. During the Charlie Hebdo attack a Muslim policeman named Ahmed Merabet was murdered on the sidewalk at the corner near the synagogue. In her sermon after the November attack, Bebe recalled Merabet’s smile, familiar to her since would pass him frequently on her way to and from the synagogue. She reminded the congregation that one can no longer say that the targets are others. In their hatred of those who don’t resemble them, the assassins see numbers, not people, she said. She called these acts attacks on humanity and concludes that in the simple act of having coffee on the café terrace, the cup itself could now be seen as a sign of humanity that the terrorists would deny.

Together, Cohen and Bebe, parents of four children ages 12 to 20, created a Jewish summer camp in 2014. In 2015 they very quickly attained their limit of 70 children, ages 8 to 16. In 2016 they expanded to allow in 102 children with a staff of about 30. Several dozen children had to be refused for lack of space.

While that increase undoubtedly reflects the quality of the offer, Cohen said that it is also shows that terrorism in France and anti-Semitic attacks in general have not dampened the desire for French Jews to live as Jews in France.

Given the immediate success of the summer camp, why didn’t they bring their two fledgling communities together 20 years ago as they were both getting started?

There is some joining of forces between of the couples’ synagogues with special events, concerts, teaching, but Cohen cites three reasons for never wanting to create a common synagogue: First, they didn’t want the community to get in the way of their couple. Second, it’s important that anyone who joins his wife’s community has to know that their rabbi is a woman; otherwise, he said, there’s the risk that some would see the male rabbi as a kind of superior by virtue of being male. Third, “my wife wouldn’t like my services and I wouldn’t like her services. We have different styles, but that’s okay, we joke about it.”

Madame Le Rabbin and Monsieur La Rabbine

In French un rabbin is rabbi and une rabbine is a rabbi’s wife. So while Pauline Bebe is une rabbine by virtue of being Rabbi Cohen’s wife, she also un rabbin in her own right. As France’s first female rabbi she felt it her prerogative to decide how she should be addressed as a rabbi. Wishing to be addressed by the title rather than the person, she therefore elected to be called Madame le Rabbin.

Meanwhile, Tom Cohen, as the first husband of a female rabbi in France, felt it his prerogative (“me, who bastardizes the French language all the time”) to decide what the term in French for that would be. “I decided on the same logic, so while in my synagogue I’m Monsieur le Rabbin, when I’m in her synagogue just as her husband I’m Monsieur la Rabbine. It’s my little contribution to France.”

Not so sure the Académie Française would agree.

* * *

Both Kehilat Gescher and Centre Maayan welcome visitors wishing to attend services. For security reasons, it’s advisable to call or write first to let them know that you’d like to attend on a given day.

Kehilat Gesher
Rabbi Tom Cohen
7 Rue Léon Cogniet, 75017 Paris
Telephone: 09 53 18 90 86

Communauté juive libérale Ile de France at the Centre Maayan
Rabbi Pauline Bebe
10 Rue Moufle, 75011 Paris
Telephone: 01 55 28 83 84

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

An earlier, shorter version of this article appeared in The Connexion in January 2016.

Travel in the spirit of France Revisited with Jewish tours, culinary and wine tours, culture tours and unique sightseeing tours. See here for more information.

The post A Couple of Rabbis in Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

For the second year in a row France has therefore seen more Jews immigrating to Israel than any other country. France has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe, with estimates ranging from 500-550,000. The Jewish Agency says that in the past decade more than 30,000 French Jews have immigrated to Israel, with more than half being under 35 years old. The Jewish Agency does not provide figures on the number of Jews who return to their country of birth or the reasons for their immigration. Immigration to Israel is known as Aliyah in Hebrew.

Despite its significance, the official figure is nearly half of the 15,000 departures that the Jewish Agency predicted for 2015 following the terrorist attacks of January 7-9, 2015. In those attacks radical Islamists targeting journalists at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices, Jews at the Hyper Casher kosher grocery and law enforcement agents on the street were responsible for killing 17 people.

Interestingly, surveys by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League have found that anti-Semitic attitudes in France decreased between autumn 2014 and spring 2015 for the overall population, perhaps because the January attacks brought wide public awareness to violence against Jews. The surveys also showed that while anti-Semitic sentiment among Muslims throughout Europe is much higher than among the general population, French Muslims have a slightly lower “index score” with respect to anti-Semitism than Muslims in the five other European countries where the issue was examined: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. For the ADL’s Executive Summary of those surveys see here.

Jewish emigration from France—for religious reasons, out of fear and/or for economic reasons—is among the topics covered in an interview by France Revisited’s editor Gary Lee Kraut with Tom Cohen, rabbi of Paris’s bilingual (French-English) synagogue Kahilat Gesher, that appears in the January 2016 issue of British monthly newspaper The Connexion.

The post 7,900 French Jews Reportedly Immigrated to Israel in 2015 appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

By Max Kutner

Passover was one week away and I knew no one in the city. I had just moved to Paris from New York for a five-month séjour and, having always celebrated the holiday at home, I searched the Internet for community Seders. France has the largest Jewish population in Europe; I figured finding a way to celebrate the holiday wouldn’t be difficult. It wasn’t. Chabad popped up near the top of the list.

