Paris: Jewish Marais District Walking Tour

Highlights

• Discover the rich history of the Jewish community in Paris on a walking tour
• Visit historic sites in the Jewish Marais district
• Learn about the history and heritage of the Jewish community in Paris
• Explore the Anne-Frank Garden and the Museum of Jewish History (from outside)
• See the Shoah Memorial and the Memorial of the Martyrs of the Deportation

Description

Discover the Jewish Marais district in Paris on a 2-hour walking tour. Learn about the history and heritage of the Jewish community in Paris as you visit historic synagogues (from outside), kosher shops, and sites that tell the rich history of the Jewish community in Paris.

Meet your guide at the Synagogue of Tournelles and begin your tour. Walk through the Jewish quarter of the Marais and learn about its history and heritage. Visit historic synagogues, kosher shops, and sites that tell the rich history of the Jewish community in Paris.

Learn about the history of the Jews in France, which seems to go back to the first century and continues until today, making it one of the oldest Jewish presences in Western Europe. Arriving in Gaul shortly after its conquest by Rome, the Jews are maintained under the Merovingians and have a period of prosperity under the Carolingians.

The Jews of France in the Middle Ages had a rich cultural life, as evidenced by the work of Rashi, a rabbi and Talmudist of the eleventh century. The situation is deteriorating sharply after the crusades followed by the trials of the Talmud and the expulsions, temporary then definitive.

Several edicts of expulsion of the Jews are promulgated, in particular an edict of Philippe le Bel in 1304, then an edict of Charles VI in 1394. A millennium after their establishment, there are no Jews left in the kingdom of France. Only the Jews of the papal states and the Alsatian Jews remained as important communities outside the borders of the kingdom.

About a century after the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Crypto-Jews from Portugal settled in Bordeaux and Bayonne. In the 17th century, the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine of the Three Bishoprics also came under the jurisdiction of France, following the treaties of Westphalia.

During the French Revolution, they obtained French nationality. A “Franco-Judaic” movement was created, but a “French anti-Semitism” was created in return, and which became more acute during the Dreyfus affair, then in the 1930s, and then institutionalized under the Vichy regime. 75,000 Jews died during the occupation.

France remains the natural choice for many Jews forced to leave Egypt and North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. The Jewish community of France, until then essentially Ashkenazic and assimilated, became predominantly Sephardic. It is now the largest in Europe and comprised between 450,000 and 550,000 people, of which about 70% are from the Arab world, who live mainly in Paris and the Paris region.

The history of the Jews in France is therefore very linked to that of the capital and this is what you will see on this tour.