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France's Jewish heritage, basic to its culture
Contributions and a changing context
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 - The traditional Jewish neighborhood retains its narrow medieval streets.
Many people focus on France's notorious anti-Semitism, forgetting that this was the first country to grant Jews full citizenship (in around 1800). The resulting integration led them to play an important role in the economy, political life and the arts.
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As well, anti-Semites' defeat in the Dreyfus Case stimulated respect for a France that stood behind the Rights of Man. It encouraged Jewish intellectuals and artists to settle in Paris.
We explore some of the contributions of people who in the West have always remained distinct.
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- The venerable Jewish quarter – vitality and architecture
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 - Pastry shop on a Sunday afternoon
Before the Holocaust, the historic Marais district was mainly occupied by Jews recently arrived from Central Europe. The area now covers only a few streets, but Jews come from many parts of the city and from suburbs for the bookstores, groceries, restaurants and three synogogues, which we visit.
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 - Art nouveau synagogue
Architect Hector Guimard designed the synagogue shown above at the suggestion of his wife, a Guggenheim. Among other Jews whose fortunes contributed to French culture: banker Albert Kahn and the financier who restored Renaissance water gardens.
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- A home bequeathed to France (museum visit)
The Nissim de Comondo museum is a home, where works are displayed neither coldly nor ostentatiously. One goes through real rooms and almost expects the family to appear.
A great Jewish-Venitian-Turkish-French banking family's descendant, Moïse de Camondo modelled his home on the Petit Trianon and became a great collector of 18th-century works of art.
Of note is the conservatism of the owner's taste. The collection is contemporary with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), painted in Montmartre, a 40-minute walk away. In emphatically turning away from the new, Camondo's collection evokes the intellectual climate that modern art dared challenge.
Please read on.
- Jewish origin, Paris art – "The School of Paris" (talk or walk in Montparnasse)
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 - Entry, Nissim de Comondo museum
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 - Chagall, self-portrait with Eiffel Tower
Foreign artists have greatly contributed to Paris's fame. Among the most important were Jews from Central Europe, to whom Paris offered inspiration, fellowship and refuge. They are at the core of the "School of Paris".
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 - Kisling, "Kiki de Montparnasse"
We show the neighborhood and evoke the lives of young artists who made their way across Europe to Paris's Eastern Station, knowing perhaps only one word of French: the name for freedom and bohemia, Montparnasse.
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- Today's artists can be included in a wider program
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 - Jef Banc
This major painter expresses a vision of life, time and death by using calligraphy on documents that date back several centuries. Jewish respect for writing is at the heart of that approach.
We can exceptionally open his studio to amateurs of contemporary art.
NB: His family lived in working-class suburb during the war. "How did you survive?" "Neighbors knew we were Jewish but we weren't bothered."
- French anti-Semitism – informal comments
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 - Yves Teicher
For groups, suggestions to deepen this introduction:
• Concert "From Russia to the Gare de l'Est" (the station via which these artists arrived in Paris), by violinist Yves Teicher, whose roots are Rumanian and Jewish.
• Talk and concert on Fanny Mendelssohn, in our pianist's Montparnasse salon.
• Piano concert "Six Jewish composers", which our blog describes,
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 - Family-run kosher butchershop in the traditional neighborhood
The rabbi of a small synagogue shows us that site. Through him, we see that Jewish life goes on in a natural way.
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This butchershop's patriarch was saved by Protestants during World War 2. He tells his story, which is part of a collective French rescue of Jews. Please CLICK.
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- Two indispensable museums
The Museum of Jewish art and history and the Shoah memorial, both in the Marais
- We bring reproductions of the works of art that this page shows, and others
- France's two historic minorities, Protestants and Jews ...
have points in common. They can be a subject for discussion.
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- Our guide is likely to be Catherine Aubin...
because she is a historian and because her maternal family (of French Protestant origin) has given her first-hand accounts of Protestant help to Jews during World War 2.
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