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The Greene Line: The Perils of France
By Norman Greene
San Diego Jewish Press Heritage, January 3,
2003, page 18
Gex, France—There's a mezuzah on the front door and a picture of his bar
mitzvah in the den where we are sleeping. Raphael is 15 and attending boarding
school for the first time. It is a Catholic-run, strict boarding school. There
are no Jewish boarding schools or day schools in this area of France.
Gex is a charming, rural border town of sorts, a bedroom community for Geneva,
Switzerland. There may be Jewish schools in Geneva, but the French
Jews do not particularly care for Swiss Jews. Most of Raphael's friends are not
Jewish.
Alain is a ruggedly handsome French man in his early forties. He is father to
8-year-old Lou, all young and innocent. His wife, Jane, is a successful
commercial interior designer with three children by her former marriage. They
seem very happy together.
Alain is an employee of the largest Jewish-owned bank in Geneva. There are, I
was told, at least three of them. He holds his position by virtue of the
fact that his wife is Jewish. Management is Lubavitch and very strictly
Orthodox. The employee cafeteria is kosher.
Eric and Anne have yet to arrive on the scene. They are the proud parents of two
adorable boys; each had a brit. Anne is very respectful of Eric's
religion and traditions. She fasts with him on Yom Kippur. She is devoted to him
and they are happy together. They, like so many of the French, have not
bothered to marry, possibly because she is not Jewish and has not converted.
Melodie, Jane's eldest daughter, is an adorable 24-year-old who recently married
28-year-old Patrick. He proudly proclaims that he is 100 percent
Swiss. They had a civil marriage. Both work in Geneva and have that glow of
newly-marrieds. They mix with the other cousins easily and seem to be
enjoying the marvelous French party cuisine. They plan to wait a year or so
before starting a family.
Jovial Fabien is delightfully outgoing. No classic French reserve here. He and
his Jewish wife have been separated for more than five years. He is
accompanied to this gathering by the love of his life — they have known each
other since they were both 15 — and her adult children. Sabine is strikingly
attractive, warm, gracious, accomplished, amusing and not Jewish. They laugh
easily together.
Our host and hostess are a lovely, hard-working Jewish couple. They each have
demanding careers. They have built a beautiful four-bedroom, California
modern home with a magnificent glass wall in their huge living room that
overlooks the Gex countryside and Geneva and offers views of snowcapped
Mount Blanc and the Jura Mountains, as well as clusters of village homes in the
valley below. They have raised a Jewish family and strongly identify
with the liberal culturalism of our faith. They both have studied Hebrew and
visited family in Israel many times. They are fearful for Israel and feel
personally wounded by the 9/11 assault on the World Trade Center and Western
civilization. It is important for them to be Jewish. They hope for Jewish
continuity for their two children.
Upon our arrival, they gave us a handsome four-color, slick brochure concerning
Jewish life and services in Geneva. It seems to contain mostly
information about fundraisers for ORT, Karen Hayessod, Magen David Adom and the
Council of Swiss Jewish Affaires. There is one page in English about a Philip
Roth book lecture. There are glossy pages of advertisements for Gucci, Bulgari,
Hermes, Swiss banks, hotels and travel to Israel. The
advertising in this single issue alone would seem to be enough to sustain the
weekly Heritage for six months. There are no obvious Jewish services in
Gex.
At the center of this family are the grandparents, Robert and Mary. They were
both born in Egypt and expelled from their homeland two days after
their marriage in 1957 by Nasser after the failed French/English/Israeli attempt
to recapture the nationalized Suez Canal. Although they could trace
their families back generations in Egypt for Mary and Egypt, Iraq, Turkey and
Poland for Robert, they both held French passports. Faced with the
immediate order to leave, they decided to emigrate to France at the time of the
Egyptian expulsion. They arrived in Paris with only the clothes on their
backs and the help of the Jewish Agency.
Two of Robert's brothers fled to Mexico. Two of his sisters relocated in Israel.
One brother became ultra-Orthodox in Brooklyn, where he has created
a dynasty of his own. "It is like another world to us," Robert said,
"not at all like living in the United States or Paris." HIAS offered
to relocate Robert and Mary in Texas or Ohio. Both were unacceptable to Mary.
She preferred to stay in Paris. It took Robert two days to find a job. A year
later, they began a French family of their own. They raised a daughter and two
sons in Paris. They kept a kosher home. They were financially and socially
successful. "Hard work paid off for us," theyseemed to imply.
Today, they have become very pragmatic about the state of French Jewry. "These
are different times," Mary said with a bit of an apologetic smile.
"In Egypt, everyone married Jewish. You would not have dared to do
otherwise. Today is different. You can only hope."
France has the largest population of Jews in Western Europe — some 600,000 in
number. They have been politically marginalized by a series of
anti-Semitic governments, pro-Arab policies (there are more than five million
Arabs in France) and fractious relations with Israel. While there
are strong Jewish institutions in the country, if this gathering is typical of
French Jewish society, it seems clear that the current rate of
assimilation should be of growing concern to the well-being of future Jewish
generations.
In this, France seems no different from the U.S.