Reflecting on the ever-intensifying atmosphere of fear in which French Jews live, Elena Servettaz revisits the incident that wakened her to the problem:
I remember very clearly the first time I felt this fear, several years ago. It happened quite suddenly. I was shopping in the Galeries Lafayette department store. The vendor, a young Arab man, was very helpful and cheerful. I was trying on clothes while he was taking care of his other customers. At the time, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front was rising in the polls, and he asked me what I thought about Le Pen.
“What do you want me to think about Le Pen?” I asked him, laughing. “I would sooner forget she exists.” The young man seemed to want to test me more: “She is the devil, but many Catholics in France admire her. Don’t you? You are Catholic and you don’t like her?” I was very surprised that discussion in a luxury shop turned so personal, but answered by trying to make another joke: “Who told you I was Catholic?”
But the conversation stopped the very same minute. “Jewish!” he hissed and recoiled from me as if I were a leper. He went away and he asked his colleague to help me instead. Le Pen was no more a devil for him, but I was.
Should I have reacted that day, and how could I do that? It’s very bizarre that in Judaism so much is about transmission, but there’s something else that most Jewish families pass on with their traditions, knowledge, and philosophy—it is this bizarre behavior of preferring to accept aggression rather than fight it.
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/198147/how-to-be-a-jew-in-france