Jews Also Cry for Notre Dame

After the European Union for Progressive Judaism convention in Amsterdam in March 2012, I visited Paris in my capacity as President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

Overshadowing our Paris visit was a horrible tragedy in which four people were savagely murdered at a Jewish day school in Toulouse. When word came, Rabbi Tom Cohen, of Kehilat Gesher in Paris, was showing us the magnificent Cathedral of Notre Dame. Ms. Miriam Kramer, Chairman of the European Union and Mr. Stéphane Beder, President of the French Union of Progressive Judaism were with Vickie and me as we stood in awe in front of the magnificent Cathedral.

When the news of the horror in Toulouse reached us, we quickly repaired to a café in the shadow of Notre Dame to hastily and sadly draft the WUPJ response to the massacre of innocent Jews.

I am reliving that tragedy as I watch live news film of Notre Dame in flames.

I confess that part of my first impression of Notre Dame in 2012 was similar to what I feel whenever I tour magnificent houses of worship: How many homeless people could be housed and how many hungry fed with all the money it took to build this edifice!

That said Notre Dame is a place of matchless beauty and a symbol of a people’s faith in God. To see it in flames exacerbates the fear and uncertainty of the times in which we live.

Thankfully the fire of Notre Dame did not involve the unspeakable loss of life our nation suffered on Nine Eleven. Human lives are worth more than any building.

Still, seeing its famed spire collapse was even more shocking than seeing the Twin Towers in New York City fall on Nine Eleven. After all, the World Trade Center opened in April 1973. Notre Dame was completed in 1345.

If ever a building represented beauty, stability and order in the world it was Notre Dame.

For that reason, we Jews join with Christians around the world in bemoaning the fire in Paris.

A building of unsurpassed beauty is burning in the City of Light, and somehow the whole world seems a little less safe and a little less secure than it was before.