Alef-Bet Cafe, Paris

 6/15/08

           Paris in the Spring – the Eiffel Tower, the Grands Boulevards, the shopping, of course, but a Yiddish Cultural Center and a kosher cooking school? Mais oui – if you know where to look. Paris has long been an important city of the Jewish diaspora, with successive waves of Jews, first Askenazi and later Sephardic, finding a home in the city. Though the home they found was not always a hospitable one, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Paris since at least the sixth century. A large Askenazi population still exists, but there is a palpable Sephardic flavour – it is a city where you can walk into a kosher North African restaurant and hear a melange of French and Arabic. I love Paris and for my second visit to the city, I wanted to experience the sights, sounds, and especially tastes of Jewish Paris, a world at once familiar to my New York Jewish palate, yet bursting with exotic flavours.

 

“The Sephardim made the city Jewish again,” said Susan Susskind, a transplant from Brooklyn who moved to Paris

 

in 1970 and never looked back. I met her and her husband when they sat next to us at Lotus De Nissan, a quaint, glatt kosher Chinese restaurant, with décor straight China.”

 

 

 

Madame Tao, adopter of traif recipes

 

Orthodox proprietor Madame Lafond opened Lotus 23 years ago after she “got tired of going to the same place in Montmartre

 

all the time after Torah classes” and because “J’adore Chinois.” Mme. Lafond assured me that a Chinese woman, Madame Tao, had adopted all the recipes from her authentic Chinese versions, even substituting faux shrimp for the real, but traif, kind. It was not long before my coFrance once again confronted its’ anti-semitic past, as it had in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair and the second World War. Instead of fragmenting the Jewish community, the Halimi incident brought a renewed awareness of Arab-Jewish tensions and racism in France generally. “A French woman in a supermarket started crying when she saw my boy with a kippa on his head after the Halimi incident. She said she was so sorry,” recounted Mme. Lafond. 

 

 

My experience at Lotus de Nissan ended on a lighter note, not with a parve fortune cookie, but with schtick. “Did you hear who senator Mccain told Chelsea Clinton were the most hated people in the world?,” Mr. Susskind asked. “No, who?,” I answered.

 

“Osama, Obama and your mama,” he replied; fitting for a people who, in France as in New York, have usually managed to face adversity with humor.

 

The next day, we headed to the St. Germain area, home of posh shops, the famed Deux Magots Café and, nearby, the Alef-Bet Restaurant and kosher cooking school, a delightful and funky place owned by two vibrant young Jewish women, both 26, one Algerian-Moroccan and the other Moroccan-Romainian. Perhaps as a result of their mixed heritage, the menu is eclectic, with North African and Israeli dishe

s sharing the rotating menu with gefilte fish and kreplach. Our teacher, Sarah, had been trained at the Ecole Supérieur de Cuisine Française which, according to her, is where real French chefs train. “Cordon Bleu is for foreigners,” she explained. She taught us to prepare a simple, but satisfying, brunch of Israeli salad, zaatar (a mixture of thyme, sesame seeds and oregano) spiced scrambled eggs, mini pitas and French style rugelach (lighter and longer, like a croissant, instead of the dense little pieces you find in most Ashkenazi bakeries). 

 

 

After polishing off most of the meal, with my wife pocketing the last rugelach for later, I spoke to Elya Trigano, one of owners. After a mid-career crisis at the ripe age of 25, Elya, who had been in advertising, explained that she had always loved cooking and wanted to open a stylish, fun, kosher place. She hired a Jewish architect, who designed the minimalist interior with a wall of cut out shelves meant to evoke Hebrew lettering. With such an overtly Jewish name and theme, I asked if she had encountered any problems with anti-semitism. ‘No,’ she said. “It’s a risk, but I feel safe.” We liked it so much we returned for lunch a few days later, for a salmon club sandwich and frites. Desiring a souvenir, I asked if I could buy one of their signature Alef-Bet logo aprons, a hip red design with cascading alefs and bets. They were out of my size. “We have the children’s size,” Elya explained. “It can be, you know, sexy on a woman.” Maybe so, but I do the cooking in our house so I left empty handed, though not without memories of the most stylish kosher café I have ever seen, as well as handy, laminated recipes.

 

 

Sexy?

 The next day, after walking through the much lamented, rapidly gentrifying Marais area, we went to the Mémorial de la Shoah, a museum that opened in 2005 as both an admission of the horrors of the Vichy regime during the holocaust and a celebration of French Jewish life. After entering the outdoor courtyard just beyond the front door, we were greeted by a large Star of David, meant to signify the six million Jews without a burial place and a wall, with the names of 76,000 Jews deported with the cooperation of the Vichy government during the holocaust. The museum also celebrates leading Jewish figures in French history, such as Andre Citroen who founded the eponymous car company and Theodore Herzl, a Hungarian immigrant whose Zionist vision led to Israeli statehood. 

 

The siren call of “Shawarma, Falafel. Get it here” greeted us as we ambled up narrow cobblestone streets onto Rue des Rosiers in the Marais, well known as the ancestral center of Parisian Jewish life. Much like Orchard Street on the Lower East Side or Boulevard St. Laurent in Montreal, it is fast becoming a caricature of it’s former self, with a few Judaica stores, delis and synagogues dotting an area dominated by high end clothing boutiques with prices that would make your nana blush. True, many of these stores are still owned by Jews, but can 225 Euro jeans be called shmattes?

