Paris walking – Rediscovery and discovery

 

[Sacre-Coeur - Paris*]

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post expressing my anxieties about revisiting Paris after so many years. Well, having returning from there safe and sound (and feeling younger), I can say that the city is as alive as ever, albeit with changes, both positive and negative. On a personal note, Paris still retains its magic touch of 40 years ago on me even if I have aged a little bit.

To be fair, Paris is not exactly the same city it was some 40 years ago when I lived there. Bicycle lanes now occupy at least 1/3 of the road space, which has significantly helped clean up the air (no more black residue in one’s nose at the end of the day due to diesel emissions). The price has been to render the act of crossing the street even more challenging but it is a good deal overall. The faces have changed, with the city truly becoming rainbow of colors. To be fair, Paris has always been a blend of locals and immigrants with each party loving to complain about the other. Tellingly, I even found a long series of streets mainly with stores specializing in skin and hair care for dark-skinned people. The neighborhoods have evolved too. For example, the street on which my apartment was located, Rue St. Denis, used to be known for its working ladies  is now dominated by clothing stores (next to my location) and restaurants, a few minutes away. I found most of the changes natural but was saddened by the transformation of the Marais, the neighborhood where my mother and her family grew up and which I knew so well. It has become a concentration of high-end brand stores and gay clubs with almost no Jewish identity  remaining aside from a few official signs. That disappointment has more to due to my nostalgia than to its new character. Thus, Paris has changed a lot in terms of specific details.

However, its heart have remained the same. First, Paris is energy, a fountain of youth for those that embrace the city. Regardless of  a person’s age, Paris is about living now and enjoying life in all of its aspects. Maybe New York and a few other cities also have the same aura. As a visitor, life is waiting just outside the door. Despite its relatively small size, each neighborhood has its own unique mix of buildings, stores and people. Ten minutes by foot in any direction take you into another world. It turns detours into voyages of discovery. As for food, Paris is having an endless choice of restaurants almost anywhere you walk, none with the same menu or style.  African or Asian, American or French or anything else you may want, it is available and close by. For example, I found a restaurant 20 meters from apartment that featured food from five different African countries and three Caribbean islands. Above all, Paris is sensatory heaven: architecture and art, open and covered markets, perfume stores, cheese shops and bakeries, jazz, swing and rap music in the street. One evening, I went out for a drink in the Louvre square and ended up dancing a swing, something I hadn’t done in years. La vie est belle á  Paris.

On a personal note, I experienced the trip bachelor-style, i.e., by myself, due to an animal health crisis at home that prevented my wife from joining me as planned. I returned to my youth of 40 years ago when I lived there, walking the streets as I did in my 20’s, some five to eight hours a day, and eating anything I wanted, including lots of bread, pasty, chocolat and café Liegeois, crepes, both sweet and savory, and even a Grand Marnier soufflé, to name a just a few. I saw family that I hadn’t seen in forty years. We even recognized each other as our faces had not changed even if our bodies had, just a bit. My French immediately came back, granted with some interference from Hebrew and too many grammar errors to suit me, especially after a beer, but with a better vocabulary. I discovered that neither my love of the city nor love the life style had changed. I immediately felt at home in Paris.

Admittedly, I had aged somewhat as I admitted when I begrudgingly took the metro back from the Champs d’Elysée back one evening instead of walking (50 minutes) because my legs were simply too tired. On a positive side, I found the 3+ hour lunches quite pleasant unlike in my younger days. Curiously, just as I thought all those years ago, however much I love Paris and it is in my heart, I could not live there. In short, now as it was then, in my opinion, it is impossible to be too sad in Paris if you have money to spend and even if you don’t have very much but I would not like to reside there.

