France

Virtual VIFF now streaming

Shai Avivi, left, and Noam Imber are excellent as father and son in Here We Are. (still courtesy VIFF)

Understated and poignant are just two of the words I’d use to describe the screeners I watched in anticipation of the Vancouver International Film Festival, which opened Sept. 24 and runs to Oct. 7.

As with most everything these days, much of VIFF has moved online; however, there are still in-person screenings and talks, with audience sizes limited. And, as with other film festivals, online viewing is geo-blocked to British Columbia, meaning that you can only watch the movies if you are physically inside the province. The new format should allow for more access to the festival offerings and, while there will be those who miss dressing up and going out to the movies, there will be many people excited to be able to attend VIFF in their pajamas at home, me being one of them.

Last week, I watched two full-length features and two shorts: the narrative Here We Are, directed by Nir Bergman (Israel/Italy); the documentary Paris Calligrammes, directed by (and about) Ulrike Ottinger (Germany/France); The Book of Ruth, directed by Becca Roth (United States); and White Eye, directed by Tomer Shushan (Israel).

Every year, the Jewish Independent sponsors a selection at VIFF and, this time round, we’ve chosen a wonderfully written, acted and filmed movie. We generally have zero time and little information on which to base our choice, so I feel particularly grateful to have lucked out with this gem.

Here We Are is the story of a father who both will do almost anything for his autistic son, but who also uses his son as an excuse to not deal with the larger world. Aharon (played with incredible delicacy by Shai Avivi) has left his job to care for his son Uri (acted by Noam Imber, who gives an empathetic and strong performance). Aharon and his wife Tamara (played by Smadar Wolfman, who does a wonderful job, too) are no longer together, and Uri’s care has been left in his father’s capable and loving hands.

But Uri is an adult now and, to grow, we need space and the ability to direct our own lives. Tamara recognizes this and has worked hard to find Uri a good home, where he will be able to make friends and participate in activities with his peers. Aharon, however, is unable to let go and, though he also wants the best for Uri, he undermines Tamara’s actions – not only in words, but he takes Uri on the run.

The script by Dana Idisis leaves room for the pauses and emotions that make Here We Are an excellent film. Avivi’s face speaks more than a thousand words and you can see the inner conflict as his character struggles to accept that his son no longer needs him as much. The chemistry between Avivi and Imber makes the father-son relationship believable and compelling. And there are no “bad guys” here, even though mother and father differ in their opinions on parenting.

“I love the characters, the relationships, the way Aharon has reduced his needs to accommodate his son’s, and the transformation they experience throughout their journey,” reads the director’s statement. “I believe that, if I’m able to convey these characters as they are, from the written page to the screen, together with the bittersweet and humorous tone of the script, the audience will also fall in love with them.” Bergman accomplished his goal, and then some.

image - Ulrike Ottinger with her portrait of Allen Ginsberg, Paris 1965, and the work in colour (below) — Ulrike Ottinger with her portrait of Allen Ginsberg, Paris, 1965, and the work in colour (below). *(©Ulrike Ottinger courtesy VIFF)*

Paris Calligrammes is also very watchable and engaging. I’ll admit to never having heard of Ottinger before, so I was looking forward to learning more about her, her artwork, her photography and what eventually inspired her to filmmaking. However, while I thought the documentary was esthetically pleasing and gave a tangible sense of how exciting it would have been to live among the artistic elite in Paris during the 1960s, I couldn’t tell you much about Ottinger herself and what she contributed to the thoughts, images and culture of those turbulent times. But, I guess, perhaps it is assumed that one knows these things already.

image - Allen Ginsberg, Paris 1965 — Allen Ginsberg, Paris, 1965. *(©Ulrike Ottinger courtesy VIFF)*

Ottinger does offers some interesting and valuable commentary – read by British actress Jenny Agutter – but, for whatever reason, I didn’t think it was enough. The film is named after the bookstore Librairie Calligrammes, which specialized in antiquarian books and German literature, and was where Jewish and political émigrés hung out, along with others who we would now call cultural influencers. Ottinger drove to Paris in 1962 from Konstanz, Germany, to become, in her words, a great artist; to follow in the footsteps of her heroes and heroines. She not only follows those footsteps but walks alongside the likes of Tristan Tzara, Marcel Marceau, Raoul Hausman, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and countless others as well known.