As a twenty-four-year-old Reform Jew, I knew little about the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Orthodox Judaism, only that if you can’t find them they’ll find you. In Paris so far my only contact with the men of Chabad had been to ignore them when they approached me near the falafel stands on rue des Rosiers in the Marais. I didn’t know what to expect from the Seder. Would it go on for hours? Would it be entirely in Hebrew? Would men and women have to sit separately? Leaving my comfort zone was part of what I liked about getting to know Paris.

Chabad was easy enough to find—and it was right on the Champs-Elysées, at least the address was. The Arc de Triomphe was glowing a few blocks away and tourists sat at sidewalk cafés under heat lamps. The Chabad building was unmarked, hidden among the street’s bright lights and stores. I knocked on an enormous door and a man emerged to let me in. He lacked the coat, hat and beard that I thought all Chabad men wore, so I was unsure if I was in the right place. I nevertheless followed him down a long, dark hallway, worlds away, it seemed, from the bustling Champs-Élysées. The hallway ended at a courtyard, where a more traditionally dressed Chabad man greeted me.

“Chag Sameach,” came a voice from between the man’s hat and beard. “Happy Passover. Speak English?”

“Oui, mais je parle français aussi.” I answered.

I had seen too many Liam Neeson movies and thought for sure I was about to get taken so I wanted him to know that he couldn’t pull one over on me in French.

He pushed open the door behind him.

The lobby was more welcoming than the courtyard had been. I approached some English speakers, explored some Jewish geography and discovered that one of them grew up in the Long Island town next to mine.

When it was time for the Seder, we headed to a room that doubled as a banquet hall and chapel. There was a Torah ark along one wall and shelves holding prayer books along another. In the center of the room were four rectangular tables with ten chairs each. We were invited to take a seat.

My tablemates included Sam, a middle-aged man from Los Angeles who worked in “investments and gold” and looked like my former therapist. There was Asher, a seventeen-year-old from Pittsburgh who was taking a break from living on a kibbutz to travel Europe. There was the thirty-something Long Islander from the lobby and his wife. They had recently moved to Paris from Brooklyn. And then there was our table leader, a member of Chabad, who was probably younger than I was, although he seemed to have a few centuries on me.

It wasn’t clear when the Seder actually started. Aside from major songs and prayers, each table moved at its own pace. I struggled to follow along with the mix of French, English, and Hebrew. Chairs squeaked as the Orthodox participants rocked back and forth. At one point we had to pour drops of wine into a bowl to commemorate the Ten Plagues. Growing up, I had always dipped my pinky in wine and dabbed ten drops on a plate, so the pouring was unfamiliar to me. I poured one drop too many and my table leader gasped.

I considered an early departure, but all that praying had worked up my appetite and I had no Passover food in my apartment.

Dinner was served: salmon with mashed potatoes, diced beets and carrots. Thinking this was the whole meal I licked my plate clean and ate whatever matzo remained on the table. Then, to my surprise, out came a second dish of meat and more potatoes. The food tasted fine in the moment, but soon after I felt like an Eleventh Plague had hit me, my punishment for spilling that extra drop of wine.

It was late by the time we finished dessert, and the Seder showed no signs of wrapping up. The Rabbi told stories in what was to me incomprehensible French. Dirty dishes cluttered the wine-soaked table. There was no break in the action for me to say “merci” and “aurevoir,” so I made a quiet exodus. Rejoining the crowded Champs-Élysées, I felt like a free man. It’s what Moses would have wanted.

I had moved to Paris for new experiences like this. But that Seder just made me miss my family in New York. I missed my brother, with whom I used to perform scenes from the movie The Prince of Egypt for Seder guests. I missed my mom, who had gender neutralized the words in our sixty-year-old Haggadot. I missed my dad, who leads our Seders and adamantly says “Four Sons” despite my mom’s “Four Children” annotations. I missed singing “Dayenu” around the piano, grandma’s matzo ball soup and watching The Ten Commandments on ABC. It was the only time we still gathered around the TV as a family.

What made this night different from all other nights in Paris? I missed New York which, even if just for one night, seemed like a land of milk and honey.

© 2013, Max Kutner

Max Kutner is a New York-based nonfiction writer and documentary filmmaker. His work has appeared in Belleville Park Pages and The Columbia Journalist and on Thought Catalog, Buzzfeed and io9. His films have screened at festivals in the United States. For more about his work visit maxwellkutner.com.

The post Passover in Paris and the 11th Plague appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

The largest plane tree in France sits like a beloved grandfather in the square in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, an ancient village in the Hérault Valley, 27 miles west of Montpellier. Children race around its massive trunk and stop to drink from the multiple spouts of the nearby fountain topped by Liberty. Adults sit in its shade to chat. It’s a beautiful, comfortable spot whose history runs deep, but it was not on our itinerary as we originally skirted this part of the valley on our way from Provence to Toulouse.

A chance encounter with a shop keeper in Pézenas, a wine town among the vineyards between Montpellier and Béziers, however, made us change directions and head north into the Hérault Gorges. The shopkeeper’s excitement about the beauty and history of the village convinced me and my husband that a detour would reward us with a memorable stay. She was right, and at the time we did not realize that we would come face to face with sublime architecture, some of which could be found just a short drive from our home in Pennsylvania.

