Small synagogues and traditional shops showthe resilience of Jewish life in the Marais in Paris

The Foundation Roger Fleischman and the former Synagogue Beit Yossef on rue des Ecouffes in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I spent an afternoon during our visit to Paris last week walking around the Jewish district in Le Marais and strolled through the Rue des Rosiers, known affectionately in Yiddish as Pletzl or the ‘Little Place,’ and the surrounding streets, including Rue Pavée, with the Rue Pavée Synagogue, built as the Agoudas Hakehilos Synagogue.

The Rue des Rosiers is the main street in the Marais and the neighbouring streets are home to many Jewish restaurants, cafés, bakeries and bookshops.

Many luxury brand shops have moved onto rue des Rosiers in recent years. A one-time community hammam, or steam bath, was in 2008 transformed into another link in the chain of Swedish fashion retailer H&M.

But these narrow, cobbled streets remain an important centre of Parisian Jewish life with their kosher food shops, bookshops, restaurants and cafés. Throughout the Marais, memorials plaques on many buildings are reminders of the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish community in Paris.

The Kosher Pizza shop on rue des Ecouffes, a little street off rue des Rosiers, was previously the Synagogue Beit Yossef. Next door at No 18, the Roger Fleischman Foundation dates from 1931, when it was set up as a study centre.

The founder, Armand Fleischman (1886-1973), was born in Paris and was an infantry sergeant major during World War I and was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Military Medal. He became President of the Fonds National Juif (FNJ) of France in 1923.

Armand Fleischman set up the Foundation Roger Fleischman in 1931 as a centre for young people to study the Torah, with a small oratory following the death of his son, a young Tzadik and medical student, at the age of 19.

This shtibel or small house of prayer is said to be one of the few places in the Marais still representative of the places of worship of Jewish immigrants who arrived from Poland in the 1920s.

It became a house of prayer for Jews from North Africa in the 1960s, and now follows the Sephardic rite, and it continues to serve as a place devoted to prayer and religious instruction.

The Tephilat Israel or Frank-Forter Synagogue on rue du Bourg Tibourg is named in honour of Rabbi Ray Israel Frank-Forter, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Tephilat Israel or Frank-Forter Synagogue is a small oratoire or prayer house at 24 rue du Bourg Tibourg in the Marais. It was founded in the 1920s for another Jewish community from Central Europe. It is named in honour of Rabbi Ray Israel Frank-Forter, who was deported during the Holocaust and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.

It too became a Sephardic synagogue in the 1970s and is open for Shabbat services, holidays and on Sunday mornings.

During that afternoon last week, I also visited the Mémorial de la Shoah or Holocaust Museum in Marais, the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr and the Museum of Jewish Art and History. But more about these visits on other days.

Shabbat Shalom

Many of the traditional Jewish shops continue to thrive in the Marais (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)