Some of the most interesting parts of the film are about Algeria’s years-long war of independence from France (1954-1962) and the situation at the time with respect to the appalling treatment of Algerians living in Paris. Clips are shown of a peaceful demonstration held on Oct. 17, 1961, that was violently broken up by police. According to the film, 200 to 300 people were killed that night alone and, to this day, there has not been an investigation and no one has been held accountable for the deaths; even opposition newspapers didn’t report on it at the time and photos vanished from newsrooms. Ottinger notes that the order for the police to attack was given by then-chief Maurice Papon, who, under the Vichy government, had organized the rounding up of Jews to be murdered during the Holocaust.

This is a film that, I think, would be most appreciated on a big screen, but is still worth watching, for its content, yes, but mainly for its creative use of archival footage and interview clips, photographs and current-day images and filming. The documentary starts with a quote from Conseils au Bon Voyageur by Victor Segalen, advice that Ottinger has “gladly followed”: “Advice to the good traveler – A town at the end of the road and a road extending a town: do not choose one or the other, but one and the other, by turns.” If one needed inspiration to live by the conjunctions “and/both” rather than “either/or,” Paris Calligrammes might offer it.

image - Tovah Feldshuh plays a grandmother with a secret past in The Book of Ruth — Tovah Feldshuh plays a grandmother with a secret past in *The Book of Ruth. (still courtesy VIFF)*

While Paris Calligrammes is the product and vision of a longtime filmmaker, The Book of Ruth comes from the imagination of Chen Drachman, and is the first film Drachman has written and produced. She also co-stars in this exploration of how important it is to have symbols – in this instance, represented by an historical figure – around which to rally or by which to live one’s life.

The short takes place during the happiest, smallest (five people) and shortest seder that I’ve ever seen, and focuses on Ruth – played by veteran actress Tovah Feldshuh – and whether she is really the grandmother her granddaughter, played by Drachman, grew up knowing. While the scenario postulated is unbelievable, Feldshuh offers the gravitas and has the talent to make viewers look beyond that fact and consider the questions raised in the film about the stories we build around some people – their role in a war or a political movement or an artistic endeavour, whatever – and how that story or image can help make us, living in another time, feel less alone, more understood, etc.

image - Dawit Tekelaeb, left, and Daniel Gad co-star in the short film White Eye — Dawit Tekelaeb, left, and Daniel Gad co-star in the short film *White Eye. (still courtesy VIFF)*

Symbolism, of course, can be positive and negative. Racist views and bigotry also come from the stories we have learned and tell ourselves. And White Eye, both directed and written by Shushan, does a superb job of illustrating how prejudices and privilege we may not even know we have can lead to disastrous consequences.

The main character of Omer is played by Daniel Gad with convincing stubbornness and obliviousness at first, then quiet shock at what happens as a result of his desire simply to take back what is his. When he comes across his bicycle, which had been stolen, that’s all he wants to do: cut the lock off and take it back. Even after he meets the bike’s new owner, Yunes – actor Dawit Tekelaeb will win your heart with his touching portrayal of a hardworking father and husband who bought the bike so he could take his daughter to kindergarten – Omer wants his property back. Even when Yunes’s boss (Reut Akkerman) argues on her employee’s behalf, Omer refuses to budge even the smallest bit. Only after the police become involved and Yunes, an immigrant from Eritrea whose visa has expired, is taken away, does Omer realize the full implications of his actions. By then, of course, the damage has been done. And it’s much more devastating than having had one’s bicycle stolen.

For the full film festival lineup, schedule and tickets, visit viff.org.

Poll exposes confusion

A poll undertaken by the Union of Jewish Students in France returned some bizarre and seemingly contradictory ideas among the French public about Zionism, Israel and Jews.

More than half of the 1,007 respondents to the poll – 53% – viewed Zionism as a Jewish conspiracy aimed at manipulating the world to benefit Jews. Likewise, half of respondents said Zionism is a racist ideology.

Thirty-eight percent said Israel’s existence “feeds antisemitism” and 26% said that boycotting Israel is justified. Asked if Israel was a “threat to regional stability,” 57% said yes. More than half – 51% – called Israel a “theocracy.”

These are disturbing findings. Some of these are not matters of opinion – Israel is not a theocracy, no matter how many French people say it is. Other responses are deeply distressing. The assertions that Israel is a threat to regional stability – rather than being seen as a stabilizing force in a region roiling with instability – or that Israel’s very existence makes people hate Jews indicate a pattern of opinion that is seriously disordered.