Thus, to those who have nostalgia for the Paris of their youth or those that have never been there before, I strongly recommend visiting the city and exhilarating whatever senses you want with its magic. Paris d'antan est morte; vive la Paris d'aujourd'hui

 

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Travel jitters

 

[Paris roofs*]

Travelling to an unknown location is exciting, at least for some people. The prospect of encountering a new culture, hearing a foreign language, tasting local foods and seeing unique places breaks up the metro, boulot, dodo routine, enriches the mind and even creates a purpose for working so hard on a day-to-day basis. However, this unknown also creates a certain anxiety, differing by person, whether it involves food, language, loss of orientation or any other familiar aspect in life. I personally have experienced these jitters in the past. Moreover, I am experiencing them right now as I am about to travel to a SFT (the French translators association) conference in Angers and then to Paris to see my family. I find myself a bit nervous about what I will encounter when I leave the airport despite the fact that I am quite familiar with France.

I begin by saying that these pre-trip nerves did not stop me from travelling and enjoying my travel experiences. When I and my wife flew to Budapest, I was troubled by the fact that I did not know a single word in Hungarian and could not pronounce it when if I heard it. Hungarian is not a Latin-based language and has a rather peculiar rhythm. In fact, I could not nor did not try to speak any Hungarian but found it quite easy to read the signs and attain essential information. My trip to Poland for a legal language conference created much more emotional ambiguity due to the close geographical connection to the Holocaust. The trip was indeed emotionally challenging but enriching as I learned how complex the connection between past and present is. For more thoughts, see this post. In both cases, I enjoyed the discovery, each in a different way.

My upcoming trip to France has created a different type of worry. To explain, I am half-French (my mother), lived in France for a short time in my 20’s and speak nearly fluent French, one of the languages from which I translate. I even have family there. A minor worry for me is entering a more formal society after more than 30 years of living in a “direct” country. Thus, I am a bit nervous about making some social faux-pas that are not as excusable for a person of my age (as compared to when I was younger). However, my greater fear is the potential disappointment on what I will see in Paris. To explain, I lived in that city some 40 years ago and last visited some 14 years ago. Neither I nor the city are same. You can say that we have evolved or, possibly, devolved. Thus, our upcoming meeting will much more similar a first date than a reunion. I confess that this uncertainty makes me a bit nervous.

Still, as Doris Day sang so wonderfully, che sara, sara. Whatever the case, it will be nice to see my cousins, stroll through a European city, enjoy the food, appreciate the lifestyle and, as I did some 40 years ago, let my American self  laugh at the French while my French side enjoys every bit of the experience. Even if I am not fond of how the city has changed, it is, to paraphrase Shakespeare, better to have seen and been a bit disappointed than never to have travelled at all. I accept travel jitters as an essential part of discovering the world. Of course, I will report how justified or unjustified my fears were when I return. The only thing to fear is fear itself?

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit

Roamin Times

To begin, I was a classic “wandering Jew”.  My relatives from at least two generations took their legs and immigrated to a different country, not always by choice. One grandmother went from Russian to the United States while the other emigrated from Poland to France. My mother left France for the United States. I came to live in Israel.  I am fairly certain that my daughter will leave Israel to live in the United States, which she likes more than I do. So, there is a genetic factor there.  From the time I left home to go to college to the day I started my life in Karmiel, Israel, a period of more than ten years, I never lived in any city for more than three years.  A short list of these cities includes Santa Cruz, CA, Paris, France, Los Angeles, CA, Eugene Oregon, Portland, Oregon and Ashkelon, Israel.  I didn’t have to join the navy to see the world and became a bit of an expert on how to get started in a new city.

That being said, I can safely say that all cities are not created in equal in terms of ease of entrance.  The key factor is the percentage of residents not born in the place. On one extreme, there are villages and small cities that you are still considered new after three generations because, to mangle Einstein, everything is relative. On the other extreme are places like New York and Los Angeles, where the sheer number of “foreigners”, both domestic and foreign, is so large that your source of origin is merely a way to start a conversation and of little other significance. A peculiar situation is Paris. Half of the city consists of French Parisians while the other half are outsiders, both French and foreign.  I was quite lucky being half French and half “ericain” that I could enter both worlds, that of my Parisian family and that of the temporary and permanent émigré community. I felt quite at home and would still do today even if I believe Paris is an unhealthy city to live due to the stress and diesel fumes, no matter how exciting it is be there.

