Inauguration Speeches
December 1, 2021
Rabbi Tom Cohen :
Madame la Députée, Monsieur
Dear members and friends of my community,
Just between ourselves… I really didn’t believe that tonight was going to happen!
Let me explain. After the High Holidays, I met with our Board to propose the idea of inaugurating our new building during Hanukkah.
I explained that historically, in France, many synagogues have held such ceremonies during this period. I cited the example of the Hanukkat Habayit, the dedication of the synagogue of the Union Libérale Israelite de France, which also took place on December 1, but in 1907.
That community has been close to my heart since I arrived in France and worked alongside Rabbi Williams. He is represented here tonight by his wife, Isabelle Williams.
Isabelle, please tell Michael that I wanted to thank you both publicly for your kindness, trust, mentorship and friendship over the years.
But with all the delays in our building works over the past weeks, and especially with the endless increase in Covid contaminations, I didn’t really believe that we would actually be here this evening… that is, until last night.
Yesterday I had the great surprise of finding all my children gathered together around the dinner table, brought together by Rabbi Pauline Bebe, my partner in life and their mother, to mark this occasion. Suddenly I realized that this truly was going to happen… and then I got scared.
It wasn’t that I was frightened the way you can be frightened by a horror movie. It was a question of being struck by a deep consciousness of the responsibilities and the obligations that this moment represents in the life of my community. It is truly a historic moment in the life of Kehilat Gesher.
The word that really reflects my feelings is the Hebrew word יראה (yir’ah). It is often translated as “fear,” as in the expression יראת יי (yir’at Adonai), that is, “fear of God” or “God-fearing.”
Many of you here will recognize the Hebrew root in the expression yamim nora’im (Days of Awe), the term used to describe Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
That is correct, but the root also has another meaning, which is wonder and gratitude.
As David says in Psalm 118:
זֶה־הַ֭יֹּום עָשָׂ֣ה יְהוָ֑ה
(Zeh-hayom âsâh Adonay nâghiylâh venismechâh bho.)
(This is the day that God has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.)
I am filled tonight with admiration, appreciation and gratitude for all our members and friends, past and present, near and far, who by their enthusiasm, by their energy, their ever-enduring presence, and their financial contributions… have helped us create this home! But this place is only bricks, only a platform, only a prop.
For me, the task is to make it a home – we have to make it a truly living Jewish home, that is proud of being Liberal:
A place to study, to pray and to eat.
A place to find friends and to make friends.
A place where questions can be asked and sometimes, where answers can be found.
A place for art and for music.
A place for dialogue between Jews; for dialogue between Jews and people of other religions; and between believers and non-believers.
The aim is to work together, on the basis of our heritage, to build a society which is more just, more fraternal and more equal.
Much remains to be done with your financial help: putting up partitions, installing the heating system, redoing the entire basement!
But now is the time to be in the moment, and to appreciate how much we have already accomplished. There can be no beracha, so rich in meaning and more appropriate than to stand and say together the Shehechiyanu:
ברוך אתה יי אלוהינו מלך העולם
(Baruch ata Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, shehecheyanu vekiyemanu vehigianu la zeman hazeh.)
Exalted are You, Adonai our God, Eternal Sovereign, who has kept us in life, sustained us, and has brought us to this very moment. Amen.
Samantha Woolfe, President :
Mrs. Kuster, Mr. Boulard, elected officials, spiritual representatives,
Hanukkah Sameach, Joyous Festival of Lights, Happy Hanukkah!
Welcome to Kehilat Gesher’s new home, synagogue and community center. And welcome to the celebration of our Festival of Light and miracles, tonight, the fourth night of Hanukkah, the 27th day of the month of Kislev in the year 5782.
For those of you who do not know me, my name is Samantha Woolfe. I am pleased to introduce myself as the new President of Kehilat Gesher, the Franco-American synagogue of Paris.
