A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [192]
PARIS BECAME the fourth-largest Jewish community in the world and the most important in Europe. Although there were an increasing number of Daniel Altmanns, French Jews still tended to assimilate. About a third of Paris Jews considered themselves to be “religious,” although many nonreligious Jews had strong Jewish identities. Florence Finkelsztajn said of her education plans for her four children, “I want them to learn the tradition, not the religion.” But a third of French Jews were marrying non-Jews, although French society continued to point out the futility of assimilation. Mitterrand's first government contained a number of very assimilated Jews, including Lament Fabius, who had a Catholic education and took communion. But when the government was announced, the French talked of the “Jewish government,” and when Fabius later became prime minister, he was “that Jewish prime minister.”
In 1987, Rene Sirat, the first modern sephardic Grand Rabbi of France, resigned. His successor was also from North Africa, from Tunisia. Sephardim or Ashkenazim was no longer an issue that interested many, although differences persisted. North Africans missed their countries. They spoke Arabic and listened to the free-spirited, whooping Arab music. But the Ashkenazim—the few who could remember—had no nostalgia for Poles or Poland. And some traditions remained different, such as the music of prayer chanting. The Sephardim made the Passover dish charoset with dates, while the Ashkenazim always made it with apples, and the Sephardim ate olives and didn't eat horseradish or chicken soup with knadlech, matzoh balls. And even in Paris Algerians still grilled lamb the night before Passover because they had each killed a lamb before Passover when they lived in Algeria and owned lambs. Sirat would confess to his family of his one great failing in rabbinical school: When he had studied kashrut, each student was required to slaughter a lamb in the ritual way, and he couldn't do it. He could not bring himself to kill the lamb.
But the Ashkenazim were no longer concerned about the Sephardim taking over; they respected the Sephardic rabbis. On the other hand, some Sephardim, despite their numerical superiority, were concerned about the new Orthodox Ashkenazim taking over. Many Sephardim who had strayed from religion in France were brought back by Rottenberg or the Lubavitchers. This was not in itself upsetting. But when they grew peots, put on broad black hats and long black coats, dressing like they were from a shtetl in Poland, this was disturbing because it had nothing to do with North African Jewish tradition. Some Sephardim wondered why an Algerian would want to imitate the culture of poverty and oppression from Central Europe.
Sirat had resigned as Grand Rabbi because he wanted to return to his true avocation, teaching, and participate in the extensive Jewish educational structure that he had done much to establish. With his soft, compassionate almond-shaped eyes, his black frizzled beard, moving his yarmulke around his head as he searched for words, he looked like a professor. He had a clear message for modern Jews about God's covenant, the responsibility of “the chosen people/’ He warned Jews against self-imposed ghettos: “I think that we must also be a presence in the world, especially in the places where men are suffering or humanity is attacked. Every time that people suffer somewhere in the world, the Jews suffer with them, and they must not remain indifferent to the pain and suffering in the world—not in Yugoslavia, not in the former Soviet Union. We do not have the magic to solve all the world's problems, but we must not be indifferent. If we are indifferent to the suffering of other people, how can we ask others to be sensitive to our suffering? Because we must never forget that all people suffer, not only Jews.”
EMMANUEL AND FANIA EWENCZYK were having coffee on a rococo table in their spacious, ornate