But here’s where it gets really weird: 46% of respondents acknowledged that Israel is a democracy and 48% see it as a “normal country like all others.” A remarkable 54% of respondents view anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism and 59% correctly identify Zionism as a “movement of liberation and emancipation for the Jewish people.”

Together, these responses paint a picture of French confusion and contradiction – a picture that would probably be replicated to a degree in other European and North American polls, were we to undertake them. One might be tempted to critique the pollster and their methodology. After all, polling is suffering a crisis of credibility these days and this particular poll is so confounding in its contradictions that it simply can’t be right.

Or can it? Is it possible that the French (and others) are so baffled by the truths and fictions floating around that they could, as a community or as individuals, hold such cognitively dissonant ideas such as the acceptance that Zionism is a movement for the liberation and emancipation of the Jewish people and that it is a Jewish conspiracy to manipulate the world and that its fulfilment creates antisemitism? Could people believe both that Israel is a democracy and Israel is a theocracy? One could argue that different individuals responded differently to the questions, but with affirmative responses to all these questions ranging near or above majority levels, it is almost certain that some people responded affirmatively to contradictory positions.

In fact, this makes as much sense as any other explanation. The poll seems to suggest that the French (and we would extrapolate to most Western countries) hold very confused, bizarre and inconsistent views about Jews and Israel.

For all the work Zionists have done explaining ourselves for the past seven decades, we seem to have a long way to go.

Saint-Paul transforms

Paul Shore gets a little help from his daughter at a recent book signing. (photo from Paul Shore)

Cultural pastimes, like pétanque, “recharge our joie de vivre, our delight in being alive; they free our minds; and they fuel our chutzpah for adventure. We must protect these beautiful little gifts, tie a bow around them, love and keep them safe,” writes Paul Shore in Uncorked: My Year in Provence Studying Pétanque, Discovering Chagall, Drinking Pastis and Mangling French (Sea to Sky Books, 2016).

The title pretty much describes the basic content of this delightful 164-page book, and gives a hint of the light touch with which Shore writes. His story will make readers reflect on their own pivotal life journeys, if they have been lucky enough to have them. Perhaps it will also make us recommit to what we’ve learned from such experiences – the need to stop and smell the proverbial roses, for example, and the joy and fulfilment that can come from opening ourselves up to new places, people, cultures – the list goes on.

It was his job that took Shore to Saint-Paul in 1999. When the Vancouver-based software company with which he worked opened an “outpost in the Nice area” of France – with him “as its sole initial employee” – he leapt at the opportunity. Telling his firm he wanted to live in a “cute small town,” he found himself in Saint-Paul de Vence.

“Little did I realize,” he writes, “that I was about to take up residence in a village that could be best described in summer as ‘gaudy tourist central’ because it was so famous and magical…. Nor did I know that the brilliant modernist painter Marc Chagall had lived, worked and was buried in my soon-to-be-surrogate hometown. Nor did I have a clue that Saint-Paul was tantamount to a holy site for an odd game called pétanque.”

“I lived in Saint-Paul for almost exactly one year – from January 1999 to late December 1999,” Shore told the Independent. “I had visited Nice the year before on a short business trip and dreamed about the possibility of someday spending a longer stint in the region. And I had been in the south of France years earlier, in 1990, as a Euro-Railing new university grad.”

Shore grew up in Ottawa, but has called Vancouver and its environs home for many years. He, his wife, Talya, and their two children have lived in Whistler since 2003.

“We are longtime members of Temple Sholom,” he said. “In Whistler, we get together with Jewish friends for major holidays and we visit Temple Sholom and family in Vancouver from time to time, too.”

There are a few Jewish terms and references in Uncorked and a pivotal exchange between Shore and a woman named Adele, the manager of an art gallery in Saint-Paul – she is the one who informs Shore that Chagall had lived and painted in the village. She also shares with him that Chagall was a Russian Jew and that she, too, is Jewish and her family came from Russia. “Comme ma famille [Like my family],” writes Shore, who explores his heritage further in the latter half of the book.

