French Sabbath

Last night I had my first French synagogue experience and my first Orthodox synagogue experience all at the same time. C'était trés interesante.

First, I should mention that I spent several hours - or at least one hour - earlier in the day traipsing around an approxiately one-block area, looking for the synagogue, who's address was either 5 rue de Jérusalem or 3 rue de Jérusalem. With no luck. I kept trying different streets that looked like they would take me to the right place. Every time, I would either find myself obviously too far away, or else completely blocked from where I wanted to go. Finally, when I was able to check a more detailed map, I found it seemed to be in the one tiny alley I had not gone down at all. But I was generally in the right place.

So I went back that evening, and luckily was able to walk there from the place that I was staying. I went down the tiny alley, which was indeed marked (in a very hard-to-see place) Rue de Jérusalem. It was very short, and as far as I could see, there was no synagogue. There wasn't even an apartment entrance or a store or anything. There were some beat-looking cars parked, some dumpsters, and a depressing-looking building with lots of garage doors. This was not the "good" part of town." I thought, is this one of those groups that meets in someone's basement? How did they get marked on the map? Where is the synagogue?

So I went down to the end of the alley, which had a one-way street coming from the main road, up and to the left. It wasn't there. Then I turned to the right. There, clearly not physically on the "Rue de Jérusalem" at all, but down a brick-paved pedestrial walkway, was a likely synagogue-looking building, which was fairly non-descript, but nice, and even more indicated by the old man wearing a yarmule and standing outside the door. I was right on time, and I could hear the chanting already inside.

The old man smiled at me as I approached. He seemed perplexed that I would ascend the stairs. Est-ce-que je peut entrer? Vous êtes Juive? Oui. Then he got really excited and looked very happy. He asked where I was from and told him I was an American. He enlisted the help of a man and his bar mitzvah-age son, who were just arriving, to tell me where I was to go in the synagogue - the "Premiere étage." This is an Orthodox synagogue, he told me in French. Men are on the first floor, and women are on the second floor - the balcony. Okay, well, I wasn't going to let that turn me away. They were warm and welcoming. There was no sense of being left out. Except there really weren't a lot of women there. There wasn't a whole lot of anybody, but it was definitely mostly male, all chanting in Hebrew on the first floor.

There were two great electrical candelabras up front, and in the center of the floor, was an enclosed space with two chairs, and an immense Torah book in red, covered with plastic. A young-ish man in a black suit and black yarmulke approached the enclosure and began to lead the chanting. I thought he might give a drasha in french, but he did not. And as he chanted, he would periodically look at us up in the balcony. I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I just tried to stand up and sit down at the appropriate times. There was a printed page in French, but other than that, everything was in Hebrew. So I decided to practice my letter-reading a bit. The young boy who came in with his father was there on the floor. Or perhaps he had already had his bar mitzvah. He looked relatively old.

It's odd. There is a certain kind of maturity that I see in younger Jewish males [I say "males" because I'm referring to that entire age group of all people, at a point where neither "man" nor "boy" would really be descriptive.] Maybe it is true for females as well, but I feel that teenage boys, generally, are pretty immature. Let's just take that for granted, with a few exceptions - at least in America. The girls tend to be mature a little bit earlier. Again, a generality. But when I reached the airport in New York City, there was a young Jewish male sleeping sitting on a bench near our luggage claim. He could not have been more than 16. Probably 14. He had on a yarmulke and a nice suit. His bags were there next to him. There was no one with him. And he just slept. Looking at his face, he seemed to exude a knowledgable peace. He trusted himself and the world enough to sleep in this place, and indeed he seemed to have the trust of many others behind him. His whole life seemed to make sense for him. He was not worried about the future. He was not worried about the past. His age seemed irrelevant. He had the sense of being fully a man, even though he was very young. And it's something I have seen before - a certain sense of the world - but which was very pronounced in this young man I saw.

The young man at the synagogue did not seem quite so old in his bearing. But he, too, like all Jewish men I know, had that certain spark of dignity. It manifests differently in women, but it's there, too. One woman on the balcony had her hair covered. I realized that I probably should as well. But the two other young girls didn't. I guess perhaps it is okay, if you are not married. In fact, I am pretty sure the poster outside the door said something to that effect.

What I thought was most intriguing was hearing Hebrew in a French accent. I wonder what it sounds like to someone who really knows Hebrew. And the man recited long passages entirely from memory. I am sure he has been doing it his whole life. It is probably, like for me, going to church and automatically knowing all the prayers, only what he knew was so much more vast.

The service was short. It was over in less than an hour. So I walked around a little bit, sat and thought for a while in the pedestrian area nearby, and then called my friend so that I could join him for his party in another part of town, in Aix.

But even though I experienced services entirely in two languages I don't really even know, I nevertheless felt fulfilled. I felt I could at least imagine what was supposed to take place, and I took comfort in hearing the words, and seeing the devotion of the other men and women in the place. It was uplifting, even though the direct meaning of the words was unavailable to me. And that made me think more about the power of words: that these words can have power and meaning, even if I don't know what those meanings are.