Kesher Talk

A French archbishop in a synagogue, wearing a yarmulke, drinking kosher wine and singing the praises of the Torah? Believe it. It happened at an unusual book party earlier this month at France's oldest synagogue in Carpentras. Jules Farber, an American Jewish journalist who has lived in the south of France since 1997, presented Monsignor Cattenoz, archbishop of Avignon, with a copy of his new French-language book, "Les Juifs du pape en Provence: Itineraires," or "The Pope's Jews in Provence: Itineraries." Published last month, Farber's book is a detailed study of a small population of Jews who endured five unhappy centuries of rule by the Vatican.

"We Christians have to look at our roots, and our roots are in the Torah," Cattenoz said in remarks to 150 people crammed into Carpentras's petite synagogue, which includes a vintage matzo oven and a 14th-century mikvah. Among the guests were the Catholic mayors of four towns in which Jews of the Middle Ages were allowed to live, the rabbi of Avignon, Jews who trace their roots in the region as far back as the 16th century and representatives of the local Protestant church.

It was a lovely ecumenical moment in a region that has a harrowing history of treating Jews badly. For much of the second millennium, the Jews lived not in France proper, but in the Comtat Venaissin, a swath of what is now Provence. The Comtat belonged to the Vatican from 1274 to 1791, and the Jews had the grudging permission of the popes of Avignon to reside there after they had been expelled from Languedoc, Herault and every other surrounding province.

The official line, in booklets published by the Vaucluse region's tourist board, has long been that the Jews were "welcomed and protected" and "granted the freedom to live and worship" by the popes, who ruled from Avignon for most of the 14th century, before power returned to Rome (bishops and other papal emissaries continued to govern the Comtat from Avignon until the French Revolution).

Such revisionism still goes on, but the truth is slowly coming out. "The popes 'welcomed' the Jews because they wanted to use them as scapegoats," said Farber, who has written extensively for The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and Christian Science Monitor, and who spent five years researching his book. "They wanted to keep them impoverished and downtrodden, so they could say to their Catholic populace, 'See, they didn't recognize the savior, so they have to suffer.'"

Suffer they did, in crowded carrieres (from the ProvenÁal word for "street," since Jewish quarters in the south of France usually comprised a single street) that were locked up tight at dusk. "It was a matter of control," Farber said. "There was a Christian gatekeeper, and the Jews had to pay him." After working as doctors, surgeons, masons, dyers and bookbinders in the 14th century, Jews were gradually excluded from all professions except money-lending and selling secondhand goods. They were forbidden to speak to Christians, and forced to wear distinguishing signs — first rouelles, red and white "wheels" pinned to their clothing, and later, yellow hats. "They wanted to make sure people could see from a distance who was not a Christian," Farber said, "and to keep Jews from having sexual relations with Christians — they were especially concerned about that."

For all the hardship, small communities of Jews — never more than 2,000 altogether — managed to survive for five centuries in the ghettos of Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon and L'Isle sur la Sorgue. All are within an hour's drive of each other and, if you look closely, you can still find traces of pre-Revolutionary Jewish life.

posted by William @ 11/21/2003 08:50:25 AM