While there are various entertaining and touching tangents, the focus of Uncorked is Shore’s quest to learn the mysteries of pétanque, which he describes “for the uninitiated,” as looking “a little like the Italian game of bocce, or the British game of lawn bowling, or even the winter sport of curling that is popular in Canada,” though, he advises readers “not to suggest such similarities out loud while standing on French soil, unless you have no desire to try to play the game, no desire to be welcomed into a café, no desire to gain the friendship of a local, and you desire to have the nickname Monsieur Con – the polite translation of which is ‘village idiot.’”

photo - Paul Shore in action on the pétanque field — Paul Shore in action on the pétanque field. *(photo from Paul Shore)*

Shore was determined to “gain entry into the arcane world of this ancient game with its half-understood rituals and ancient codes.” With help from a friend (Hubert) and a lot of practise, he works his way up from spectator to furtive nighttime learner to solid daylight player to confident owner-of-his-own-ball-set player. He knows he has been accepted fully into Saint-Paul life when he is invited into Le Cercle (The Circle), “the private bar that was off limits to everybody except registered pétanque players of Saint-Paul,” and receives his member card.

Unfortunately, by that time, his work was going to need him back in Vancouver. In talking with one of his friends in France a couple of weeks before his return to Canada, Shore vows, “I’ll swim in the fast lane awhile longer … but not forever … France has taught me it’s not worth the personal sacrifice.”

“When I returned to accept a new role with Broadcom in Vancouver, I unfortunately couldn’t swim in a slower lane for the seven years I stayed with the company,” Shore admitted to the Independent. “I worked ridiculously hard, traveled too much for business, while being within the core of the high-tech industry and spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley during those years. It was exciting and I learned a lot, but it troubled me that I wasn’t able to apply what I had absorbed during my year in France about living a well-balanced lifestyle…. Since I departed Broadcom in 2007, I have lived differently – working hard in intense environments at times, though not for long periods of time and with far more varied interests and time off to vacation and to help raise a young family.”

For the past year, he said, “I’ve been doing a little business consulting, while focusing on marketing my book and pursuing new interests in the renewable energy world. I also manage a vacation rental property that we own on the northern Sunshine Coast in the town of Lund – we call it ‘The Shores at Lund.’”

He has returned to Saint-Paul with his wife a couple of times. “And we plan to visit again next June – the first time with kids, ours are 9 and 5,” he said. “I will definitely bring my pétanque balls back to play there again. I have always stayed in regular contact with Hubert, even though I haven’t seen him in person since 2006. I have a couple other French friends who I speak to less often, though we also stay in touch – one now lives in Montreal and we have seen her a few times over the years.”

Shore has played pétanque in Whistler on Bastille Day, though not lately. “I will definitely teach my kids,” he said, “once they can safely handle the heavy metal projectiles.”

As for his motivation to write this book almost 20 years after his stint in Saint-Paul, Shore said, “I have wanted to try my hand at writing for ages, though I never seemed to make the time. On the flight home in 2003, I made some notes about my year in France four years earlier, just so I wouldn’t forget all the humorous and fond memories. Those notes sat in my desk drawer at home until the spring of 2015 when I had a surgery that caused me to be immobile for several weeks. My wife brought me the notes to my lawn chair in the middle of the living room and told me that now was the time to write – and so it began.

“I wrote a lot for about two months and then set it aside until the next spring, when I departed a job and had a health scare around the same time. I then picked up the writing again, determined to finish. I didn’t know if I’d ever publish it, until I was with a friend named Joel Solomon at a workshop at Hollyhock (on Cortes Island) and he encouraged me to get it out there one way or another. Joel introduced me to a small firm, named Page Two Strategies (co-founder is Jesse Finkelstein), who I hired to assist me with the pursuit of a self-publishing path.”

Shore is obviously tenacious.

“I encourage people to pursue challenges and not to accept ‘no’ for answer,” he said. “‘Why not try?’ is a philosophy that I have attempted to live by for my entire adult life.”

A light on good news

When encouraging news emerges from the too-frequent darkness of current events, we should shine a light on it and take some solace. A couple of encouraging events happened this week.

The first is tentative, but positive. French voters on Sunday advanced then-National Front leader Marine Le Pen to the second round of the French presidential elections. This is not good news in itself – Le Pen is a far-right extremist who just days ago refuted French complicity in one of the most notorious roundups of Jews during the Nazi era. What is encouraging is the response of her political opponents and much of French society in the wake of her success.