My way of starting anew was to do what I enjoy, Balkan folk dancing. Wherever I went, I found the local group or groups, joined them and immediately had a social circle.  I once unashamedly (at the time) crashed a wedding a few days after my arrival in Portland, merely following my new found acquaintances to the wedding even though I had never met either the bride or groom.  Nobody said anything to me, whatever that means. Between my hobby, work and studies, I was able to quickly create a social circle. Being young, male and a good dancer didn’t hurt either. I suppose newcomers join churches and synagogues for the same reason.

I have now lived in Karmiel, Israel, a small town of 50,000 people in the north, for over 27 years. I have been married twice and raised my daughter here. Since the town was founded only in the late 1964, the number of native born residents is still relatively small. Curiously enough, I have no desire to roam anymore. During the Second Lebanese War, it was bit like the line of the Star Spangled Banner here, “And the rockets in air…” I preferred  being under effective house arrest in my own house in Karmiel than being at a five start refugee at a hotel in Herzeliya further south, much to the angst of my parents. I cannot tell you what exactly changed but my sense is that everybody has a time to roam and a time to create a nest. I enjoyed my days of exploration and appreciate my days of attachment. 

Relative Equality

One of Orwell’s most quoted lines, from Animal Farm, refers to the fact that while everybody is created equal, some are more equal than others. The context of this criticism was so-called egalitarian societies, i.e. the Soviet Union but, unfortunately, this relative equality applies in all its ugliness to Western perception of modern events.

To demonstrate, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_2015) presents a long list of terrorist attacks that have occurred this year.  Some of them have truly been horrendous and barbaric.  The attacks in Kenya and Mali can only be described as barbaric. Yet, in terms of world coverage, the attacks in Paris received more press lines than all the others combined.  Ideally, every human life is equally precious. In practice, a European (or French or Australian, et al) life is much more highly prized in terms of its loss. In simple terms, 3^rd world people can die like flies. Yet, the fight against barbarism, Islamic style, is a universal fight with any victim, regardless of their country of residence, regretted. May all their memories be blessed.

Likewise, the US Anthropological Association just overwhelmingly passed a motion calling on the academic boycott of Israel.  As an Israeli, I would be the last to claim that Palestinians have equal footing to Jews in Israel.  In fact, I would have no problem understanding such a motion if said association also decided to boycott Jordan, which refuses to give Palestinians any citizenship rights and has massacred them in the past, Lebanon, which keeps them in refugee camps, Egypt, which has closed its border with Gaza and flooded the tunnels with sea water, and Syria, which merely kills them. In fact, the only country where Palestinians have some legal rights and political autonomy, not to mention economic stability, is Israel. So, if an organization feels that human rights are the highest priority, such a policy should be applied equally.  Otherwise, an observer might believe that the decision was not based on high principles but instead on low-level anti-Antisemitism.

Applying  the Serenity Prayer, the one about the courage to change, serenity to accept and wisdom to know which situation applies, the question arises regarding what a person that is less equal needs, courage or serenity. Personally, I would like the knowledge of how to change so we can have a world where everybody is created equal, period.

House culture

A man’s (or a woman’s) house is his castle, or so they say.  It can also be his status symbol, social hall or just dormitory, all depending on the individual person and group culture.

The original expression in English means that the owner of the house may design and decorate the house as s/he pleases, of course as long it does not violate any housing codes or block any views of the neighbors.  This medieval law also allows you to refuse access to any person that you choose, especially salespersons, to the point of being able to shoot intruders in some countries and circumstances. Even the police technically have to attain a warrant to enter a house.  All that is missing is a moat.

In many countries, such as the United States and Israel, it is your statement of income.  Whether you have one bedroom or fifteen does matter in the eyes of society. It determines your social circle and basically announces your tax bracket.  Regardless of the formal price and currency, only the rich can afford a large estate with gardens and pools while only the poor stay in government housing projects, with the possible exception of the few remaining communist countries such as North Korean, where there is basically equality in poverty.

