Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Belleville

Graffiti in Paris' Belleville district (photo: gillesklein)

Steven Erlanger wrote a perceptive piece on Muslim-Jewish relations in Paris' 19th Arrondisement in today's NYT, which contains much of the kind of quotidian testimony one must take into account when discussing Europe's "New Anti-Semitism." Erlanger's picture is Brooklynesque: hipsters, immigrants, Lubavitch, aggressive teenagers, and a darling park where they all meet up. In recent months, a couple of religious Jewish boys have been involved in altercations with young blacks and Arabs. When 17 year-old Rudy Hadad was beaten into a coma in June French President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly shuddered at the specter of anti-Semitic motives. But what's really going on in this neighborhood?

In 2002, when worries about anti-Semitism in France were peaking, I was hanging out with a Tunisian Jewish friend of mine on these very streets, the Rue de Belleville to be exact. Alex worked in jewelry manufacture. He had attended a local technical high school where he would have interacted quite often with non-Jews, many of them Muslim immigrants from North Africa. According to the article, Jews are fleeing such schools. Along the avenue, Alex pointed to phone card signs advertising rates for Morocco-Mali-Togo-Chad. "Would you ever think this was France?" he asked, incredulously. He was French, he wanted me to see. He was different. In fact, I often felt he was desperate not to be taken for an Arab, for a "Beur" in argot slang.

Erlanger's article chalks up much of the tension between young Jews and Muslims in the 19th to simple group-think and bravado. What happens in Israel bears little on whether or not two cliques of different faiths scrap in the park. I'm very sympathetic to this viewpoint. Some of the interviews here also raise the possibility of class grievances manifesting themselves in Muslim on Jewish violence. I think one has to be very careful with such explanations. For the Jews I knew in Belleville, Jewishness was the epitome of classy; something the more well-to-do Parisian Jews, with their Arab friends and cosmopolitan attitudes, laughed at over drinks on Sunday afternoon in the Marais. What do these brawlers in the 19th think? Who knows. Maybe they just want to fight.

8 comments:

Nobody said...

My Arab friend told me the most surreal story about his interaction with Algerian youth at the market. On hearing that he is Arab from Israel, they told him - you can't call yourself an Arab, You are a Jew! This conservation has quickly started sliding into violence but he was lucky the French police happened to be nearby.

Anonymous said...

Sugar sweet, no French Antisemitsm, no left blaming Israel for every thing even the new bee disease, no Islamic preachers poisioning the air with anti Zionist= antisemitic preaching. But it seems that Fench Jews are opinionating with their money. The whole world is now topsy turvy and real estate is the key. Except in Israel, because hundreds (thusands ?)of French Jews (who do not read the NYT) are buying real estate, opening bank accounts and in fact are preparing for the day when they have to leave France. But what do they know about life in France?

Noah K said...

Nobody and Anonymous,

I too remember getting into these tribalistic squabbles in Paris. My Tunisian Jewish friend once had a friendly argument in the gym with an Algerian about which groups more selfishly only help their own. It was primitive stuff, but I don't think it can be intelligibly traced hateful imams, the Dreyfus affair, or even the local Chabdniks.

I'm not so sanguine about this either. I've also been in a situation where I felt -- in anyc case perceived the situation to be -- that my 62 year-old father was essentially picked on for being a Jew, shouldered and shoved out of the way in a deli where we were the only non-Arabs -- actually not so far from where Dreyfus was decommissioned!

The bigger point has to do with the way we a) report (potentially anti-Jewish) violence, and b) understand the state of Jewish life in France. Amos has recently told me of his research on a). Which kinds of violence do we report, privilege, etc.? I'm not that concerned with the fact that this kid was wearing a kepa. I'm more concerned with fully understanding the social dynamics that led to this fight. Now from my personal experience in this neighborhood, where there isn't a lot of social mobility, there isn't Prep-for-Prep, just Chabad, young Jews and Muslims keep pretty far apart. You could blame the French state for not integrating these people and providing them with opportunities for social mobility, ultimately allowing them to descend into petty, tribal quarreling. That would be a crude analysis. But not as crude as chalking the whole thing up to the French Left and the always-convenient local hateful preacher.

Anonymous said...

True, I have not used nice learned words and very clever post this or that arguments but Frnch Jews are buying real estate in Israel and in Canada too. As they say in the USA they are putting their money were their mouths are.

Amos said...

American Jews have long been buying real estate in Israel. That in itself is no argument.

But it's true that many French Jews, at least the ones whom one meets in Israel or the U.S., don't see much of a future in France.

Noah K said...

There are a lot of Jews in Israel who don't see a future in Israel! Give me a break.

Amos said...

That is a very pertinent observation.

What do you think about your friend's particular conception of what constitutes France? It is very much in the traditional French mode of civic identification. There's something different going on there than a rejection of France in favor of Israel. We have to remember also that those French Jews whom one encounters in North America or Israel represent a selected group.

Algerian Jews (unlike Algerian Muslims) were granted French citizenship already in 1870, through the Cremieux Decree, and I think that most of them have retained a very strong identification with la patrie to this day.

Nobody said...

Amos said...

American Jews have long been buying real estate in Israel. That in itself is no argument.

But it's true that many French Jews, at least the ones whom one meets in Israel or the U.S., don't see much of a future in France.


Were there any polls sounding the attitudes? Because some people here are eagerly expecting a new Aliyah from Europe. The French one meets in Israel are usually all doom and gloom about their future in France but then they would have never come here in the first place.

Of course we all saw the riots and apparently there is a lot going on behind the scenes that the French don't make public. It appears that they have truly draconian laws regarding treatment of suspected Muslim radicals and they are in a constant race against time trying to prevent a major attack. For some reason there is very little publicity about it.