Le Pen will face Emmanuel Macron, a political neophyte who is described as a centrist and around whom many French seem determined to coalesce in order to reject Le Pen’s divisive and xenophobic rhetoric and policies. The defeated candidate of the Socialist party immediately urged his supporters to back Macron, saying he recognizes the differences between a political opponent and “an enemy of the republic.”

Another bright spot in the results was that, despite polls that tightened the race into a four-way contest in recent days, there is, in Macron, a voice for moderate, pro-European, liberal policies. A nightmare scenario – avoided by only a couple of percentage points in the popular vote – would have seen Le Pen face off against far-left extremist Jean-Luc Mélenchon. As it is, all polls and pundits (for what any of those are worth) predict Le Pen will suffer a landslide trouncing on par with that her father experienced when he reached the runoff in 2002, as moderate French of all stripes lined up behind Le Pen’s opponent.

This positive milestone follows the unexpectedly poor showing of the far-right party in the recent Dutch elections.

Closer to home, another bright spot was an exclusive interview in Monday’s National Post with Ibrahim Hindy, the imam at a Mississauga, Ont., mosque.

Hindy has become a voice of reason against extremism in the Canadian Muslim community and he comes with unique experience. As a younger man, he was invited into a web that could have led to radicalization. However, his own understandings of Islam as a merciful worldview contradicted what he was hearing from the people he had fallen in with in Pakistan. Later, meeting Jews and people of African descent at university, Hindy realized that, contrary to what he had been told by some of his would-be mentors, Muslims were not the only minority facing challenges in the world. His tolerant, empathetic approach has earned the 33-year-old clergyman a respected role among Canadian anti-extremist activists, as well as police, and, more importantly, among young people in his own community.

At the same time, Hindy has seen very close up the level of extremism in Canada aimed at Muslims. As controversy swirled around an Ontario school district’s accommodation of Friday Muslim prayers on school premises, Hindy and his mosque were on the receiving end of grotesque and threatening messages. His Islamic centre was described in one message as “one of many Satan safe houses that need to be burned to the ground.”

Incidents of hatred and violence are not to be tolerated – and they have not been. In addition to law enforcement agencies taking action, Canadian Jews, Muslims and others have been brought closer together and intercultural connections have been strengthened. Interfaith events in Vancouver, including one at a mosque, one at a synagogue and another at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, are just a few occasions that have confounded those who are determined to sow distrust, hatred and division.

At the same time, we do hear the view expressed that moderate Muslims must speak up and condemn extremism among their co-religionists. So those voices that call for just this sort of expression and activism should waste no time in commending it when we hear it, as we have from Hindy.

Likewise, all Canadians should look into our own hearts and at views expressed in our own communities and consider whether we are judging groups of people based on the actions of a few. Discrimination and extremism exist in different forms and we should be vigilant not only when it is directed at us, but also when it is directed at others.

Jerusalem’s French aspects

Salt print of Adolphe Crémieux, December 1856, by Nadar (1820-1910), from the J. Paul Getty Museum. (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

While Jerusalem’s French connection thankfully lacks the violence and crime of the 1971 movie by the same name, both the film and real-life “French” Jerusalem have one thing in common: both expose us to off-the-beaten-track sites. Take a look at what you’ll find in Jerusalem.

The Israel Museum (11 Ruppin Blvd.) has amazingly reassembled an original 18th-century French salon called the Rothschild Room. (All that’s missing is the fancily dressed smart-set listening to a book or music recital.) It also has an impressive collection of French impressionist and post- impressionist painters, such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas,

Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as works by earlier French artists such as François Boucher.

Speaking of paintings, 120 years ago, Count Marie Paul Amédée de Piellat painted Crusader-related images on the wall of what is today known as Jerusalem’s French Hospice, a non-denominational facility for the terminally ill. Painted in fresco-style, they were recently uncovered during a routine repair.

First built some 130 years ago as St. Louis Hospital – after the same King Louis IX who was responsible for broadening the Inquisition and burning Talmuds – it stands at 2 Shivtei Yisrael St. Around the corner from the hospice is the Romain Gary French Institute of Jerusalem, which promotes French culture by means of French-language courses, a French-language library and a media and entertainment space.

Romain Gary was a Second World War pilot, French diplomat and filmmaker, but was best known for his prolific writing. He won literary prizes using various pen names. Born to Jewish parents, his mother had him baptized a Catholic. Oddly, he had a large menorah at the foot of his bed when he shot himself dead.