In the Mediterranean and other regions, the house is your social center.  Families and friends generally gather at their houses, not at restaurants.  In these places, houses and apartments are fairly big while restaurants are expensive relative to income.  For example, many Israeli families get together on Friday or Saturday nights around a nice meal, sun flower seeds and tea to share time together. The atmosphere and cost are truly family-friendly, better than any restaurant.

By contrast, in Paris and other large cities, where apartments are small, dark and expensive, the preferred meeting place is restaurants.  Likewise, in many parts of the United States, it is common for people not to invite people over as a matter of principle, as if your house was your castle against the world.  In this case, the house is a place to eat, sleep and watch television.  What counts is the noise level outside, distance from public transportation, available parking and proximity to shopping.  Granted, all those feature can cost quite a fortune in a city like New York, but still, the aesthetics of the location are much less important. The house is more a less an inflated dorm room, minus roommate.

So, your home is what you make of it or others make of it. Do not take it for granted.

Je suis trente huit and J’accuse

For a Jew or anybody with sense of history, the last year culminating in the events in Paris this month has been traumatic.  From the reported shootings in Marseille, the unreported regular attacks on Jews in Europe and the dramatic events in Paris at the Holocaust Museum, newspaper office and supermarket, the situation looks very dark, with a stark resemblance to those of 1938.

Then, a rogue leader of a large country publicly espoused nationalistic and xenophobic goals and acted to attain them.  While some people opposed them, many people and leaders either ignored the message or, even worse, sympathized with it.  Evil was eventually defeated but at a heavy price for all.

Today, the call is from a more omnipresent force, Islam.  Regardless of their variety and organizational form, Muslim organizations call for the destruction of all non-believers, starting with the Jews. Isis, Hezbollah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey and Syria all agree on one matter: pluralism is not an option.  Many European leaders choose to ignore this call in order to win votes while many people in the street and government, even non-Muslims, sympathize with the goal.  While many if not most Muslims, both in Europe and the Middle East, are not active politically, they are influenced both by this call and the inevitable anti-Arab reaction that terrorism causes. 

Yet, there are differences.  First, Israel exists.  If French Jews have started carrying Israeli flags in the street, it is a sign that that the Diaspora tactics of staying low is being replaced.  While the prime minister of Israel was criticized for pushing himself to the center of the Paris rally, the world had to be reminded that Jews were not going to count only the local leaders and police.  The latter are accountable to another country now.  Also, some European leaders have hopefully learned from 1938.  They are trying to stop this disaster while it is still manageable.  The fact is that Hitler could have been stopped then. While quislings will always exist, there is hope for an early unified reaction.

It is hard not envision a terrible war before use, one that will go beyond national borders.  It could release the butchery of the Middle Ages, where the ends justified the means and everybody pays the price.  It is not quite 1938 but it is too close for anybody’s comfort.  I accuse the world of a hypocrisy that is dangerous both to the Jews and itself. Most of all, I try to maintain the hope that enough people have learned from the events of the not-so-distant purpose.

A Tale of 3 Cities

Being a Jew in the United States, France, and Israel are distinctly different experiences and something that I have experienced.  During the recent Israeli military operation in Gaza, which is hopefully finished, I saw the status of Jews faced with a vocal anti-Israeli/Jew local population in all three countries.  I intentionally linked Jew/Israeli because in the eyes of our “enemies”, the terms are in effect synonymous.  To paraphrase J. P. Sartre, a Jew is a Jew because the world considers him so.

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, most of the population was Jewish, meaning the high school was basically empty on Yom Kippur.  That being said, this Jewishness was against an empty background because almost all non-Jews in the area do not care about it.  This lack of contrast means that most American Jews have to “exaggerate” in some way to define themselves as Jews.  Some are politically active, especially in raising money for Israel and expressing Israeli’s interest in the U.S.  Others become religious in a country where keeping the Sabbath is truly a challenge (outside New York).  Some even join the Israeli army, as the late Max Steinberg, who died in Operation Protective Edge. Some strive to install some kind of Jewish identity in their children.  Many do nothing and fully blend into the American landscape, often marrying non-Jews (it happens to the best of families).  Being Jewish in the United States is an effort.

