A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [144]
Thirteen years had passed since Lazare Bouaziz married Suzy Ewenczyk. More than half the Sephardic marriages were now with Ashkenazim, and it was no longer an issue that was given great importance. French Jewry had a Sephardic majority that had strongly colored the community and was thoroughly blending with it. The two groups were no longer distinct. In January 1981, the same year that Altmann married Lynda Abitan, Rene Sirat became the first North African Grand Rabbi of France. Much was made in the general press of the fact that this ruling Ashkenazic bastion was now falling to the Sephardim, as though the struggle for control of the community had been won by the North Africans. But Sirat's first official act the day he became Grand Rabbi was to go to the Soviet embassy and request a visa to visit Soviet Jews. The application was denied, but Sirat continued to apply pressure on the Soviets and to make sure that French Jewry did not forget about the struggle of Jews in the Soviet Union. Given the numbers and activism of Sephardic rabbis, it may be a long time before there is another Ashkenazic Grand Rabbi, but the ascent of Sirat may also have been the last time anyone would ever give it a thought. Even separate congregations were becoming increasingly rare.
The Altmanns were not concerned that Daniel was marrying a Sephardi, and in fact they greatly admired Lynda's mother as a tough, hard-working, industrious woman. One of Daniel's sisters had also married a Moroccan, and no one had seen that match as an issue. But after ten years, when that marriage failed, even happily married Daniel suspected that differences between Ashke-nazim and Sephardim were to blame. “Matching an Ashkenazic woman with a Sephardic man is a big problem,” he observed.
In 1981 the issue between the Altmanns and the Abitans was not Sephardim versus Ashkenazim. It was assimilation. Lynda was already a little wild, and it was worrisome to her deeply religious mother to see her marrying into this bourgeois French family. Even though Daniel had studied hard and had turned traditional, they worried about it lasting. Lynda's mother loved the Rue Pavee synagogue, because she claimed it was the only one in Paris that had never committed the outrage of having organ music. The other Altmanns rarely went to any synagogue at all. When they did, it was to the “liberal” synagogue on Rue Copernic, over in their expensive sixteenth arrondissement. At Copernic it was not just the music that was untraditional; there was not even separate seating for men and women.
The Altmanns had been eager for their son to get married. He had been “fooling around” for long enough. But his marriage to Lynda Abitan exposed them to a strange world that they did not like. They had tried not to say too much when their son grew a beard and started studying. But it was not until Daniel's wedding that they saw what his new world was really like. At the wedding not only did men and women sit apart, they did not even touch. They did not even dance together. Instead, Daniel would dance with the other bearded men while the women were off in another corner. What century was this all from? Modern successful Jews did not act like this. Who had influenced him? Who had changed him? Was he really going to live like strange oppressed people from some faraway backward country?
TO LIVE A TRADITIONAL JEWISH LIFE means to live in a community centered around a rabbi and a synagogue that has to be within walking distance. But to live within walking distance of Rue Pavee was increasingly difficult. The Marais was getting refurbished. New museums were opening to draw tourists. Bit by bit, the old buildings that used to be propped up with thick timbers running into the narrow streets were getting reconstructed, resurfaced, carefully divided into apartments and sold for prices previously unknown in eastern Paris. The city had timed the Marais renovation well, and the buildings were becoming ready just as real estate prices were starting to rapidly inflate.