Published: 15 March 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Back in 2010 St Germain en Laye’s small Jewish population had two synagogues, one Chabad and the other an Orthodox Sephardi community linked to the “Consistoire”, France’s official Jewish body. But neither reflected the cosmopolitan population of St Germain en Laye, which yearned for a community that reflected its largely Ashkenazi, Anglophone and liberal backgrounds.
A small group of families began to meet in each other’s homes every month, running services themselves and organising Talmud Torah for their pre-bar mitzvah aged children. (The founding families have celebrated several bar mitzvahs in the past eight years.)
The community grew and began to employ the services of a part-time rabbi, the first a Schechter-trained female rabbi based in Belgium, then a trained female cantor who flew in from Budapest once a month.
It organised cultural events, rented the local Protestant church for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, began holding a communal Seder and other events, and became part of a loose affiliation of Jewish communities in the region, all of which were “consistorial”, which means that they were recognised as part of the official body of French Jewry. Masorti Judaism was not consistorial and thus not a part of this official body, but no one seemed to mind too much.
A couple of years ago Neve Shalom decided to approach the representatives of the Orthodox community to suggest that it be lent the synagogue premises once a month for Masorti Shabbat services.
Considering that one of the fundamental tenets of Neve Shalom’s services is that they are completely egalitarian – not only do men and women sit together during services, but women count towards a minyan, and, most problematic of all, at the time its services were led by a woman – this was an extraordinary proposition; more extraordinary still, it was accepted.
The Jewish community of France – the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world, numbering between 500,000 and 600,000 – tends towards deep conservativism. Though only a tiny proportion – around 5 per cent – are Orthodox, non-Orthodox currents have found it difficult to flourish.
Considering that one of the fundamental tenets of Neve Shalom’s services is that they are completely egalitarian, this was an extraordinary proposition.
It’s a problem that Jewish cultural and educational movements also face. It’s telling that the annual French Limmud (Jewish cultural) conference struggles for attendance, attracting only around 600 people, just over half as many as the thousand or so who attend the festival in Sweden, which has an estimated Jewish population of only 20,000.
The Masorti movement faces a similar challenge. Though it is growing, progress is slow, not helped by the fact that with no non-Orthodox francophone rabbinical training colleges there are too few candidates to lead the seven communities that are now established around the country.
Rabbis have to train in London, Jerusalem or the US, but the challenge then is to persuade them to return to France, where salaries are considerably lower and communities outside Paris are tiny – some barely manage to galvanise enough members to make up a weekly minyan.
There are three full-time Masorti rabbis in France, two in Paris and one in Nice; the other four communities juggle visiting rabbis who travel between communities or run the services themselves. It is difficult to see things changing in the near future.
This is why the tentative steps towards co-existence with the establishment Orthodox community in St Germain en Laye is so exciting. It offers a vision that might be the saviour of both communities, which on their own might struggle to survive.
But more importantly, with a younger and more proactive membership, Neve Shalom promises to breathe new life into the synagogue building itself. Most of the children at last week’s megillah reading at the synagogue were from Neve Shalom.
It would be a charming irony, not lost on some of its members, if Masorti Judaism proved to be the Orthodox community’s most enduring legacy.
Photo: A board meeting of Neve Shalom