Approached from the south along the Herault River, Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert is heralded by a striking series of bridges, including the medieval Pont du Diable, arched high above a steep gorge lined with grey-white rocks that look as if they had been drizzled down the cliff.

The village itself is surrounded by chalky limestone mountains stippled with green shrubs. Embedded in the hills are the remains of a Visigoth fortress and a dusty old mule path, portions of which have been traveled for centuries by pilgrims following the sign of the shell that marks routes of the Way of Saint James leading to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostella in Spain where the remains of St. James the Greater are said to be buried. Today this path also affords walkers day hikes that begin at the edge of the village on the rue du Bout-du-Monde, the street of the end of the world.

The graceful, rounded apse of the Abbey of Gellone dominates the pale buildings with tiled roofs that emerged as we drove past a gentle flow of the Verdus, a stream that keeps the area verdant as it runs toward the Herault River. We parked the car and walked a narrow street that led to the main square. Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert can be filled with tourists, but as with any well-known site, arriving off-season allows for less hindered signs of the past and of local life.

Those signs were already clear from the hotel room we found, from which we could hear the bells of the abbey, the greetings of residents on the pavement and watch an old dog make his way from the direction of the square toward the welcome of a water bowl.

As we meandered through the cobbled streets of the village we spotted scallop shells embedded in fountains and near doorways as signs of welcome for pilgrims traveling the Way of Saint James. We wondered if these doors opened as readily today to pilgrims as they had in past centuries.

We were charmed by the personalized doors and windows that reflect the artists who reside in the village; we were also struck by a few handmade signs protesting the possession of the original cloister from the Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One poster advertised a meeting where a speaker would ask the question “Qui a Vendu Le Cloitre aux Americains?” Who sold the cloister to the Americans?

The Cloisters, in northern Manhattan, is the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of Medieval Europe. It sits majestically atop a hill in a lush 66-acre park with wonderful views of the Hudson River. The impressive monastery-like building is, according to the museum’s website, “not a copy of any specific medieval structure but is rather an ensemble informed by a selection of historical precedents, with a deliberate combination of ecclesiastical and secular spaces arranged in chronological order.” The Cloisters developed out of an impressive collection of cloister sections and other medieval art accumulated by American sculptor George Grey Barnard early in the 20th century. That collection was later acquired and curated at the Fort Tryon site through the donation of land and funding by John D. Rockefeller. Among the highlights of its ecclesiastical spaces is a cloister, one of five, created with 140 fragments from the cloister of the Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert that, according to the museum, Barnard had discovered being used as “grape arbor supports and ornaments in the garden of a justice of the peace in nearby Aniane.”

The monastery in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert dates to the 9th century when it was founded by Guilhem, Count of Toulouse and grandson of the Duke of Aquitaine. Guilhem was a cousin of Charlemagne and noted in his time as one of the emperor’s most valorous knights for his battles against the Saracens of Spain. For centuries that followed Troubadours sang about his bravery. Charlemagne presented him with a piece of the Holy Cross (it was an age of relics) that he brought with him when he came to establish a home and a monastery in 804 in the remote region that would eventually bear his name, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. (“Le Désert” refers not the geography but to the absence of people in the area at the time.) The relic helped make the Abbey of Gellone an important stopping point for pilgrims on the road to Compostella, and it remains there to this day. Despite his life as a warrior, Guilhem was deeply religious and spent his final years at the monastery as a monk from 806 until his death in 812.

Thanks to the traffic of pilgrims, the monastery prospered and most of the Abbey of Gellone visited today dates from the 11th century when it was rebuilt in the Romanesque style. Like many monasteries in France it eventually suffered from the vicissitudes of faith and politics. It was pillaged during the Wars of Religion and vandalized during the French Revolution, losing both furnishings and architectural elements. Each historical trauma, whether natural (e.g. floods) or man-made, led to more decay, and by the 19th century parts of the abbey were dispersed throughout the region, including sections of the cloister later purchased by Barnard.

The interior of the abbey conveys an intimacy and warmth due in part to the variegated rustic tones of the stone. The vault of the soaring apse is punctuated by three high windows that represent the Trinity, and an ornate marble and glass altar presents a stunning contrast with the simplicity of architectural line. Near the altar rests what are said to be the remains of Saint Guilhem and the relic of the Holy Cross given to him by Charlemagne. There are lovely spaces within the abbey, one of which houses an 18th-century organ. The abbey has an atmosphere that suggests mystery and evokes contemplation. It is also a perfect venue for intimate musical performances such as the string and flute ensemble we attended during our visit. The cloister that was rebuilt in the second half of the 20th century, which includes a few original columns, also affords a quiet retreat.

The village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert appears to flow from the monastery. The narrow streets that begin at the portal of the abbey on the square seem a natural path to the beauty of the tight houses and the chalky tops of the mountains that appear beyond their roofline. An approach to the village offers a lovely view of the rounded apse symmetrically flanked by the round exterior walls of two smaller curved vaults and bordered by a low wall encasing a small garden. The exterior of the monastery, however, does not convey the serenity of the interior. Evidence of the tumultuous past is reflected in the monastery’s outer surfaces in color variation, patched walls, and solid sections that seem almost fortress-like. Still, there is a sense of calm and history as you walk between trees and flowers and enjoy time along a quiet path.

