[Avodah] What Do French Jews Do On Shabbath?

[via Avodah]

In v34n20, R' Arie Folger wrote:

>
> R' Jay Shachter asked how French Jews deal with the increasing
> number of buildings with electronic codes for entering through two
> successive doors.
> 
> It depends. Many Shomer Shabbos Jews live in the heavily Jewish
> areas like the 19eme arrondissement. There, many buildings still
> have keys.
> 
> In other buildings, technological solutions are used, which I
> decline to mention here.
> 
> However, you are right that this is a massive problem.
> 

In case anyone is interested in how this worked out, I found a
non-Jew, an employee of my dry cleaner, who was willing to come to my
building at midnight Friday night, and open the outer door to my
courtyard, by tapping the electronic code.  I paid him 40 euros in
advance, but when the time came I also invited him up to my apartment
for a glass of wine.  Thus it was not even technically amira l'nokhri
-- although I am grateful to R' Arie Folger for giving me the psaq din
(later in v34n20, not quoted above) that amira l'nokhri would be
permitted -- since at that point the non-Jew was doing the mlakhoth
for himself, so he could come to my apartment and drink a glass of
wine, and not for me.

There was more that had to be done.  I had to make two copies of the
key to my building: I hid one in the courtyard, within 4 cubits of the
door to the building, so I could open the door from the outside, and I
hid another one inside the building, within 4 cubits of the door, so I
could open the door from the inside without pressing the button that
opens it electronically.  You cannot use the same key for both
purposes, because, even though the courtyard is a carmelith, and the
public areas of my apartment building are a carmelith (the apartments
are separately and privately owned), they are not the same carmelith,
they are jointly owned by different sets of people.  As for the door
to my own apartment, I just left that unlocked.  Getting into the
building next door was less difficult, because the hostess never had
to leave, she just came downstairs at a prearranged time and opened
the door for me.  Whether you can trust the kashruth of someone who
has no problem tapping an electronic code on Shabbath when she needs
to, and can give no advice to someone for whom that is a problem, is a
separate question worthy of its own Avodah discussion.  I believe that
you can, under certain circumstances, but I am willing to be convinced
otherwise.

What continues to astonish me is that the French Jews have found no
easier solution to these problems, or that (and perhaps this is saying
the same thing in different words) they continue to live in an area
where these problems have no easier solution.  In 2014, I spent 5
weeks in Paris, and I rented an apartment in the 19th arrondissement,
because that was where I heard the largest Jewish community was, at 28
Quai de la Loire.  In this building, there was no mechanical way at
all to open the door even from the inside.  Even from the inside of
the building, you could open the door only with a proximity sensor, or
by pressing a button that worked electronically.  This was before
synagog information had disappeared completely from godaven.com, so I
found a synagog in the neighborhood (Rabbi Guggenheim, if I recall
correctly -- but it is very possible that I do not -- although he was
personally not there for most of my stay), and for five weeks I prayed
there twice a day, six days a week, but not on Shabbath, because on
Shabbath I could not leave my building.  After I had been going there
for three or four weeks, some people invited me for Shabbath, but I
had to decline, telling them that as far as I could tell, it was
impossible to leave my apartment building on Shabbath.  Not a single
person there had any advice on how to solve that problem.  Residing in
a building where you can't leave the house on Shabbath is, apparently,
a normal and acceptable corollary, to being a French Jew.


>
> Finally, RJS accused French Jews of taking their synagogues off the
> web and the Consistoir of hiding its electronic mail address.  Well,
> I just did a search for a Paris synagogue I know, and it was
> definitely listed in many sites and also had its own publicly
> accessible site.  As to the electronic mail address, ever since teh
> advent of spam, many sites have used web forms instead of electronic
> mail addresses.  This is not a Jewish matter.  When I contact a
> company through its web site, the same mechanism is used. And
> whoever tries to contact me through my web site also has to pass
> that hoop.
> 

So, you were able to find the website of a Paris synagog that you
know.  Perhaps you do not recall that you were not born knowing the
name of that synagog, and that the only way you know it (and were thus
able to find its website), is that someone told you (or you stumbled
upon it while walking around in a Jewish neighborhood, but that is
unlikely, because Parisian synagogs have taken to removing nearly all
identifying marks from their outside, so that the only way you can
know that the building in front of you is a synagog, is from the
prominent cadre of French soldiers stationed in front of it, as there
are no soldiers stationed in front of churches or mosques), and that
otherwise, it would have been practically impossible for you to find
it.  Perhaps you also do not recall that you were not born knowing
what a "Consistoir" is, and that there is no way that a person seeking
to contact the "Beth Din de Paris" can know that the way to do so is
thru http://consistoire.org unless someone tells him.

That Jewish institutions in France have removed information from the
World Wide Web is not disputable by anyone who knows the facts.  I
spoke this past Friday night with a couple who send their daughter to
the Ecole Juive Moderne (accent aigue over the E deliberately omitted,
because the Avodah digest software chokes on it).  They told me that
it used to be that when you searched google.fr for "Ecole Juive Paris"
the E.J.M. website was the first result displayed.  Then there was an
attack on a Jewish school in Boulogne, and the EJM community was
terrified; they removed their information from search engines
(apparently, in the European Union you have the right to do this) and
they removed all mention of the school's physical location from the
school's website.  Unless the parents who told me this don't know what
they are talking about, which I think is unlikely, you cannot deny
that there has been an attempt on the part of French Jews to render
themselves invisible.  Unfortunately, the same measures that render
Jewish institution invisible to our enemies, also render them
invisible to Jews.

I just went to google.fr and did a search for Ecole Juive Paris, and I
see that EJM is back on the results page again, although it is far
from being in first place, so it is time for another purge.  The
school website still conceals the school's address.


>
> I think you may want to apologize to French Jews.  The majority
> disagrees with the president of the Marseille Jewish community.
> 

Respectfully, you are not in France, and I am.  As far as I can tell,
the only particular in which the majority of French Jews disagree with
the president of the Marseille Jewish community, is that the president
of the Marseille Jewish community was not discreet, speaking publicly
rather than privately.  They do not disagree with what was said, only
with how it was said.  It is believed by some that we do not render
ourselves more safe by announcing within earshot of our enemies that
we are afraid of them.  But that we should be afraid of them, that the
proper response to our enemies is to hide from them, rather than to
arm and defend ourselves -- that is the nearly undisputed consensus of
the Jews of France.


                Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
                6424 N Whipple St
                Chicago IL  60645-4111
                États-Unis
                        +1 773 7613784   ligne fixe
                        +1 410 9964737   GoogleVoice
                        jay at m5.chicago.il.us
                        http://m5.chicago.il.us

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