A certain degree of haimishness remains though, between the boutiques and the scaffolding signifying more urban infill condos, especially on Rue Des Rosier and Rue Des Ecoffes. On two different nights, I devoured top-notch falafels, dripping with tahini sauce, spicy eggplant and cabbage at L’as du falafel, billed as Lenny Kravitz’ choice and their competitor, Mi-va-mi, just feet away. For around five euros, there may not be a more satisfying Jewish culinary experience in Paris. Even if we did have to run over, or, more accurately, get run over, by bugaboo strollers and dogs with pink outfits to find it, the Marais and its Jewish character cannot be counted out yet. As shabbos descended on the Marais, orthodox young men rushed home to change in gym shorts, tzit tzit blowing behind them, and the main Marais synagogue, on Rue Pavee, buzzed with acticity, just as it has for ninety five years.

Far removed from the hustle of the falafel barkers and physically fit Orthodox in the Marais, we sought tranquility, at the cemetery. Père Lachaise is the final home of many of France’s greatest figures. The painter Pissaro, the composer Chopin and the singer Edith Piaf are among the luminaries buried there. In Père Lachaise’s Jewish section, one can find simple graves of long forgotten French Jews as well as ornate mausoleums seemingly designed to rival their Christian brethren one section over. Among the Jews buried there are the painter Modigliani, the singer Sarah Bernhardt and the philosopher Gertrude Stein, but finding them will take some perseverance. We were chanceux enough to find a friendly guide, who, free of charge, showed us the way to Modigliani. On our way out of the cemetery, my wife insisted that we stop by to see its most famous denizen, James Douglas Morrison, late of the Doors. He was not Jewish, although I heard his agent was.

After exiting the cemetery, we headed to nearby Belleville, a fascinating multi-cultural neighbourhood with colourful multi-hued people clinging to the cultures of their homelands, mostly in Africa and Asia, which they or their families left behind. A sephardic counterpart to the Marais, Belleville is still home to a large Jewish Tunisian community, who are concentrated on a stretch of Boulvard de Belleville. That is where I found the Aux Délices de Kifolie restaurant. From his adjoining table, a Muslim man from Tunisia explained that Tunisian Jews and Tunisian Muslims had a mostly congenial relationship and that although most Jews have left, many keep vacation homes in Tunisia to which they return year after year. Yes, but what about the food? The speciality at Kifolie, the man explained, was fish couscous. When in Belleville, do as they do, so that is what I ordered. Next to us sat a large contingent of Jewish Tunisians, at a big table, speaking at once in Arabic and French, with Arabic tunes wafting through the air. Each time someone new came up to the outdoor patio, they were welcomed into the loud and boisterous big table, as if they all knew each other from the old country.

We were presented with a virtual feast of appetizers, including mini pizzas, mini tuna sandwiches, known as “Tunisian sandwiches”, olives (my wife, an avid olive eater pronounced them “great”) and a tomato dish described as “Mechoui.” If that sounds like a whole meal before the mains even arrived, it was. Still, when my fish couscous arrived, along with potatoes and other veggies in a separate bowl of broth, I was anxious to try it. “Use more of the juice,” the man next to me admonished. I did, and it was the best meal of the week. We left Belleville with an appreciation not just for the food, but for the coulurful and friendly Tunisian Jewish way of life and wondering what life was like for Jews in the old country. I tried to ask the owner, a middle aged Tunisian what it was like for him. “I don’t know. I was born here,” he replied.

 

Going from one transplanted culture to another, I found the Yiddish Cultural Center on Passage Amelot, in a barely marked alleyway across from a large Renault car dealership. It was there that I met a woman named Ruby Monet, a Yiddish teacher at the Center. Another transplanted New Yorker, from the Bronx, Ms. Monet had moved to Paris in the 1960s. Although she grew up speaking Yiddish with her grandparents, she had not spoken it in years, until she found out about the center in 1989 and decided to see how much Yiddish she could remember. She remembered enough to become a teacher and has been there ever since. “When I taught English, students had to learn it, but with Yiddish, what do you need it for but pure pleasure. It’s a pleasure to teach,” she said. The center contains the largest Yiddish library in Europe, which Ms. Monet called “one of the great unknown treasures in Europe” and a Yiddish language school with about 200 students. It also holds seminars, klezmer concerts and other events celebrating Yiddishkeit, and has a small café.

As my wife and I left Paris, our bellies full of falafel and couscous and our minds at ease, knowing that the largest Jewish community in Europe is flourishing, I was already plotting a return visit to the city of light. I ran out of time before I could sample what I hear is the best kosher Indian restaurant in the world (no joke – google “Darjeeling Paris”) I could work up another appetite for that.

If you go:

Alef-Bet Café and Cooking School, 25, rue Galande 75005 – whether for a cooking class or for a quick bite, it is fun, stylish and inviting.

Aux Délices de Kifolie, 112, blvd. de Belleville 75020 – a lively taste of a lost world, get the Tunisian sandwich or the couscous.

L’As du Falafel, 34, rue des Rosiers and Mi-Va-Mi, 27, rue des Ecoffes 75004 – dueling kosher falafel makers, watch for free samples.

Lotus De Nissan, 39, rue Amelot 75011 – old-school glatt kosher Chinese, for solid rice and noodle dishes minus the traif.

Mémorial de la Shoah, 17, rue Geoffroy l’Asnier Paris 75004 – not far from the shopping and falafel in the Marais, a well done review of  France’s Jewish history, good and bad.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery, enter on Boulevard de Ménilmontant, 75020 – Yes there are Jews here and a “graveyard usher” will help you find them.

Yiddish Cultural Center18, Rue Passage Amelot, 75011 – Even if you don’t know your noz di from your tokhes der, it is worth a visit. Ask for Ruby.