* * *

We drove to The Cloisters Museum in the fall on a radiant day much like the one that welcomed us to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. The museum rises from the topmost height of lushly wooded Fort Tryon Park on which it occupies four acres. It conveys medieval perfection through its stone tower, unmarred arches, metal steeple atop a spire such as those found on village churches in the south of France, and the graceful curve of an 11th-century apse from a church in Spain. It may be “an ensemble informed by a selection of historical precedents” but the total effect of The Cloisters is that you have arrived at another time and place. Cobbled paths wind up a hill toward the powerful stone structure, and visitors step into remarkable spaces that belie the 21st century. The statuary, paintings, tapestries and other artifacts humanize the medieval world. Coming so close to medieval art within authentic stone chapels and chambers and gazing into the faces of sublimely painted wooden sculptures makes a connection to ancient life that is transformational.

Four of the cloisters at the museum have outdoor settings with skillfully tended gardens. Everything appears natural and free; the eruption of color and texture suggest a rustic landscape, but the reality is far more calculated. The Cuxa Cloister from a Benedictine Monastery near the Pyrenees in Spain is breathtaking; stone pathways, flowers, trees, and dense foliage frame pink marble columns, a central fountain and low tiled roofs. It is a realization of how we imagine a medieval cloister to have looked and felt.

The reconstructed cloister from the Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert at The Cloisters is an interior space with a high glass ceiling for natural light and lovely arched windows that overlook the Hudson River behind one side of the cloister. A few potted plants and some large vessels from the period dot the hard pebbled courtyard. The columns are stunning, set in pairs to support the arched stone of the installation. They vary in both the shape of the columns and design of the capitals. Some of the columns are rounded, others hexagonal, still others are ornate with waves from top to bottom, and some are wide and fully sculpted. The capitals are carved with exquisite renderings of acanthus leaves, vines, flowers, honeycombed patterns and both animal and human figures. The passageways behind the columns suggest a sense of contemplation with stone benches for reflection. Care has clearly been taken to respect the extraordinary craftsmanship in the stonework and gracefully echo the serenity of a monastic setting.

I wanted to love this cloister, but I could not. I felt the artifice of museum lighting despite the open ceiling, and I begrudged the closed space that made it more of an exhibit than a setting where imagination might take you back in time. Viewing the columns from multiple perspectives, I tried to place them mentally at the peaceful Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, among the trees and flowers, the passageways to the abbey, the prayers of monks and the footsteps of approaching pilgrims. I wanted to see them not as individual elements of interest but as an essential part of an idea, a purpose, a commitment to the necessity of contemplation and prayer. Instead, despite the splendor of The Cloisters and my appreciation for how it celebrates the beauty and humanity of medieval life, makes it accessible to so many and preserves it for the future,  I found myself wishing I had attended the lecture that answered the question, “Who sold the cloister to the Americans?”

© 2013, Elizabeth Esris

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, population 265 (2012 figure), is located in the department of Hérault in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon. The village’s official website, which also provides information about the surrounding Hérault Valley, can be found here.  Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is a member of the association Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.

The Cloisters Museum and Gardens, Fort Tyron Park, New York, New York 10040. The website for The Cloisters contains a wealth of information. In exploring the site you will discover photos that show Barnard’s collection as it was originally displayed in New York City. Worth accessing are wonderful videos that detail the history and construction of the museum in Fort Tryon as well as detailed videos that focus specifically on the reconstructed cloisters, including further information about the cloister from Saint-Guilhem-Le-Désert.

Elizabeth Esris is a teacher and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Wild River Review, Bucks County Writer, and Women Writers. She wrote the libretto for Elegy For A Prince with composer Sergia Cervetti which premiered in excerpts at New York City Opera’s VOX Opera Showcase in 2007. She and Cervetti also collaborated on a one-act chamber opera, YUM!, a celebration of wine, food, and friendship. She teaches English and creative writing at Central Bucks High School South (Pennsylvania).

Other work by Elizabeth Esris on France Revisited include this article and poem about the Luberon and this article and poem about the Abbey of Senanque.

The post Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert: Who’s Minding the Cloister? appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

OMG, just look around you in Paris on this frigid morning and bear witness to the city’s sinful descent: a city where sculptures of naked men and women shamelessly decorate the gardens, the capital of a country with a national health system that pays for birth control pills and abortions, a place where tourists mock communion while visiting Notre-Dame and Sacré Coeur then queue happily at Ladurée and Pierre Hermé to gorge themselves on colorful sugar wafers, 2€ a pop, where a president lives openly in sin yet declares it a private matter, a metropolis where an atheist majority has twice elected a homosexual mayor (who may soon have the right to preside over ceremonies to marry other homosexuals) and where two women, twin Jezebels, are now publicly hissing and clawing at each other as they fight to replace him rather than stay at home caring for children and pleasing husbands.

Repent! Repent! Or we’ll all be damned and frozen for eternity.