Jerusalem’s Ratisbonne Monastery – built in the late 1880s, in Rehavia, 26 Shmuel HaNagid St. – is named after two French Jewish brothers who converted to Catholicism and made it their mission to have Jewish children follow in their “way.” Just before Israel declared statehood, 60 children from Kfar Etzion were safely evacuated to the monastery before the kibbutz fell. Most of the kibbutz defenders, however, were killed in the fighting. During the period in which the Jordanians blocked Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus, the Ratisbonne Monastery served as the school’s law faculty.

Today, the monastery is an international theological school for those studying for the Catholic priesthood.

Several Jerusalem streets are named after French personalities who were either themselves Jewish or had connections to Jews. Centrally located Emile Botta Street is named after the French consul in Jerusalem during the Ottoman rule. The 90-year-old Pontifical Biblical Institute stands on this street. This facility has been in the news lately, as an Egyptian mummy belonging to the institute is currently on exhibit at the Israel Museum.

Emile Zola Street in the German Colony honors the outspoken journalist who defended Captain Alfred Dreyfus’ innocence. In a Jan. 13, 1898, letter (J’accuse!) to the French president, Zola publicly charged the French government and army with suppressing the true story behind Dreyfus’ arrest. Zola himself paid a high price for his bravery; he fled to Britain to avoid prison, only to die there suddenly and suspiciously from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Located near Emile Zola Street is Adolphe Crémieux Street. Crémieux was a Jewish lawyer, statesman, staunch defender of human rights (both of Jews and slaves) and the founder, in 1860, of the Alliance Israélite Universelle; four years later, he served as its president. Unfortunately, the Alliance vocational school no longer stands, but you can still see approximately where the gate was on Jaffa Road, in front of the site’s successor, the Clal Building.

Crémieux did much to better the conditions of the Jews in France. In 1827, he advocated the repeal of the Oath More Judaico, a piece of stigmatizing legislation left over from pre-revolutionary France. Crémieux apparently brought about the abolition of the oath when he defended Rabbi Lazard Isidor. The rabbi – who went on to become France’s chief rabbi – had refused to take the antisemitic oath and was charged with contempt of court. Crémieux got him acquitted. On March 3, 1846, the French Supreme Court finally declared the oath illegal.

Crémieux was likewise involved in defending Saratov (Russia) Jews facing charges of blood libel. For his instrumental assistance in bringing about the end to slavery in the French colonies, Crémieux was nicknamed the “French Abraham Lincoln.”

In recent years, Crémieux Street drew significant attention when police investigated former prime minister Ehud Olmert for the suggested favorable terms he received on the purchase of a home on this street, in exchange for help rendered to the contractor who sold it to him. The National Fraud Unit ultimately advised that there was not enough evidence to proceed with criminal charges against Olmert in the “Crémieux Street affair.”

Frederic Chopin Street is named for the well-known, Polish-born, French composer and pianist. Probably not coincidentally, this Talbiya street is the site of the Jerusalem Centre for the Performing Arts. Six halls serve as regular venues for music and dance concerts, dramatic performances and films.

Located in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, Estori Haparhi Street is named after the first topographer of the land of Israel. Haparhi’s family lived in Provence, but was expelled from France, along with the rest of the medieval Jewish population. Following this expulsion, he made aliyah and frequently preached the necessity of settling in the Holy Land. While making his living as a doctor, he wrote a book citing the biblical and halachic borders of Israel. He claimed that the Arabic names of numerous towns and villages reflected their Jewish textual names.

Speaking of medieval France, the Jerusalem municipality named three Mekor Baruch neighborhood streets after medieval Jewish scholars, Rashi and his two grandsons, the Rashbam and Rabenu Tam.

Neve Yaakov’s Gamzon Street recognizes the French resistance work of Robert Gamzon. In wartorn France, he set up an underground for issuing false identities to children and young adults. With these papers, they were able to escape France. Gamzon went on to fight in Israel’s War of Independence and to do research at the Weizmann Institute.

Talpiot’s Marie-Pierre Koenig Street commemorates the bravery and leadership of the French general who headed the Free France forces in the Second World War and took part in the D-Day landing. During the war, Koenig let members of the Jewish Brigade fly the blue and white flag, in defiance of British orders banning such action. Even after becoming the French minister of defence, Koenig remained an advocate of the new state of Israel.

