4 | JULY 1 • 2021

for openers
Internal Workings
I

f you can stomach it, I
would like to get right to
the heart of the matter:
the bones and blood of what
makes our conversations tick.
Are you the
person who is
always a bundle
of nerves? If so,
you will get on
people’s nerves.
You would have
to have a lot of
nerve to ignore
their reactions to you.
Devotion to a cause means
that you must give blood,
sweat and tears. Such devo-
tion must be in your blood.
People’s callousness may
make your blood run cold.
Misunderstandings can cre-

ate bad blood between folks.
Do not even think of getting
involved in something which
seems too rich for your blood.
If an employer finds that out-
put is getting stale, he may
seek to introduce new, young
blood into the staff.
Some dense people may be
described as all brawn and no
brain or suffering from a brain
drain. Of course, something
that comes easily to you may
be a no-brainer. Need help?
Look to pick someone’s brain
for new ideas. Do not go to
a scatter-brained individual,
however. Doing so may make
you want to beat your brains
out.
If your heart is in the right
place, you will have a heart-

to-heart talk with someone
who needs your input. Get to
the heart of the matter to save
someone from being heart-
broken. Your actions will be
heartwarming.
Don’t like public speaking?
You are probably averse to
having butterflies in your
stomach. You literally have
not got the stomach for such
a performance. Someone who
is really into spicy food can be
said to have a cast-iron stom-

ach. To you cooks out there:
The way to a man’s heart is
through his stomach.
If you feel that you are
being ignored, do not be
reluctant to ask, “What am I?
Chopped liver?” It does not
take a lily-livered person to so
inquire. Be sure to ask at the
top of your lungs!
Well, it seems that I have
let this presentation bleed me
dry. I will have a heart and
desist now.

Sy Manello
Editorial
Assistant

PURELY COMMENTARY

commentary
An American in Paris: Jewish and Scared
I

’m an American Jew from
New York who now lives
in Paris.
What brought me here at
the age of 68 in the middle
of a pandemic?
That’s a long
story — a long
marriage, a
sudden death,
trying to put
my life back
together and
deciding instead
to change it completely.
I’ve had a love affair with
Paris since my second trip
here as a college student in
the early 1970s. In the ensuing
decades I’ve visited France
many dozens of times. Moving
here was a way to make a
long-held dream come true

— or so I thought. Instead,
my six months living in Paris
has been beset with questions
I never expected. Here’s one:
Is this really the right place
for a Jew these days? After
spending a lifetime with only
intellectual/historical fears, I
now find myself facing fears
that are far more visceral.
A little over 20 years ago,
I had just completed my first
book, The Complete Jewish
Guide to France. By that time,
having studied European his-
tory, listened to my family’s
Holocaust horror stories and
spent considerable time in
France, I was keenly aware
of Europe’s history with the
Jewish people. It wasn’t a pretty
picture.
Yet there was something

about France. I believed in
France despite its history, per-
haps even because of it. Wasn’t
France the first country in
Europe to grant civil rights to
Jews in the late 18th century?
Didn’t Napoleon Bonaparte
tear down the ghetto walls in
cities he conquered? Didn’t
he create the still extant state
mechanisms that allowed Jews
in France to become French
citizens — Frenchmen who
practiced Judaism?
My belief in the inherent vir-
tue of la Republique Francaise
and in its concept of laïcité
— wherein the state exists to
protect the populace from the
excesses of religion — allowed
me to look at its post-revolu-
tion (1789) history in a some-
what forgiving way. I could

convince myself that France’s
stumbles as a new republic
were the errors of youth and
not part of a larger dysfunc-
tion.
The Dreyfus Affair? But it
was non-Jewish Frenchmen
who saw to it that he was exon-
erated. The Shoah? But surely
France had learned a difficult
lesson from the crimes that
some Frenchmen committed
against other Frenchmen, I
reasoned. The country was
seriously damaged politically
and emotionally, yet the French
republic and laïcité ultimately
prevailed.

FEAR CAME SLOWLY
As a Jew, I was never afraid to
be in France.
I wasn’t afraid in 1975,

Toni L.
Kamins
JTA

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