Or so it is written in stone above the central door of Notre-Dame in the City of Paris, where blasphemy is not a crime.

(c) 2013, Gary Lee Kraut.

The post Vignette: Paris Weather Report appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

By Elizabeth Esris

If you buy a calendar for a Francophile around the holidays, the kind in which each month is a spectacular scene from a different region in France, chances are that July or August will feature a view of long, arching rows of lavender running to a gray stone abbey that evokes romantic visions of Provence.

I drove into that very scene on a summer day as I approached the Abbey of Sénanque. The view of the mass of vibrant lavender against the stark eloquence of the 12th century Romanesque monastery took my breath way.

I wasn’t alone. The spectacular scene is shared by many visitors drawn to this rural valley just north of the chic and stunning perched village of Gordes. Walking the dusty path from the parking lot amid the quiet conversation of others, I knew that I needed to move beyond the photo op in order to make my visit a lasting and intimate experience.  When I approached the old stone walls, I wanted to engage my imagination as I learned about their history.

The Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque  was established when local lords donated land to build a Cistercian monastery in 1148, 50 years after the founding of the mother of Cistercian abbeys at Citeaux in Burgundy. At Sénanque, twelve monks were brought to live in huts while construction of the abbey was begun.

The church of the monastery was consecrated in 1178, though it wasn’t until 1250 that other essential buildings such as residences and the refectory (dining hall) were complete. Over time additional structures of a self-sustaining medieval religious community were added, including a cloister, a chapter house for meetings, a scriptorium for writing of manuscripts, and barns and other outbuildings that were part of a series of granges for food production.  Four mills completed a productive agricultural community that enabled the diligent and entrepreneurial Cistercians to lord over a prosperous center of influence in Provence well into the 15th century.

In addition to being an industrious order that worked hard to create efficient agricultural techniques, the Cistercians also established a core group of lay members at the Abbey of Sénanque who toiled at the most arduous manual tasks in the granges and at the mills. These men lived within the monastery, but slept and ate in separate quarters.

Perhaps it was inevitable that with prosperity came exploitation of the Cistercian’s original religious mission. The riches of the agricultural operations afforded temptations that gave way to worldly pleasures and diversion from the precepts of simplicity and service. Profiteers within the order eventually took control of the monastery in the 1400s, and it fell into decline because of mismanagement and corruption.

The Cistercian mission for a life of austerity and manual labor was reinforced once more at Sénanque in 1475 when a new abbot, John Casaletti from Avignon, was appointed to oversee the monastery and return focus to the values of the Cistercians. The abbey prospered again and became an agent for ministering to the poor, including caring for victims of the plague early in the 16th century.

In 1544 the abbey became a victim of the Wars of Religion when it was attacked by the Vaudois whose oppression and slaughter in the region had been sanctioned by the Catholic Church since the 12th century. The Vaudois pillaged the abbey and destroyed the lay quarters. The Abbey of Sénanque never recovered its prosperity and influence, and during the French Revolution the property was nationalized.

In ensuing years the monastery changed hands a number of times until monastic life was again established in 1988 by the small Cistercian order that lives there today. The community is for the most part financially self-sufficient through income from tours of the monastery, production of lavender and honey, sales of related items in the gift shop, and hosting of overnight visitors, though on occasion the French state and the department of Vaucluse have provided financial assistance to keep this historic setting alive and in good condition.

Learning some of the history of the Abbey of Sénanque in guidebooks, in pamphlets, and during a tour led me to ruminate about monastic and rural life in medieval Provence.  I imagined the narrow mountain road (now D177), which leads to the valley from Gordes, as a dusty mountain path upon which novices came by foot, or perhaps on saddle, to begin a life of silence, simplicity, and long hours of labor in the fields.  I asked myself who they were and what drew them to such an austere life. I envisioned them nearing the rugged stone walls that would become their refuge—perhaps their prison—and I tried to sense their last images of home and the anticipation of what awaited them.

The Abbey of Sénanque was built without a main door to the primary façade; this emphasized the aestheticism of the Cistercians and their desire that the monastery be unadorned.  It also reinforced the insular quality of the community and its purpose in sustaining a simple and silent life away from distractions that a grand portal might communicate to those outside the order.

It was in late June, amid the brilliance of the early blossoming of lavender, when I stepped inside the monastery.

When the voice of the tour guide echoed through the severe but beautiful vaulted dormitory where at night the monks once slept fully clothed in marked sections on the hard floor, I asked myself if they slept peacefully, fatigued by the day’s labor or if they were stalked by dreams of life outside their cloister.

In the scriptorium, the chamber where monks in medieval times worked copying manuscripts, I imagined faces bearing down on parchment and the meticulous lines of letters that inched slowly across the page, formed by hands that ached by day’s end and eyes that wearied with the dimming of natural light.  It is the only room with a fireplace—heated so that the monks could perform their delicate work.

The abbey church was and is still a place of prayer and contemplation. (It’s possible for visitors to attend mass here.) Even though it is stark, the symmetry of the nave speaks of artistry—restrained artistry, an aesthetic that denies excess but is unable to deny beauty. The aim might have been austerity, but when the eye follows the arches to the line in the vaulted ceiling, the radiance of sunlight on stone feels like adornment.