For a general understanding of how the Holocaust affected French Jewry – including the critical assistance provided by French Jewish underground workers – plan a physical, or at least a virtual, visit to Yad Vashem (yadvashem.org). France’s recognition of Jewish defence was short-lived, however. Following the Six Day War, France embargoed its Mirage fighter jet. This forced Israel to develop the Kfir jet, and a street named HaKfir reflects Israel’s decision to go blue and white.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Beneath burkini

The burkini fiasco, if it has had any positive effects, should have opened some eyes to how silly human beings can behave when we become enmeshed in a fabricated social panic. The issue, for those who have not seen the image of French police standing over a woman at a beach, requiring her to remove articles of clothing, is the idea that Muslim women in modest beach wear are a threat to Western civilization.

About 30 coastal towns in France banned the “burkini,” swimwear that generally covers all but a woman’s face, hands and feet. Even after a French court ruled the ban illegal, most of the mayors insisted they would continue enforcing the dress code.

The irony is jarring. Ostensibly based on the idea that Islam or Islamism – the motivation and the perceived threat are blurry – oppresses women by forcing them into extensive body-covering clothing, police in a democratic Western country force a woman to disrobe. (It was inevitable, also, that photos would soon go viral depicting nuns frolicking in the ocean in full Christian religious regalia, unmolested by authorities.)

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls has called the burkini a “provocation” and “an expression of a political project, a counter-society, based notably on the enslavement of women,” an “archaic vision” in which women are “immodest, impure and that they should be totally covered. That is not compatible with the values of France and the Republic.”

We can leave to the French what is compatible with the values of France and the Republic, yet surely a nation founded on the pillars of liberty and equality must find something amiss when its police devote their time and resources to enforcing swimwear rules.

France is singular among European countries for its stated commitment to laïcité, the prohibition against religious involvement in government affairs in service of a secular ideal. Similar issues have been addressed in Quebec, where overtly religious Christian symbols, including the crucifix, were deemed part of the province’s cultural heritage and thereby conveniently exempted from the ban on religious imagery. But, in France, as elsewhere in Europe, more is at play than ideas of secularism. In fact, the imperfect heritage of secularism is being manipulated as an excuse to target a particular group.

On the one hand, let us not pretend that there are not legitimate concerns and issues raised by the increasing population of Muslims in Europe. Among this population, both among immigrants and those born in Europe, are a small number who have become radicalized and are a genuine threat to society. A larger number holds ideas that challenge the European consensus on the role of women in society, pluralism and the rights of people to live free from religious coercion. These are legitimate concerns that require addressing through long-range integration strategies and societal accommodation between traditions – as does the rise in Europe of nationalism, xenophobia and racism.

But the burkini is, at best, a side issue; a symptom of a few things, none of them healthy. Regardless, the “solution” to any social coercion around women’s clothing is certainly not legal proscription, at least it should not be in a Western democracy. Burkini-banning has more in common with religious extremism – modesty “police” exist in various communities around the world – than the Western freedoms the burkini-bashers claim to defend.

Paris synagogue visit

The Hon. Rob Nicholson at the Great Synagogue of Paris during a trip to France, accompanied by Joël Merghi and Rabbi Moshe Sebbag. (photo from the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs)

The Hon. Rob Nicholson, minister of foreign affairs, visited the Great Synagogue of Paris during a trip to France, accompanied by Joël Merghi, chair of the Central Consistory of France, and the synagogue’s Rabbi Moshe Sebbag.

As they toured the synagogue, they discussed the recent attacks against the Jewish communities in France and Denmark and the importance of continuing to denounce antisemitism. Nicholson also took the opportunity to reiterate the Government of Canada’s support for freedom of religion, including through the Office of Religious Freedom.

Nicholson traveled to Paris to meet with Laurent Fabius, France’s minister of foreign affairs and international development. The ministers discussed a range of international issues, including the crisis in Ukraine, the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and global terrorism. In addition, they discussed the state of the world economy and opportunities for growth, trade and jobs following Canada’s recent trade agreement with Europe.

This trip was Nicholson’s first visit abroad as minister of foreign affairs and is part of concerted efforts by both Canada and France to further strengthen the deep and long-standing bond between the two countries.