Living in Israel means being closer to a lot more diverse countries than my three thousand by two thousand mile stretch of English speakers in my former home. El Al has direct flights from Israel to Marseilles where there is a large Jewish community and good place to meet people from the U.S.

I never wanted to go to a country where I have to hide being Jewish and so … I decided I wasn’t going to after hearing Rawan Osman speak about her experience – she grew up in Lebanon told to hate Jews and then worked for a religious Jewish boss in France and was shocked out of her prejudice. After October 7th, she converted to Judaism.

So, in France I decided not to hide my Jewishness … usually. I’ll do a kiddush Hashem, wear my yarmulke proudly, and be a nice guy everywhere.

Walking Around Marseilles

Marseilles has the second largest Jewish population in France – and a very large Muslim population, largely from Northern Africa. The internet says there’s little friction between the communities though I once had a 30-minute conversation with a telemarketer from Algeria who asked me how I was doing … “bad, I keep getting telemarketing calls”. Then she launched into her feelings and problems over a 40 minute phone call. Only near the end of the call did I learn she was actually in Algeria – perfect American accent and she had nothing kind to say about Israel.

Nevertheless, I even walked through a street full of fruit stands and fruit stores where many women were wearing a hijab.

No one cared. I took a picture of a fruit store and two people made sure not to block my shot.

I went to the Jewish street to eat kosher food – and this needs to be said: never order pizza out of the New York area. In France, order pastries. They were excellent.

Some of the Jewish stores had worrying graffiti on them … after walking around more, the Jewish street seems to have far less than average. Graffitti is a thing in Marseilles.

Water fountains and cafes

Saw this many water fountains in France: 0.

The closest thing I saw was a bottle filling station in a train station which was broken, seemingly for a long time. There are few open parks and those that are often have rubble and few benches. The train station had one small,cramped area with uncomfortable seats filled to the brim. There were two angled things on a wall where you could uncomfortably lean, though a protruding sign made even some of those uncomfortable ‘seats’ even more uncomfortable.

Instead – France has cafes everywhere. Ever city seems to be centered around a decaying grey, gothic style church surrounded by cafes. Next to the cafes are some stores maybe …. and those are surrounded by more cafes.

Making aliyah from the United States, I never thought about the plethora of water fountains, park benches, and greenery. In Frace it seems the idea is to order a drink and sit in a cafe forever.

Anti-Israel Graffiti

The train station has an obscene amount of stairs to get to the top – Marseilles is on a hill. Near the top of the stairs were two types of gravity: “Chai” in Hebrew – live … and “Free Palestine” negating any existance of Israel on the outlined map adjacent thereto. Between celebrating life and negating that of others … I choose the side that chooses life. Why aren’t there more Rawan Osman’s in the world?

With the yarmulke in full view, I encountered my first and only incident possibly related to the yarmulke. A very pretty girl with baby asked me where the nearest pharmacy was because she needed money for buy formula. Having just arrived off the plane that day, I explained that I had no idea … I used Google Translate and showed her my phone.

Turns out she can’t read. Turns out her less pretty and slightly older friend speaks English, has her own baby carriage, and … while I understood the word “pharmacy” correctly, until she asked me to go to an ATM to get money … I hadn’t realized the babies were rented, they were gypsies, and I was probably targeted because religious people are more likely to buy into these things with a religious predisposition to give.

“I live in Israel”

French power outlets: 220V and 50hz like Israel and the 2-prong outlet is identical. The ground pin France is on the outlet rather than the plug so you need an adapter for grounded devices / devices with a circular plug. The outlet on the left … the internet doesn’t seem to know what it is. It’s a three-prong outlet with the prongs inline. Seems to be for high wattage appliances.

After asking a train staff person if I could go on an earlier train and her response being, “why?” and “because I want to” apparently isn’t a good enough reason in France, I waited until my scheduled train and found my assigned seat near others on an otherwise very empty train.