The most memorable part of the abbey is outside, where the eye collides with an impossibly beautiful vision: thousands of lavender flowers, growing in even rows, sway with abandon in the valley breeze against the gray walls of the monastery. It’s at once simple and sublime. Large slate tiles top roof lines. Low sections of the abbey emphasize the rustic nature of the setting, while the rounded lines of the apse and the angles leading to the bell tower suggest the divine. How many stories played out in the heat of the Provençal sun and behind the secretive windows of the monastery? The eye returns to the lavender and back again to the monastery.

On a warm summer day, arriving very early or late in the afternoon, one can avoid seeing buses and hordes of tourists with cameras taking the inevitable shots of lavender against the gray stone. It is possible then, to indulge in fantasy of how it was in medieval times—or how it is today among the robed inhabitants. I visited twice, both times in late June before the height of the tourist season but just in time for the lavender. Both times I stooped low to watch large black bees hover over blossoms , and I looked through the lavender to the abbey wondering how villagers viewed this monastery and it inhabitants so long ago. I imagined an alter ego sitting atop the roof in summer, ruminating about the insular monks who lived within.

Those reflections evolved into the poem, “Musing at the Abbey.”

Musing at the Abbey

In a tide of lavender
arms dappled by sun and stem
vie with black bees for nectar.
The stone wall of the abbey
is weary of the artist’s brush and
bleach of lenses.
It breathes them away
with memory of silent skies and
novices on dusty roads.

Women appear on the tiled roof
with gauze skirts draped
between their thighs.
They bathe in the June sun,
listen to the steps of monks
inching toward prayer,
and whisper to them
with attar from the blooms.

I join them in their hopeless vigil,
my arms hungry
for the heat of summer prayer.
They know me from a dozen other churches.
We have stalked robed ghosts before,
seducing ourselves with chants
of hooded profiles
who share lavender
with black bees
in a quiet coupling
of earth and the divine.

© Elizabeth Esris

Poem first published as “At the Abbey” in Women Writers, June, 2009.
Accompanying text first published in France Revisited, Dec. 2011

Also read Elizabeth’s explorations of and poem about the massacre of the Vadois at Mérindol in the Luberon area of Provence.

The post The Abbey of Senanque: Lavender, Old Stones and Poetry in Provence appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

While Paris’s seasonal crop of exhibitions, theater and music clamors for attention, the numerous national and religious cultural centers of Paris yield their fruit year-round to lesser fanfare.

These centers welcome members and outside visitors to diverse programming of a more intimate or confidential kind, bringing to Paris glimpses great and small of nations and of religions.

Some of the centers and institutes listed below are worth a visit even without attending a particular event since they occupy notable or historical buildings or attractive settings in their own right: for example, the Swedish Cultural Center has a peaceable tearoom in his historic building and courtyard in the Marais, while the Collège des Bernadins (a Catholic cultural center) occupies a historical building of the 13th century across the river from Notre-Dame.

Here to start are six institutions that reveal the diversity of these cultural centers

1. Irish Cultural Center
5 rue des Irlandais, 5th arrondissement
The Irish Cultural Center, located two blocks south of the Pantheon, grew out of the Collège des Irlandais, a Catholic seminary for Irish students. A community of Irish students and clergymen officially gathered on the Left Bank in 1578 as they sought refuge for training and education of Catholicism, then restricted back home. Irish colleges (seminaries) were then set up in various Catholic or Catholic-friendly countries of Europe; about 30 existed in continental Europe by the end of the 18th century, with the community in Paris being the largest. The students moved into the location of what is now Irish Cultural Center in 1775. Later extensions include a chapel dedicated to Saint Patrick, which still holds Sunday mass open to the public, and a library of old books and manuscripts, many dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, visited only by special permission. A modern library on the ground floor is open to the public.

La Fondation Irlandaise (The Irish Foundation), comprised of French and Irish members, has managed the Collège des Irlandais since a decree by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1805. The street the center is on was renamed for the Irish two years later, though the complex has also served other functions over the years. In 1945 it briefly served as a refuge for displace persons claiming or requesting American nationality. From 1945 to 1997 it was used as a Polish seminary. Returned to the Irish, now financed by the Irish government, and no longer a religious center despite the presence of the chapel, the Irish Cultural Center reopened as such in 2002. The center promotes various aspects of culture emanating from the island, including music, poetry, literature and film. The center also has housing for 45 students, artists and writers.

2. British Council 
9-11 rue de Constantine, 7th arrondissement
The British have an extensive educational and cultural network throughout the world in the form of the British Council, “an executive non-departmental public body, a public corporation (in accounting terms) and a charity” promoting all things British. The British Council in Paris is of most interest to English-speakers residing or visiting the city for its occasional speaking events involving prestigious figures in the fields of the film, literature and the performing arts. The British Council is also heavily involved in efforts to promote the English language through courses and to promote British science, culture and arts through cooperative programs.

3. Swedish Institute
11 rue Payenne, 3rd arrondissement.
This is Sweden’s only foreign official cultural center in any country. From the historical mansion that it has occupied in the Marais since 1971 (making it one of the first such mansions to be restored in the district), the Swedish Institute organizes exhibitions, concerts, encounters with writers, projects of films, theater and debates on questions of culture, science and society. Swedish classes are also available.

