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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