In Israel, most people speak some English and signs are in English and Hebrew. For some reason I expected that in France. Another thing you notice when you live in two countries … the differences in a third.

I took two years of French in high school and remember very little. Surprisingly things started coming back to me and I could understand, in context, many of the signs. French has enough words similar to English that it seems a lot easier to me than Hebrew which is so different in structure and vocabulary. Thanks Norman invasion of Brittania.

They asked me where I was from and I didn’t want to lie. New Jersey … though I live in Israel now. Brace for impact. What are they going to say?

“Good for you – you got away from Trump!”

All they cared to talk about was how much they hate Trump. Hey, I’m in Israel now! I’m a good guy!

Touring French Villages

My son and daughter-in-law living in the states booked an all-day van tour to various French countryside villages. Cute, picturesque … recommended. One was based on manufacturing using a water wheel, another on ochre mining, and a third on … no idea. Now they’re just full of cafes surrounding a crumbling, grey, gothic style church. Also – tourist shops, though with no cheap models of the Eiffel Tower and very few t-shirt stores. While the T-shirt was invented in France, as was the restaurant, they just don’t do “tacky” very well even in tourist places.

Reminds me a bit of looking down from Har HaTavor (Mt. Tabor)

Soap. Soap is everywhere – mostly the same brand. There’s a lot of clothing stores, jewelry, lavender, and postcards. Pleasant, I would say. I came away with a cat-shaped cutting board from a cat cafe where we bought the required minimum of a single drink and played cards there as long as we wanted.

A side rant: you can’t find location-themed playing cards easily anymore. Not a joke: I once ordered Key West playing cards and shipped them to an Amazon locker in Key West where they awaited my arrival. I stopped there on the way from the airport, ran out of our rental car and picked them up with a few other things while my wife thought I went psychotic. Most of my kids were in on the prank.

*Playing cards at the cat cafe. Bought these “women artists” cards in a small village with the house of Dora Maar … filed a trademark in her name. Turns out she’s a real person.*

I invented a new card game: Trifecta. First you do a round of “War”, then “Egyptian Ratscrew”, and then “1, 2, 3, 4.”

Then there’s Trifecta+ where after each round of three, you do a round of “I’m going on a trip and bringing with me …” followed by repeating the prior series of items and adding a new item each time. Fail to recite it properly and you give other players three cards. Probably best as a drinking game.

Anyway … not a single anti-sematic incident. Nada. I do like to proselytize on the superiority of Fahrenheit vs. Celsius though that’s as far as any conversation about religious and non-Trump politics went.

Slideshow of pictures from the villages:

Water-centereed village to make paper.
Many art galleries in France – much less expensive than the same sort of things in other countries.
Ochre mountain shaved down
Cemetary in one of the villages – lots of good pictures here.
The ochre villiage.
I didn’t write down the names of the villages …
Pirson
French people pull in forwards to parking spots like Americans (and not like Israelis)

Finally, someone cares that I’m from Israel!

Our tour group included those from the United States and China. When we introduced ourselves and I said I lived in Israel one lady said, “I have a lot of questions for you!”

Goody, goody! Political discussion!

Then she said nothing about it the whole day! On the last leg of the drive back I asked her what she had in mind and started with an absurd hyperbolized question, “are you pro- or anti-genocide?” to get things going. All she wanted to talk about was Mike Huckabee’s religious views. Lame.

Avignon itself

Meanwhile, here’s some pictures of the food market in Avignon open from 6am to 2pm on every day – most kids in France don’t have school on Wednesday and most places are closed from about 2pm to 4pm every day. French like their rest:

The old city was surrounded by walls and a moat. Personally, I think maintaining the moat would have been cool. Savannah did. Avignon just kept the walls and punched holes through them for cars and people. Seems they were worried that a French person might stand in a place without a line of sight to a cafe and get nervous or disoriented.

