Paris bulletin 1 2016

I was in Scotland until the end of January where it rained a great deal. Now I'm back in Paris where it's doing much the same, day after sopping day. It’s not just the pigeons that are grey and bedraggled. However I wasn't going to be beaten by le temps pourri. In quick succession I booked tickets for my art classes, for a concert at the Philharmonie de Paris and for the new production of Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play ‘Dans la Solitude des Champs de Coton’ which is on at the Bouffes du Nord at present. At the end of that first week I also went to the exhibition ‘Moïse – figures d’un prophète’ at the MAHJ (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme) on the rue du Temple.

Security in public buildings remains high in Paris. Some days when I go to the Louvre they make you take your coat off, some days they don’t. It’s just one of the ways we are supposed to feel we are active participants in the fight against terrorism. Checks like these are among the less sinister features of the present and continuing ‘état d’urgence’ which, in the light of the most recent vote in the Assemblée Nationale looks as though it’s here to stay. Nothwithstanding the widespread disagreement in virtually all sections of the population, apart from the far right, about enshrining these fundamental changes in the constitution of la cinquième république.

For some categories of the population the impact of the measures is much more far-reaching than the inconvenience of having to remove your coat and flash the contents of your handbag at a bored security guard. I’m talking about house arrests, house searches and the curtailment of free movement which results from both of those. So far only a tiny proportion of the population has been targeted by such measures but they are not distinct from the more routine searches we are all subjected to. The état d’urgence has introduced a conditioning process – more accurately a process of indoctrination – of the general population. We are to become desensitised to the posses of heavily armed soldiers parading through the streets, to having our right to gather in public places controlled and/or prohibited, our choice of friends monitored. 

The longer it goes on the more normal it will become so that in the end it won’t matter whether the powers the government has seized make us more or less secure than we would otherwise be. It will just be ‘how it is’. Violence masquerading as protection: that's why most of those stuck in the mud of the Calais camps don't want to live here. 

There is nothing either tokenistic or cursory about the vetting you undergo to get into the MAHJ. You cross the cobbled courtyard of the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan that houses the museum and state your business to the official in his booth of reinforced glass before even getting as far as the electronic checks. Once you’re through those the Moses exhibition doesn’t disappoint, either in the art on display or the accompanying texts and explanations. It led me to download a copy of the King James’s Bible onto my Kindle so that I could read it without the magnifying glass I need for my ancient print copy. I’d quite forgotten what a great book Exodus is, full of the most amazing stories. 

Before you get into the exhibition itself you come face to face with a life-size Moses (actually Charlton Heston), projected onto the wall at the back of the main staircase. There he is with his staff, making the Red Sea open so that the Israelites can trundle through to safety – a ten minute excerpt from The Ten Commandments, Cecile B DeMille’s last and most expensive film, all bronzed bodies and churning waters. 

                                              Charlton Heston in biblical mode

The rest is rather more reflective. The exhibition closes on 21^st February, so not much time left to see it.

Like the small neighbourhood mosques few synagogues advertise their presence in Paris, although ironically they’ve become more visible since 13^th November precisely because of the soldiers that stand guard at their doors. The city’s main synagogue, the largest in France, is on rue de la Victoire, a very ordinary commercial street in the centre of Paris. 

upholstery shop opposite the synagogue

The synagogue towers over it, impressive both in its dimensions and its ornamentation. Sadly, if you are not Jewish the outside is all you are able to see. Both entrances are surrounded by steel crush barriers, both are guarded by armed police. I did manage to get through the first two doors only to be quizzed, and my request to be allowed entry rejected, by a shadowy figure sitting behind darkened glass in a kind of guardhouse.

A different expedition next – out into the Ile de France for lunch with a friend. I catch a transilien train and we cross the looping Seine not once but twice. The high-rise buildings and tagged walls gradually give way to les pavillons de banlieue, packed in tight bundles one against the other. By the time we reach my station there are actual fields full of actual sprouting crops and Paris is like a mirage on the skyline.

The streets are quiet. It’s good to get some distance.