Travelogue – Issue 6 | August 2009
From Paris, A Travel Misguide
by Adam Shechter
iv.
The Synagogue Agoudas Hakehilos of Marais presents a concealed spectacle. The Haredi swoop down, black jackets flapping, into this Art Nouveau fortress with the same pogrom-fleeing gait as in Brooklyn. I enter with Miriam, Jewess in blue jeans. Whoever it is that runs things, a stooped-over man with a graying beard and unwashed dark suit, greets us with hesitation and clenched jaw. I put out my hand and he pulls his away. His hands are wet, he says. He asks me where I am from and I answer, From Brooklyn, where else? A ringing phone saves him and he announces he must answer and flees into his dusty office. Miriam and I stand as tense strangers, traces of pork flowing through our blood. We stand muttering, pretending to admire the lobby. A few minutes later he returns with a half-ass historical brochure and tells me that I can look in the sanctuary if I like and that Miriam can look from the balcony.
I slip into the sanctuary like an emotional thief and snap a series of photos of its elegant and sad personality. Depressed, stubborn, the sanctuary presents a modest stage for the resistance of Torah. Miriam remains in the lobby. I urge her from the door to come and take a peek. Finally, she relents. She sticks her head in but can’t quite relax and neither can I. Though having shared the same fate as the religious during the Holocaust, we have no actual connection. We are strangers and they fear us. Outside again, I photograph a mezuzah completely sunken into the concrete doorway of an adjacent Jewish building. We speculate this was done to prevent it from being torn off by passing anti-Semites. Still, a black-hatted Jew exits the building and it is me to whom he throws his fiery hateful eyes.
About the author
Adam Shechter is from Unbrooklyn, the imperceptible imperialist brownstone aesthetic of 1989, Prospect Park West benches by Carroll Street. He is also the editor of the online journal, The Blue Jew Yorker. Recent publications include Exquisite Corpse and Ashe Journal. More at Adam’s personal site.
Read our current issue, Issue 6 | August 2009:
Poetry
Berlin by Sy Margaret Baldwin
Two Poems by Sean Edgley
After Your Funeral I Set Out to Find You in Different Time Zones by Jennifer Faylor
Painter by Ricky Garni
Other Than by Dana Guthrie Martin
Two poems by Timothy Kercher
Five Views of Guanajuato: A Mythology by Athena Kildegaard
Two poems by Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Goya by Trent Nutting
The Changing of the Flowers by Jennifer Saunders
Two poems by Ken Turner
Postcard prose
Buttons by Jennifer Faylor
The Enemy Tree by Kirby Wright
Escape on the Canal by Addie Zierman