I can only begin with a tribute to my predecessor, Anne Sebbag, and to everyone who worked together during her presidency to make this moment possible. Anne will speak later in the evening, as will members of the New Home Committee, who worked with unflagging energy to find this new space for Kehilat Gesher. Thank you!
I also wish to express our gratitude to Mrs. Brigitte Kuster, who represents this district in the French National Assembly, and to Mr. Geoffroy Boulard, Mayor of Paris’s 17th arrondissement, for their unstinting support. Thank you for being here this evening.
Finally, I thank our volunteers not just for being here on this special occasion, but for their presence at every religious service, every activity, the courses and social events organized for our members and our friends. Whether for security, cuisine, Talmud Torah, early childhood Jewish education or music, our committed volunteers are always ready to share their enthusiasm for the transmission of our history and our traditions.
Tonight we will be privileged to hear our wonderful, beloved choir sing Hanukkah songs. We are particularly proud of them as an integral part of our very musical community. And later on this evening, I will have the great pleasure to present our quartet, the KG Arbé, making its debut performance.
None of this would be possible without our donors. You and your families have been at our side for years and years; some of you have been supporting us from the very beginnings of Kehilat Gesher, twenty-eight years ago. I particularly want to thank you. For all of us in the community and for our Rabbi Tom Cohen, this magnificent space testifies, once again, to your commitment.
Of course, and especially in the context of this Hanukkah celebration, I want to thank our Rabbi for illuminating our path and for his dedication. Many of us here in this community were married by Rabbi Tom, who has overseen the education of our children and has accompanied us through all the important events of life that we experience within our Jewish tradition.
Rarely in our lifetimes have we so needed the glow and hope of Hanukkah. This new space for praying, sharing, learning, singing, reading, discussing, eating, and dancing together is particularly important and necessary at this moment in time. And it seems to me a sign that Hanukkah—which means “dedication” in Hebrew—coincides with our inauguration.
It is sometimes said that the miracle of Hanukkah is not actually mentioned in either of the two books of Maccabees. And indeed, in the Second Book of Maccabees, it is written that the Festival of Hanukkah was created by Judah for the re-dedication of the Temple, which was to recall King Solomon’s inauguration of the First Temple in Jerusalem, that lasted eight days.
Can we, perhaps, draw a similar link with the history of our community as we celebrate, this evening, the re-inauguration and dedication of our community in this new synagogue?
Anne Sebbag, President of Kehilat Gesher from 2017-2021
Mrs. Kuster, Mr. Boulard, Elected officials, Spiritual representatives,
First, let me say how delighted I am to welcome you to Kehilat Gesher’s new home.
This is an occasion for looking back as well as looking forward. I will try to do both… but first, a few definitions, or clarifications, may be helpful:
What is Liberal Judaism? Representing the majority of Jews in the United States but only a minority in France, the Liberal or Reform Movement is a branch of Judaism which seeks to evolve in the context of contemporary societies and the modern world. One of the most visible reflections of this aspiration is the affirmation of the equality of women and men. In a Liberal synagogue, we sit together, not apart; the traditional “women’s gallery” does not exist.
What do we mean by “our new home”? Our reference is to the Hebrew word bayit, a word whose roots suggest many possibilities. House, home, foyer…
And what about our name, Kehilat Gesher? It means “bridge between communities”. The name was chosen by our founders with reference to their philosophy and their program, which remain ours today.
Our founding members deliberately chose the17th arrondissement as the home for the new Liberal community they were creating. Other Liberal Jewish communities were located in the east of Paris, in the 11th arrondissement, as well as in the west of Paris in the 15th and 16th arrondissements. There was also an anglophone community outside Paris, in the west of the Ile de France region. Today, the 17th arrondissement has the largest Jewish population in Paris, numbering some 40,000 individuals, so this choice has proven to be auspicious.
