The Jewish
Quarter
Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du
Judaisme - Mon-Fri
11am-6pm. Sun
10am-6pm.
The
Hotel de Saint-Aignan, 71, rue du Temple, is the new home of the
Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme. Opened in 1998, the museum owns
the Dreyfus archives, the collections of the now closed
Musée
d'Art Juif de Montmartre and also pieces collected by Isaac Strauss,
composer and former conductor of the Paris Opera Orchestra.
The Jewish
Quarter
As the tide of gentrification sweeps remorselessly through the
Marais, the only remaining islet of genuine local, community life is in
the city's main Jewish quarter, still centred around Rue des Rosiers,
just as it was in the twelfth century. Though many of the little
grocers, bakers, bookshops and original cafes are under pressure to
sell out to more upmarket enterprises (for a long time local flats were
kept empty, not for property speculation, but to try to stem the
middle-class invasion), the area manages to retain its jewish identity.
There's also a distinctly mediterranean flavour to the quartier,
testimony to the influence of the North African Sephardim, who, since
the end of World War II, have sought refuge here from the uncertainties
of life in the french ex-colonies. They have replenished Paris 's
jewish population, depleted when its Ashkenazim, having escaped the
pogroms of Eastern Europe, were rounded up by the Nazis and the French
police and transported back east to concentration camps.
Don't leave the area without wandering
around the clutch of surrounding
streets which best represent the evolving identity of the quartier :
rue
du Roi-de-Sicile (with our apartment : Studio Sicile), with its unpretentious eateries, the
cute place Bourg-Tibourg (with
our studio
Marais, rue du Bourg-Tibourg) off
rue de Rivoli, the intimate rue
des Ecouffes, rue Ste-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, with its lively gay
bars, rue Vieille-du-Temple, where a medieval cloister, the Cloitre des
Billettes, at nos 22-26, hosts free exhibitions of art and crafts. On
the other side of rue de Rivoli, at 17 rue Geoffroy l'Asnier, the
Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine mounts exhibitions
concerned with genocide and oppression of peoples, and guards the
sombre Mémorial du Martyr Juif Inconnu, Memorial of the unknown
jewish martyr.