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NOUS VIVRONS As Paris gears up for the Olympics this summer, Hephzibah Anderson speaks to the artist Joann Sfar about life in the capital post-7 October, and how he finds optimism in the shared heritage of the city ’s Jewish and Muslim residents For his 52nd birthday in August last year, award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist Joann Sfar designed himself a pendant with the Hebrew word ‘chai’ [life]. A party was planned for some weeks after – on 7 October. That day, as news of the slaughter in Israel began to emerge, he wondered if he should cancel. “Most of my father’s family is Israeli and I have three cousins in the army there,” Sfar explains, “But a close rabbi friend told me, ‘We are not people who cancel a party.’” It went ahead, with most of Paris’ Jewish and Arabic cultural figures in attendance. As Sfar ruefully notes, he hasn’t seen so many Jews and Arabs gathered together in the same place since. The events of 7 October lent vital new significance to his gift, too. Within hours of the attack, he’d posted a watercolour sketch of the word ‘chai’, captioned with “cela veut dire ‘nous vivrons’” (“that means ‘we shall live’”). The post went viral. It also inspired a 500-page book, Nous Vivrons, due to be published in France in April, which he calls a work of graphic reportage. In it he casts himself as a reporter à la Tintin (Sfar’s Snowy is Bretzel, a large Swiss Shepherd), investigating Jewish identity through interviews with individuals ranging from writers and musicians to athletes. He conducted them
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S FA R J OA N N in France and Israel last October and November. “The minute I arrived in Tel Aviv, hope came back. I hate opinions, and in France everyone is filled with opinions, but I love human relationships and, in Israel I was talking with people – however chaotic, however conflictual. The voices for peace are still there, on both sides.” Jewishness has long been central to the work of this energetic artist, who’s excelled in both literature and film but who remains best known for his graphic novel series, The Rabbi’s Cat. It’s set in Algeria, where the titular feline gains the power of speech after swallowing a pet parrot. A narrative full of comical charm and magic, it’s fondly irreverent, too. “Most of my characters are much more religious than I am,” he acknowledges. “That’s not how I live my life. I am the worst character in the Pesach Haggadah, I’m the ‘Rasha’ [the wicked son], the guy who knows it all but still eats pork and marries a Catholic girl.” Sfar grew up in Nice, where his pop singer mother died when he was just three. His maternal grandfather, a prominent figure in Sfar’s childhood, was raised to be a rabbi near Lviv, in what is now Ukraine. Instead, he came to France in the 1930s to study medicine, later joining the Resistance. The murder of his entire family back home in what’s known as the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ (which Sfar writes about in his 2023 comic Les enfants ne se laissaient pas faire), followed by the early death of his only daughter, left his grandfather fiercely atheistic. violent attacks, which have increased since 7 October. This is likely to be spurring the trend of Jews leaving France: between 2010 and 2020, 38,000 French Jews made aliyah. The antisemitism comes from the fringe but is exploited by both the hard left and the far right, Sfar believes. At the city’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he teaches, his Israeli students have all left and most of his Jewish students have stopped coming to class. He bats away the notion that the recent appointment of Gabriel Attal, a prime minister with Jewish ancestry, changes anything. Despite this, the nation’s Jewish community is still Europe’s most sizeable. The fact that it is also home to Europe’s largest Muslim community presents an opportunity, says Sfar. “It’s not heaven, but most people get on very well. We share Maghrebin ancestry and common memories. We can talk, we can tell stories.” If he had to put his work’s mission into words, he says, it would be to insist that the Jewish voice belongs in Europe as well as in Israel. “The life of a Jew has become more conflictual in France in recent years but, if we want to survive here, we need a cultural voice. It is being rebuilt these days, I hope.” Meanwhile, there are the Paris Olympics to look forward to. He’s no sports fan but the city, he says, has gentrified to such an extent it’s almost become a caricature. However, the Olympics promise a return to form. “Nothing is going to work. There will be strikes and most taxi drivers say they’re going away, so no one will be able to move in the city.” Sfar likens his Algerian-born father to Mad Men’s Don Draper. A man who shook off poverty to become a lawyer, he initially represented prostitutes and gangsters, and progressed to jailing neoNazis (the family lived with police protection for a while). There was a different sports car every year and, after Sfar’s mother died, an endless parade of models, but he also found religion. He admires the sporting spirit, too. “Israeli athletes tell me that they’re friends with most of the Arab athletes and they “Jews and Muslims share Maghrebin ancestry; we share common memories” have a high respect for each other” – a stark contrast, he points out, to what’s happened in the arts, where Israelis are finding themselves disinvited from international festivals. On a trip to Yad Vashem when Sfar was seven, his father told him that it was the job of Sfar to have Jewish children. “And then my grandfather arrived and he says, ‘Tell your father that your genitals are not made to fight Hitler.’” He is video-calling from his studio, and his bushy beard and stocky, black-garbed shoulders lend him a piratical look, so it’s not altogether surprising to learn that his own identity was forged, in part, with his fists. As he puts it, “The beginning of my Jewish life was basically punching skinheads in the south of France.” As for the ‘chai’, his design is now a real piece of jewellery, fashioned in gold and black diamonds no less (you can take the boy out of Nice…). “I hate identities, but I wear it because I cannot stand the fact that Jewish people might be terrified about being Jews. These days, the thing that hurts me the most is seeing a Jewish mother with her kids walking quickly through the streets in Paris.” He adds, “What I love about the way we always say ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ is that it’s not a call for victory, it’s a call for survival.” To borrow the French, nous vivrons. n Now, decades later, he finds himself once again fighting antisemitism on the streets – this time in altercations in Paris as he tried to put up posters of hostages. Antisemitism has been rising in France since the early 2000s, including a string of Joann Sfar. Drawn Life runs at the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris until 12 May. mahj.org. JR’s online series, From Dreyfus to Vichy: Parisian Jewish arts and culture in turbulent times, begins 3 June. See p61. Hephzibah Anderson is a journalist, author and broadcaster. JOANN SFAR’S PARIS The cartoonist and film-maker shares his favourite Paris places MUSÉE D’ART ET D’HISTOIRE DU JUDAÏSM mahj.org I love the museum because it’s a Jewish place that insists on opening on Shabbat. It shares a vision of Jewish life that’s not encapsulated by religion. SYNAGOGUE TOURNELLES synatournelles.fr Most French synagogues aren’t known for their wonderful architecture but this one, in the Marais, was designed by Gustav Eiffel. No one knows about it but it’s definitely worth visiting for the distinctive metalwork inside the building. MAISON DE LA CULTURE YIDDISH yiddishweb.com There’s been a revival of Yiddish culture in Paris and you can learn to speak the language here as well as take courses in everything from Yiddish humour to representations of women in Yiddish writing. Its annual klezmer fest keeps getting bigger. READER’S PICK Nadja Berrebi, a long-time JR reader in Paris recommends: Mabrouk • mabrouk-paris.fr Located near Le Marais, Mabrouk was set up by two friends with a nod to the food of their Jewish Tunisian grandmothers – but with a modern French twist. Try the AbitBowl, that comes with spicy meatballs (keftas) and sesame cream or the poke-style Djerba Bowl, which is rarely found in other Tunisian restaurants. SPRING 2024 JEWISHRENAISSANCE.ORG.UK 13