Even without an exhibition the Swedish Institute makes for an appealing stop in the Marais for its café/lunch room, open noon to 6 p.m. Tues.-Sun. Swedish bread, pastries, soup and sandwiches.

4. Collège des Bernardins, a Catholic cultural center. 
20 rue de Poissy, 5th arrondissement
Before considering its contemporary use, it’s worth noting that the Collège des Bernadins, owned and operated by the Catholic Diocese of Paris, is of exceptional architectural value for its 230-foot-long (70-meter-long) 13th-century “nave” that originally served as living space and educational center for Cistercian monks (also known as Bernardins after Saint Bernard who helped develop the order).

In the absence of special events in the nave, entrance is free and open to the public. It’s located on the Left Bank just one street back from the river across from Notre-Dame. Its gardens, in fact, once spread to the riverbank.

Construction of the Collège des Bernardins was part of the development of centers of learning (which at the time meant a theological education) on the Left Bank are that is now the 5th arrondissement. The origins of the Sorbonne, founded by Robert de Sorbon, also date from this period of the 13th century. The area would eventually become known as the Latin Quarter since the education of these and other institutions was in Latin.

The Collège des Bernadins declined in the second half of the 18th century and, during the revolution, lost its religious function when seized from the Church as national property. It was first transformed into a prison and then used as a fire station for 150 years beginning in 1845.

Purchased by the Diocese of Paris in 2001, a vast project of restoration and enhancement was then undertaken (costing 52 million euros, including 14 million in public funding) to create a center “dedicated to hopes and questions of our society and their encounter with Christian wisdom.” The center reopened in 2008. According to the center’s administrators, no public funding is used for its operating expenses.

The mixed-use center holds exhibits, performances and musical events, provides classrooms for theological and biblical education through the Cathedral School, and organizes conferences and lectures that bring together a political, artistic and academic intelligentsia to discuss numerous themes as vast and varied as biomedical ethics, economics, and relations between Judaism and Christianity.  Events take place in the nave or in the comfortable 240-seat auditorium that has been added beneath the eves.

5. Polish Institute
31 rue Jean Goujon, 8th arrondissement.
As with many of the national institutes and centers on this list, the Polish institute is a window to the nation’s contemporary artistic and intellectual culture and has the mission of promoting the national culture and influence while favoring international cultural exchanges with the host country. The Polish Institute excels in this form of cultural diplomacy in Paris through its programming that presents intellectual and artistic and historical views and voices from Poland.

6. Arab Institute
1 rue des Fossées-Saint-Bernard, 5th arrondissement.
The Arab Institute, Institut du Monde Arabe, opened in 1987 on the left bank of the Seine with a mission of presenting to the public Islamic-Arab culture from its origins to today. It therefore presents and representing a region (ignoring Israel), a religion and the diverse cultures of Arab countries.

Financed by France with contributions by Arab states, the institute has three main goals: to make the French aware of the Arab world, to favor cultural exchanges and to reinforce France-Arab cooperation.

The Lebanese restaurant at the top of the building has a delicious view of Notre-Dame, the Seine and the rooftops of Paris. The building was designed by group of architects led by French architect Jean Nouvel.

Map showing location of the six institutions described above

An extended and non-exhaustive list of other cultural centers and institutes in Paris

The names of organizations representing non-English-language countries have been translated into English for the purposes of this article.

7. Algerian Cultural Center, rue de la Croix-Nivert, 15th arr.
8. Bulgarian Cultural Institute, rue de la Boétie, 8th arr.
9. Canadian Cultural Center, 5 rue de Constantine, 7th arr.
10. Cervantes Institute of Paris (Spanish cultural center) , 7 rue Quentin Bauchart, 8th arr.
11. Cultural Center of China in Paris, boulevard de la Tour Maubourg, 7th arr.
12. Danish House, 142 avenue des Champs-Elysées, 8th arr.
13. Dutch Institute, 121 rue de Lille, 7th arr.
14. Egyptian Cultural Center, 11 boulevard Saint-Michel, 5th arr.
15. Finnish Institute, 60 rue des Ecoles, 5th arr.
16. Goethe Institute (German Cultural Center), 17 avenue d’Iéna, 16th arr.
17. Greek Cultural Center, 23 rue Galilée, 16th arr.
18. Hungarian Institute of Paris, 92 rue Bonaparte, 6th arr.
19. Italian Cultural Institute, 73 rue de Grenelle, 7th arr.
20. Japanese Cultural Center, 101 bis quai Branly, 15th arr.
21. Korean Cultural Center, 2 avenue d’Iéna, 16th arr.
22. Kurdish Institute of Paris, 106 rue La Fayette, 10th arr.
23. Latin American House, 217 boulevard Saint-Germain, 7th arr.
24. Mexican Cultural Center, 119 rue Vieille du Temple, 3rd arr.
25. Romanian Cultural Institute, 1 rue de l’Exposition, 7th arr.
26. Russian Center for Science and Culture, 61 rue Boissière, 16th arr.
27. Swiss Cultural Center, 32-38 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, 3rd arr.
28. Cultural Center of Taiwan in Paris, 78 rue de l’Université, 7th arr.
29. Cultural Center of Vietnam in Paris, 19-19bis rue Albert, 13th arr.

