Today I will share a bit about our neighborhood as well as our experience the synagogue where we worshipped on Yom Kippur. Sorry in advance, this is a long read.
For reasons I won’t get into, we won’t be in our 3-month rental until 1 October. So, for now, we are enjoying being just around the block, at 110 rue de Rennes, on the Rive Gauche, in the 6th arrondissement. The apartment is meh but its location is fabulous. We are on the 6th floor and have great light, including a view of the Eiffel Tower, which displays a sparkly light show every evening. We overlook the Marché Raspail, which is a 3 days a week outdoor market, including one of those days an organic market. It has a reputation of being the best known and chicest outdoor market in Paris. We wholeheartedly agree and have shopped there every market day so far.
The Marché Experience
My segue to Yom Kippur is a bagel story. Yes, we have seen at least three bagel shops, one, right next to our future apartment. And there is a line outside everyone of them every day at lunch. So, on Saturday, we went to buy our bagels for a traditional American break-fast.
Our goal was to buy some bagels to accompany the cheeses we had bought at Marché Raspail and the smoked salmon we had bought at the La Grande Epicerie de Paris (a gorgeous food court that I will talk about in a future entry). We were hoping to buy and freeze a few bagels but at Bagelstein, the lady proprietor not only told us that she would be closed on the coming Monday, but that she could not sell as individual bagels, only as a sandwich – we thought some crazy French regulation, but in fact she had a wholesale business that restricted her. She was not very revealing about why she’d be closed on Monday but we understood and wished her a Shanah Tovah. Interestingly, Bagelstein is across the street from the Institut Catholique de Paris, a secondary school, and is mobbed with students at lunchtime! We successfully found unadorned bagels at another bagel bakery.
We were able to obtain an invitation to attend Yom Kippur services at Kehilat Gesher, a trilingual synagogue, which came up during my search through the World Union for Progressive Judaism and was also recommended by the Zurkow family and Rabbi Blake, whose cousin is a member. We decided to check it out ahead of YK by attending Friday night’s Service for Shabbat Shuvah at their new home in the 17th arr. and contacted the synagogue in advance so they would be expecting us, knowing that security is on everyone’s mind . It was a lovely service, conducted by the very energetic Rabbi Tom Cohen, who welcomed us warmly, as did many members of the congregation. Rabbi Tom is an American, married to the first French female rabbi, who leads one of the other two Progressive synagogues in Paris. For more information about this interesting rabbinic couple:
https://francerevisited.com/2016/09/a-couple-of-rabbis-in-paris/
Many of the tunes and prayers were familiar to us but the service was more Conservative than Reform and very egalitarian. Congregants participated in the service in English, French or Hebrew — whatever suited each reader –and the sermon was delivered by a lay-leader in both English and French. Everyone was very friendly and after the Service, we stayed in the 17th and dined at Casa Nikkei, a Peruvian/Japanese/French fusion restaurant: an interesting combination and very delicious!
On Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur, we attended KG’s service at “Temple Cortambert,” aka Eglise Protestante Unie de l’Annonciation, a Lutheran Church in the 16th that they took over to accommodate a bigger crowd for the holiday. At Shabbat, there had been about fifty in attendance but for Yom Kippur, they drew over two hundred. The service was beautiful, with piano accompaniment and an excellent volunteer choir. We happened to be sitting near the congregation’s president and treasurer and since meeting them have already received an invitation to Shabbat dinner. WRT’s (former) Treasurer and KG’s Trésorier will compare notes. Rabbi Tom’s sermon (given in English, with French translation) was about finding joy in Yom Kippur, which we found quite inspiring.
On Yom Kippur, Andy and I walked to synagogue, about three miles from our apartment, with the Eiffel Tower as our landmark! Unlike our custom of dressing up for the holidays, the French who came to worship were generally quite casually dressed with sneakers, except those who wore traditional head-to-toe white. On Kol Nidre, Andy wore a tie and was in a minority of one. He was very happy to ditch the tie for the long YK service! As the day went on, more and more worshippers arrived and by the time the Service ended, with a resounding singing of Hatikvah, it was standing room only. Interestingly, many had gone to work that day, but came to the service to observe the conclusion of the holiday. Our Scarsdale synagogue, WRT, clocks in at about 2 hours for a Yom Kippur service with a few more hours in the late afternoon. We were in services for 7 hours and our fast lasted 26.5 hours, possibly ending later than those fasting back home! I guess those French wanted us to get our money’s worth! As a nice touch, at the moment the service ended (at 8:30pm!!), those classy French passed out gourmet chocolates to break the fast. Next year, some champagne, perhaps? Andy and I went home (yes, Uber works well in Paris) to enjoy our bagels with smoked salmon, cheeses and berries, along with some delicious chocolate.
Stay tuned for my 3rd installment. True confession: today’s blog had to be rewritten as I lost about 75% of its content — still learning how to work WordPress. But I would like to suggest that you “follow” me so that you will be notified when I post in the future.
The Innocents Abroad, 21st Century Version 