Avignon has one remaining shul with a non-updated website and seemingly not much use. It is near the center of the old city and stone like the churches, though far less ornate as one would expect. There’s a plaque that the Jews here were under the protection of the pope. Catholic theology went like this:

1) The bible says the new replaces the old. Therefore, Jews will disappear.
2) Jews aren’t disappearing. Now what?
3) New proclamation: Jews will remain to see the second coming and know that they were wrong.
4) We’re getting a lot better at killing Jews. How can our proclamation be wrong?
5) Protect a community of Jews around the pope and call them “The Pope’s Jews”.

Avignon … where popes were for 70 years. The pope residence from the 15th century looked like something out of a Disney movie only more grey. No one cared about my yarmulke … just my glass bottle which was politely confiscated until I exited.

The pope’s residence

Very interesting to see huge rooms … stone grandeur that took decades to fully complete without steel beams or heavy machinery. While Disney castles look nicer – these castles are real. No optical tricks to make the castle look big like Magic Kingdom … this was real kingdom and real big.

In order: wall of the city, courtyard of the pope house, room of the pope house, guy playing the accordion outside the pope house because you never know when that will make a good picture for the blog, pope house exterior, Avignon shul, street with umbrellas like in Jerusalem, and hole in the old city wall so you can get through.

Mohamed the Taxi Driver

Booked an Uber to the airport with “Mohamed.” I wore a hat over my yarmulke just in case. We get to talking – he knows little English and reminded me of some French terms I thought I didn’t know, and it turns out he’s from Mali.

We have a conversation for about 45 minutes … and of course it comes up, “where I am from?” Well, I don’t want to hide it. I’m from Israel … and New Jersey.

He started talking about the Abraham Accords (peace between Israel and Arab countries) and how he wants to visit. I learn about the economic problems in Mali – the curse of having natural resources so the government doesn’t need the people (jump down to page 6 after clicking the link) so there is no middle class. There are the very rich and many more of the very poor. Do people have smartphones there? Sure. If you’re rich you have everything … and he sends money back to his family there and visits once a year, living like a king.

Finally, he turns on music after we run out of “what to talk about”. I ask him to put on music from Mali – because there doesn’t seem to be any French music in France. It’s all American music. He gave me some names: Oumou Sangare, Salif Keita, and Tiken Jah Fakoly. They sound like a lazy Bob Marley to me.

Marseilles airport on the way out

Two terminals. Small. Quiet. Clean. Well organized. Quick and easy security. They fully accept Israeli teudat ma’avars – the temporary passports. My old gripe is they make you walk through two serpentine paths through shopping before you can get to your gate.

Most people in the world simply don’t care what your beliefs are. Before making aliyah, I thought religious and non-religious Jews were at each other’s throats. I have never encountered a problem in Israel with that. Seems certain groups of Jews like to promote that narrative to keep separate.

When the bank manager opened a business account for meI said I had me’eiser to give. Where would he like me to give my money to? He said “a secular charity and you probably wouldn’t want to …”.

Try me.

He said “friends of the Israeli Defense Forces.” He helped a religious Jew open a bank account though he thought I’d be against his values. I’m not … though I did give to a religious charity for the army. He was quite, quite thankful and happy that I did.

“Do they all hate us?” – fruit seller in Sdorot asking me a question about the United States. Of course not.

Next on the news: “Jew and Muslim laugh together and no one cares.”

The Entire Aliyah Diary

Arrival

01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In

Cultural Adjustment Fun

Cultural Adjustment Difficulties

On The Roads

Shopping

11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
34. Feb 17, 2025: Finding Obscure Things
41. Mar 23, 2025: New Shopping Habits
44. Apr 6, 2025: Pesach Shopping & Osher Ad

Government and Bureaucracy

Politics and Thought

Travel: South Israel

Travel: Central/North Israel

Travel: From Israel to …

54. June 4, 2025: Marseille and Avignon

Aliyah Blog 54: Marseilles and Avignon