23 April begins like other Sundays. Wake up to public radio that gives voice to moderate Muslims and hope to the listener. Breakfast with interfaith dialogue on Jewish radio. Jewish philosophy coincides conveniently with the weekly laundry. But this Sunday is presidential election day and my wife is voting for the first time– she could have become French in 1968 but took umbrage at De Gaulle’s infamous remark that the Jews were too “sure of themselves” and “domineering”.
A remarkably placid crowd of diligent citizens wait their turn at the polling booth. A young woman brings identity papers to her husband. He signs the register and gives the ballot to his three-year old who clings to the little brown envelope as if it were gold, but eventually lets it drop into the sacred transparent cube. Our district votes massively for Fillon and Macron in equal parts.
Civic duty completed, we set off to a house-warming in Picardy, an hour’s drive north through every slice of French society and politics. First the attractive tourist areas and districts popular with the confident up-and-coming who eagerly vote Macron, then past the Eurostar station that could be in Africa and on through the poorer northeast which used to vote communist and now votes Melenchon. Past the football stadium (Stade de France) where bombs went off while President Hollande was watching a game, and where President Chirac had been shocked that young French citizens had rooted loudly for Algeria against France. Le Bourget, an airport and an exhibition hall where the Muslim Brotherhood’s friends gather regularly to celebrate another year of no concessions to French republican traditions.
The Picardy exit takes us to another world, an invitation to photographers and painters alike, lush greens and yellows basking in the sunlight. GPS service lets us down, but the handsome town map solves our problem and we arrive at destination in a tree-lined avenue of splendid houses, set back from the road, just as in Chevy Chase Maryland, USA. Everyone has already voted and prefers to discuss other topics, like children who drift away from Judaism because Jews are a tiny minority in a secular society, or the reverse where the children turn more religious than their parents because their school has a core of Sephardic Jews still steeped in tradition.
We travel home to Paris through the “93” district (Saint-Denis) where Uber recruits its drivers and young fellows ride their scooters on the tram tracks, weaving in and out among the trams. Through the Buttes Chaumont -- a lovely park and Jewish haven of kosher shops, restaurants and a highly-regarded school.
Sunday 23 April is also Yom Hashoah with a moving ceremony at the Memorial de la Shoah. Young children light six candles, each candle for one million martyrs. Name reading begins and continues non-stop for 24 hours, a period insufficient for the 76 000 men, women and children deported from France. Children read with their grandparents. Rabbis, synagogue presidents, Serge Karlsfeld, Claude Lanzmann, the French Prime Minister, the Mayor of Paris take turns to read a short list of names, but no speeches. Highly dignified. Wrenching.
Election night. Social media have been speculating furiously all day. Radio and TV stations start to interview people and take the temperature, but no-one hazards a guess on the result. Final countdown and two faces appear: Macron and Le Pen. So the pollsters got this one spot on. A comforting four-fifths of eligible voters went to the polls. But what comes next? A second round to choose the president, legislative elections that might or might not give the new president a majority… Jews are somewhat relieved, but uncertainties remain.