Since we first came to this arrondissement, Kehilat Gesher has moved around. Not exactly wandering, in the sense of our biblical texts—we have not spent forty years in the desert looking for a roof! Nonetheless our beginnings were modest. At first we gathered together in a member’s apartment, then the Goldenberg restaurant made a room available in its location on the Avenue de Wagram. I believe it was underground, in a basement – but Ashkenazis like me don’t like to talk about cellars and basements, so I’ll move on to the next location, Rue Leon Cogniet, where our little shul took root and grew, in the warm and friendly atmosphere created by our Rabbi Tom Cohen.
Our members come from different countries and from different traditions—Ashkenazi or Sefardi, to name only those two. We have learned to live together and to be open to the world, and this openness is our brand, our distinguishing characteristic. We speak many different languages—French, English, Hebrew—to name only those three. Occasionally, a few Yiddish words color our conversations. Not all our members live in Paris—members are dispersed around the world and yet united in the KG community. We believe that our richness consists in this very mixture, held together by our vision of Judaism. We accept our differences and our disagreements; we listen to others.
Our space on the Rue Leon Cogniet quickly proved to be too small for our growing numbers, but it was our home and we felt reassured there. Sometimes, though, during ceremonies, the synagogue was literally bursting at the seams: services and celebrations overflowed into the street… the situation couldn’t last. For security reasons, but even more, in order to ensure our future development, we had to move. We needed a new house for our home.
In the Book of Jeremiah (29:5), the Eternal commands His people: “Build houses and live in them”. We had to find a new place of our own, to build our space.
For nine months, we looked everywhere in the 17th arrondissement. We even went beyond its borders—Mayor Boulard, I have to admit that we visited properties in the 8th and 16th arrondissements. But our fidelity to the 17th weighed against any options we might have considered elsewhere—our history is here.
When we first visited this place, 11 Avenue de la Porte de Champerret, it was a center for sport and physical rehabilitation, with everything needed for body-building! Our ambitions are for spirit-building… so seeing the rehab center as the location of our future synagogue and community center required some imagination.
Not everyone was comfortable at first. We were leaving the neighborhood of the Parc Monceau and even crossing to the other side the Périphérique! But all the positive qualities of the property carried the day. And especially the fact that it meant that we were staying on our turf in the 17th, and strategically, at the meeting point of Paris, Neuilly and Levallois.
Another positive point was security. This is a discreet location. As with all Jewish communities today, we must be vigilant, continually looking to protect ourselves. As such we are a long way from the magnificent facades of the synagogues built by architects of renown, such as the Ashkenazi (Alsatian) synagogue of the Rue des Victoires and the Sephardi (Portuguese) synagogue of the Rue Buffault, or the Rue Pavée synagogue designed by Hector Guimard and not far from here, at the Porte de Courcelles, the imposing building of the Center for European Judaism.
But all that is not really important. We needed more space to build our new home. Women and men of good will, and talented architects, all members of this community, have transformed the sports center into our lively, welcoming community center.
As our history has often shown, we know how to rebuild our homes, our dwelling places and our communities. We are a people of builders, with one foot anchored in our historical memory, albeit often painful, even as the other moves toward the future. And it is inspired by the lessons of our history that we have moved into this new address at the Porte de Champerret.
As Israeli writer Amos Oz, has said: “This question has always preoccupied the Jews: are we a people in space or a people in time? In the Diaspora, we were defined as a people in time, as an eternal people. But even after settling here [in Israel], we remain incapable of considering ourselves as a people inscribed in a particular space.”
The history of the Jewish people is not only a question of space but a question of time.
The history of the Jewish people is the history of a “world-people”.
Here, in the 17th arrondissement, at the Avenue de la Porte de Champerret we will appropriate and adapt Space, broadening our horizons to advance, expand and move in Time. Our desire is to live our Judaism fully and freely in Kehilat Gesher, a community open to the world, a community of exchange, a community of openness, a community of welcome and of tolerance.
Hag Hanoucca Sameach! Happy Hanukkah!