By contrast, being Jewish in France, at least in my experience, is fate.  Being Jewish in an overwhelmingly Catholic country has never been easy since anti-Semitism has always been part of the Catholic Church culture.  If you add a Muslim element to the mix, the situation can turn nasty quickly.  The attack on the synagogue during a recent anti-Israel demonstration is a prime example.  If parents tell their children not to wear a kipppa on their way to school as a matter of safety, it shows that Jews in France feel like a threatened minority, even if the silent majority of French strongly prefer the Jews to the Arabs.  As a French Jew, you have two options, tread softly in France or immigrate to Israel.

There, Jewishness is printed on your ID card and gives you automatic membership in a tribe, whether you want it or not.  The Middle East has always been a tribal society: Jewish, Arab (Muslim or Christian), and Druze, to name the most dominant.  A Jew walking in to an Arab village or an Arab walking in a Jewish city is identified as such even if no hostility is intended or shown.  It is a matter of identification, not racism.  In its crudest term, Hamas makes no distinction between left and right or religious and secular Jews. The person’s actual believes are irrelevant.  In comparison to the United States and France, Jews in Israel identify themselves and are identified as Jews as a basic part of social life.  This does not necessarily prevent relations with the other tribes but clearly sets the scene. Being Jewish in Israel happens quite naturally and creates a feeling of strength.

You can be Jewish in Los Angeles, Paris or Tel Aviv.  Granted that it is an individual decision, I feel Israel is a much more natural (if not always easier) place to be Jewish. To paraphrase George Orwell, I would rather be down and out in Tel Aviv (or Karmiel) than Paris or London.

The Ecstasy of Used Book Stores or Vintage Dust

The age of the Internet has brought countless benefits, including almost instant access to facts and efficient comparison shopping, to name a few.  Alas, change does have its price.  I fear that due to the Internet, the classic used book store with its sights and smells will disappear, as did manual typewriter.

As a bookworm from a family of bookworms, I have always preferred a used book store to a library.  There is a sense of adventure that the Dewey decimal system used by public libraries seems to destroy.  Also, a treasure found there is by definition a shared one, not a private one as when you find that special book buried under 18 other books in a dusty stack in the back of the store.  Only you had the patience and perseverance to remove those other books to find that pearl of a volume, however you wish to define that.

American used book bookstores, especially in college towns, tend to be colored by the national insistence of order and profit making.  The shelves are arranged nicely in alphabetical order by writer in sections having some internal logic.  This desire to facilitate the buying experience has been taken even farther by modern used book stores, such as Powell’s in Portland, Oregon (where I worked), where coffee and pastry are available to render your decision making process even more pleasant.  That the customers are being manipulated to buy books does not make the purchase of books any less desirable, of course.

By contrast, the used book stores in Paris represent the polar opposite. The vast majority are small shops.  Any shelves that may have been installed are hidden by random piles of dust-covered books.   The organization and price seem to be random, with books on widely varying topics lying on top of each other marked by arbitrary prices for better or worse.  Some stores claim to have a specialty, such as modern art or the Far East, in which case the seller might actually know which books s/he has.  Most are manned by passive looking people who seem to be there more because they don’t want to sit around the house than for any desire to make money.  Your decision to buy or just look does not seem to affect their mood at all.  This complete lack of commercial pushiness renders the search through Paris for first-edition Simenon novels all the more pleasurable.

I regret the future disappearance of this passion, which will go the way of letter writing and flower pressing.  In the meantime, I plan to partake of this pleasure when I have the rare luxury of taking an endless walk for no purpose other than to discover what magic book is buried deep in a pile of dust.

The Weather of My Life

As a stereotypical wandering Jew, I have been privileged to experience many types and descriptions of weather in my life.  On a linguistic note, the most interesting aspect is the terminology or lack thereof describing them.  I present a brief autobiographical weather tour.