There used to be an American Center in Paris, but it went broke in 1996.

The association Forum des Instituts Culturels Etrangers à Paris (FICEP) bring together 46 foreign and regional cultural institutes in the capital. For more information on FICEP, which celebrates Foreign Culures Week in Paris from Sept. 23 to Oct. 2 this year, see www.ficep.info.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Spotlight on the National and Religious Cultural Centers of Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Sergio Cervetti is a native of Uruguay, but his mother was born in France of Waldensian ancestry.  Persecuted for centuries in both France and Italy, the Waldensians–les Vaudois–were a sect founded in the 12th century by Pierre Valdès (or Valdo), a Catholic merchant from Lyon who relinquished his property and riches to preach an ideal life of devotion to Biblical teachings of poverty, simplicity, and non-violence.

Originally identifying themselves as Catholics, the “poor men of Lyon,” as Valdès and his followers came to be known, were declared heretics by the church for beliefs that are remarkably contemporary—such as a penchant for equality, disdain for clerical hierarchy, and acceptance of female preachers as early as the 15th century.

Because of the threat their radical ideas posed to the Church and Church-sponsored thrones, the Vaudois were chased and slaughtered throughout France and rural areas of Italy, where many fled in hopes of finding refuge.  So great was public outcry in Europe in the 17th century that Oliver Cromwell made official appeals for an end to the slaughter, and poet John Milton wrote a sonnet, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” to protest and memorialize the horrific murder of hundreds of Vaudois in the Italian Alps in 1655.

The Waldensians eventually found tolerance and survival, at times, in ghetto-like pockets established in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Today, their descendents maintain their religious identity, and the largest contemporary community of the Vaudois is in Italy, where they were granted religious freedom in 1848. Some of the Vaudois eventually joined the legions of Europeans who immigrated to the Americas in search of religious tolerance and economic opportunity.  Small, active communities exist today in Argentina, Uruguay, and in North America, particularly in Valdese, North Carolina, which takes its name from the Vaudois who settled there.

Mérindol, in the Vaucluse, is the site of a hilltop village whose inhabitants were massacred over a period of five days in 1545 in a crusade ordered by the French King Francois I and orchestrated locally by Jean Maynier d’Oppède, president of the parliament of Provence. The population was virtually exterminated, but it is said that some of the Vaudois of Mérindol survived by hiding in the dense mountains of the Luberon.

When my husband and I turned off the D973 road and drove through the modest, contemporary town at the base of the mountain, we had no idea how we would be touched by the hike up to the ancient village of the Vaudois. We found ourselves challenged by the climb, the sad ruins, and a view from the summit that must have been beloved by those who called the mountain home.

It was mid-afternoon when we began our ascent, and we were alone on the path until our return in the late and lingering dusk of Provence. “At Mérindol” describes our journey to the summit and to a spiritual connection with an intangible presence that we felt amidst the ruins.  It is dedicated to the friend who led us there.

At Merindol
(for Sergio Cervetti)

The sun clings to the summit,
and blinks through dark trees
that spiral the hill.
We falter in stone and
growth of four hundred years.
Ahead is a ruin,
looking with shrouded eyes
for its generations.
Our feet pound in ascent.
Our companions are the wind
and punch of breath.
The shadowed twist of tree and earth
blinds us to all but tree and earth.

Remnants of parapets and corners
press into the acclivity–
carcass of village
blanched by sun and crusade.
We think we see the top, but there is more:

more fragments of wall and window
ghostly stairs, flesh-hewn for
rush of man and child to
the smell of bread on stone
a woman’s hand upon a door,
conversation across a sill,
fatigue of night,
the brace of morning.

Sorrows of path and village
yield to the summit and
ochre mountains, the bend
of the Durance through purple fields,
Alpilles to the south, and the sea.
Joy reaches beyond ghosts and martyrs
to hearts on a summer evening
and this sunset: assurance of
the divine in valley, sky, the walls of home.

Light bleeds through a crater in the last ruin.
Shadows sink at its base like souls
returning to the grave.
We read the timeline of Les Vaudois en Provence.
1545    mort pour leur foi

leur descendants affirms
flight to purple fields and the Durance,
ochre mountains, Alpilles to the south,
the sea, searching for the divine,
for home.

Winds of dusk calm to a breeze
and darkness looms.
Our feet move cautiously in descent,
spiraling the dirt path and stone wall
past life and loss, our
eyes on twist of tree and earth
guided by ghostly hands that
know the way.

© Elizabeth Esris

Elizabeth Esris is a teacher and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Wild River Review, Bucks County Writer, and Women Writers. She wrote the libretto for Elegy For A Prince with composer Sergio Cervetti, which premiered in excerpts at New York City Opera’s VOX Opera Showcase in 2007. She and Cervetti also collaborated on a one-act chamber opera, YUM!,  a celebration of wine, food, and friendship. She teaches English and creative writing at Central Bucks High School South (Pennsylvania).

The post Les Vaudois: Reflections on a Religious Massacre in Provence appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.