http://www.parismarais.com/en/visit-le-marais/history-of-the-marais/jewish-quarter.html
JEWISH MARAIS WALKING TOUR : START AT THE ILE DE LA CITE (
METRO: CITE)
The city’s most famous Jewish neighborhood is in the
Marais and is known as the
Pletzl – Yiddish for little Place. This 4th arrondissment district (
Metro: St. Paul) has been home to Jews on and off since the thirteenth century. Today, though gentrification has made this one of the city’s most fashionable quarters, it is still heavily Jewish and has been for nearly one hundred years.
Up and down
rue des Rosiers between
rue Malher and
rue des Hospitalières-St.-Gervais, as well as on the streets off rue des Rosiers, you will find Jewish restaurants, bookshops, boulangeries and charcuteries along with synagogues and shtiebels (small prayer rooms – Oratoire in French).
...
Turn left on to
rue Pavée. At number 10 is
Agudath Hakehilot, an orthodox synagogue. Designed byHector Guimard, the Art Nouveau architect and decorator famous for the Paris metro stations, and built in 1914, this is the largest synagogue in the Pletzl. Guimard's wife, an American, was Jewish and with the rise of Nazism they left France for the United States. On Yom Kippur 1940 it was dynamited by the Germans, but has since been restored and is now a national monument in addition to playing a key role in the community.
Continue along rue Pavée and turn left onto
rue des Rosiers. Along this narrow, ancient street you will find
kosher and Jewish style restaurants cheek by jowl with Jewish bookshops, small synagogues, prayer rooms, and kosher boulangeries and charcuteries. You will also see trendy shops, a sign of the increasingly gentrified nature of the neighborhood.
