Shabbat in Paris

For December 10, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Joshua Stein

On the Friday following Thanksgiving I went to church with my wife; but not to pray. St. Denis on the outskirts of Paris was a place I’d longed to see for decades. You remember Dagobert, of course, the last Merovingian king to rule as well as to reign? Among his many accomplishments was construction of the church named after the first Christian martyr of Paris, the aforementioned St. Denis, decapitated on Montmartre (martyrs mount). He picked up his head, the story goes, and walked about six miles preaching along the way. I’m not sure exactly how he accomplished either task but he became one of several Christian cephalophores (from the Greek for “head-carrier” a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head.) From Dagobert’s time on, the basilica was the site of royal burials and tombs to commemorate France’s kings and queens.

In the 12th century the church, in need of repair, was refashioned in the new Gothic style, in fact, St. Denis is the first Gothic building in Europe, all others a modification of the original. So we had to go to church to see the tombs and the architecture. I’d been to Paris many times, but the basilica is so difficult to reach (it’s at the end of a spur line on the Metro) that I never could. This time, however, wife in tow, we schlepped and oohed and ahed.

That evening, it being erev Shabbat we went to synagogue, to the Temple Victoire a.k.a. the Rothschild Synagogue. Built in the Romanesque style in the mid-19th century, this enormous edifice is cathedral like except for the missing statues and crucifixes. Its bimah where the cantor sings facing the congregation is several steps up from the ground, higher still is the area behind where he sings facing the ark which is still higher, and above it there is a pillar atop of which is a depiction of the Ten Commandments. People approached us to talk but our French (mine and my two sons) wasn’t adequate but we quickly ascertained that Hebrew would be the Lingua Franca and we got along in that—my son the cantor did.

Afterwards we walked to the Ailes restaurant at 34 Rue Richer, incongruously across the street from the Folies-Bergère where we had pre-paid for our kosher meal. By the time we got there the place was nearly filled, but our reservations were honored and we sat and quietly sang Shalom Aleichem, and then I blessed my sons and my wife blessed our daughter-in-law and I said kiddish over the wine and the motzi over the bread. Since these sons live at a distance from us I don’t get to bless them very often and I noted as I did that tears were misting my eyes as I said the ancient words knowing that there is a limited number of times one gets to bless his children and wondered how many more chances I’d have. All around us I could hear similar songs and prayers chanted by different families, ricocheting through the restaurant like whispering breezes. But then about a dozen young men came in, took their places, but didn’t sit. Instead in perfect 12 part harmony they sang aloud the blessing over the wine, grabbing the attention of the other diners, some of whom applauded, and others walked over to ask if they were going to bench Birkat Hamazon the tuneful grace after meals. Well, they may have, but by that time we’d quietly sang the words ourselves and left, walking back to our apartment, our stomachs full, our souls refreshed.

It was a nice way to spend Thanksgiving, though whether we’ll ever be able to do it again like that I don’t know, but we did it at least the once.
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A sharp eyed reader called me to task for saying that David Koch, multi-billionaire backer of the Tea Party, was Jewish. I’d used him as an example of one who betrayed the principles of the prophets in expectations of greater profits; it was a brief mention at the end of a long article. Well, here’s a lesson for all of you currently taking Journalism 101. Never rely on memory; always double check your sources and yourself. In my rush to make a deadline, I failed to do either and blundered. Koch is Roman Catholic, not Jewish. My thanks to the sharp-eyed reader.

Adam Smith, Socialist

Quiz time, again:

1- What fruit did Eve eat in the Garden of Eden that got her into trouble?
2- In Genesis, which was created first, women or animals?
3- Why did Cain slay Able?
4-Which of the four books of the Maccabees describes the miracle of the oil lasting eight days?
5- In the Constitution of the United States does the oath taken by a new president conclude with the words “So help me, God”?
6- Does the Constitution of the United States establish a democracy?
7- What did Adam Smith mean when he wrote about Laissez-faire, laissez-passer?

Answers:

1- Who knows? The apple is a renaissance artist’s invention.
2- The woman was created at the same time as the man in Genesis I, after the animals in Genesis II.
3- We are never told.
4- None of them; it’s a later rabbinic add-on.
5- No; the word God is never used in the Constitution, ever.
6- Democracy was the last thing on their minds in 1787; the founders mixed the three classic forms of good government, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy giving democracy the shortest of shrifts.
7- Nothing; he knew the term but never used it and didn’t believe in it.

So much for common knowledge.

Discussion:

If the word God never appears in the seminal document creating the American government why do some Christian fundamentalists want to insist that our schools teach that the founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation? If Adam Smith in his classic On the Wealth of Nations didn’t advocate that the government should do nothing to regulate the economy, what did he propose? And why as a Jewish community should we care? (Hint: Think of the Jewish prophets, not the modern emphasis on profits.)

Prof. John Hill of Curry College recently gave a lecture at Roger Williams University on the topic “Laissez-fair, no fair” debunking the myth that Smith ought to be enshrined as the father of modern capitalism. It was a useful reminder to me of those long ago days when I first read On the Wealth of Nations and a wake-up call to my students who only know it by reputation. Hill contends that Smith was a moral philosopher above all; that he was interested in the wealth of nations, not in the wealth of individuals; that while he understood some would become wealthy, that wealth imposed obligations; that he favored a luxury tax to prevent the wealthy from getting too rich and opposed the sort of gap we have in America where 5% of the population controls 75% of the wealth.
In America, we have always stressed the rugged individual. Smith would have preferred we pay homage to the self-made man who gives it all back. The career of Andrew Carnegie is nothing to emulate; he was a strike breaker who ruthlessly exploited his workers and then let his partner take the fall when deaths occurred. But in his The Gospel of Wealth he preached that ostentatious living and amassing private treasures was wrong. He praised the high British taxes on the estates of dead millionaires. He claimed that, in bettering society and people here on earth, one would be rewarded at the gates of Paradise and gave the vast bulk of his state to the creation of libraries and concert halls.

In a different gospel we read “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” a nice Jewish sentiment paralleling Jeremiah’s idea that the reason Jerusalem was about to fall was that the rich were exploiting the poor. Micah tells us what God expects of us and it’s not acquiring wealth for personal gain at the expense of others but “only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk modestly with your God.” Instead David Koch, Jewish multi-billionaire gives his money under the table to the Tea Party which believes that it’s wrong to tax to aid the tired the poor, the huddled masses who have been seduced into taking out foolish loans. When I was a student protester it was on behalf of the poor, the black, the grunts conscripted into the Vietnam War, none of which I was. Today the Tea Party people protest that their pockets are being picked by people who want to introduce a form of European Socialism. Pshaw! Adam Smith knew the truth, if only people would actually read him.