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NOUS VIVRONS As Paris gears up for the Olympics this summer, Hephzibah Anderson speaks to the artist Joann Sfar about life in the capital post-7 October, and how he finds optimism in the shared heritage of the city ’s Jewish and Muslim residents

For his 52nd birthday in August last year, award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist Joann Sfar designed himself a pendant with the Hebrew word ‘chai’ [life]. A party was planned for some weeks after – on 7 October. That day, as news of the slaughter in Israel began to emerge, he wondered if he should cancel. “Most of my father’s family is Israeli and I have three cousins in the army there,” Sfar explains, “But a close rabbi friend told me, ‘We are not people who cancel a party.’” It went ahead, with most of Paris’ Jewish and Arabic cultural figures in attendance. As Sfar ruefully notes, he hasn’t seen so many Jews and Arabs gathered together in the same place since.

The events of 7 October lent vital new significance to his gift, too. Within hours of the attack, he’d posted a watercolour sketch of the word ‘chai’, captioned with “cela veut dire ‘nous vivrons’” (“that means ‘we shall live’”). The post went viral.

It also inspired a 500-page book, Nous Vivrons, due to be published in France in April, which he calls a work of graphic reportage. In it he casts himself as a reporter à la Tintin (Sfar’s Snowy is Bretzel, a large Swiss Shepherd), investigating Jewish identity through interviews with individuals ranging from writers and musicians to athletes. He conducted them

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