I grew up in L.A., a city loved by many but not by me.  In LA, in the sixties, we had the famous Sig Alert, a measurement of smog, a wonderful American combination in itself of smoke and fog.  As I recall, at Sig 1, it was recommended that people with breathing problems stay home; At Sig 2, the schools were closed; at Sig 3, factories were closed.  I understand that pollution SIGgy days no longer occur in LA or they just don’t report them.

I lived in Paris for six months.  Maybe because I was young, I don’t remember anybody talking about the weather at all.  Apparently, they were too busy talking about the latest restaurant or the previous/next vacation.  There is something to be said for this approach.

I then moved to Oregon.  The Pacific Northwest, western Oregon and Washington, offers a long list of jokes about the climate: it rains twice a year, from January to June and June to January and Oregonians don’t tan, they rust, to name a few.  In reality, a good year is three months without rain while a bad year is one month without rain.  Granted, generally the rain is not strong, closely resembling a permanent drizzle.  Similar to the Japanese approach to describing a short person, avoidance, i.e. the person next to the tall man, Oregonians talk about the sun, not the rain: There may be sun today or No chance of the sun breaking through today.  This is an example of reference by ignoring.

I now live in Israel, where rain is a blessing and reason for a blessing.  In fact, interestingly, there are words to describe the first and last rain of the season, יורה [yoreh] and מלקוש [malkosh], respectively.  At this moment, I am enjoying a late version of the latter on Shevuot, rendering me a bit sad that I won’t hear the sound of rain drops until October or November.  Alas, instead we will have חמסין [hamsine], an Arabic word meaning 50, or שרב [sharav], the Hebrew word referring to days with a hot, eastern desert wind, which sucks out all of the oxygen and drives everybody crazy.  This phenomenon is more common worldwide, called the Santa Ana winds in L.A. for example.  Yet, it does have a special word locally.

So, if you have a unique weather term in your part of the world, let me know.  I will be happy to share it.

National Streets

Street names are culturally specific.  Some countries treat their streets as long strips of asphalt while others give them much more historical significance.

The United States as a rule shows little imagination but some practicality in naming its streets.  The most common names are trees (oak, elm, pin, etc), numbers, and letters.  The city of Portland, Oregon in its downtown area has all of its streets going north/south (to the best of my memory) named in alphabetical order according to the first letter, i.e. words beginning of a, b, c, etc.  It makes finding addresses much simpler.  The only real bit of history in most U.S. cities is the use of presidents, but it doesn’t go much farther than the founding fathers and a few exceptional ones, specifically Washington, Madison, Adams, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt. 

A French city map is a history lesson, especially Paris.  Anybody who is anybody in French history has a street, however small it may be, named after him or her.  There is almost always a small plaque stating a few biographical bits and pieces about the person.  The older city has medieval names whose origins are often completely lost, such as Rue de Mauvais Fils (The street of bad boys).  The distinction between ancient and modern Paris is sometimesmarked by the word “Faubourg” added  to a street name somewhere along its length, as in Rue St. Denis and Rue Faubourg St. Denis. All in all, for the interested explorer, its turns every stroll in Paris into a wonderful look into the past.

Modern Israel tends to name streets after history and nature.  No Israeli municipality is complete without a Rehov Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Herzl, and Trumpeldor.  I live in a neighborhood whose streets are all military campaigns (most of which the younger generation has never hear of).  Ironically, it is bordered by a street called Derech Hashalom, meaning “The Way of Peace.” Fortunately, most residential streets are given the sweet sounding names of trees, birds, and flowers, such as Alon (Oak), Dukifat (hoopoe), and Harzit (chrysanthemum).  In many cities, such as Jerusalem and Zefat, the names of various rabbis and righteous people are noted.  By contrast, in many Arab villages, there are many “anonymous” streets, which I suppose adds challenge to the postal carrier’s job.

Of course, there is a joke about the high regard that Americans have for the late Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin.  Almost every freeway in the United States is named Begin freeway.