Serious thoughts for a 5 year old

I don't know if it's gotten much press in the US, but the *major* news story here for the past several days - the story that has pushed bird flu and Jacques Chirac's subsequent eating of chicken down under the fold - is the apparently antisemitically-motivated murder of Ilan Halimi. This Sunday there was a huge demonstration (about 33,000 people) that marched from Republique to Nation (right past our window) against racism and antisemitism. Today, at Ella's school during circle time, Ella's classmate Dona (who is Jewish) shared with the class that she had gone to this demonstration. It turned out a couple of other kids had also gone or seen it going by, and they wanted to know more about what had happened. The teacher had what sounds like a very sensitive conversation with them about the fact that this man had been killed probably because he was Jewish and that it is a horrible thing to hate or hurt someone because of their race or their religion. One of the kids asked if there was anyone in the class that was Jewish, and the teacher said that it is up to each person if they want to talk about what their religion is or not. Dona said that she was Jewish, but Ella didn't say anything. The teacher thought she was embarassed, so she mentioned it to me when I picked Ella up, in case we wanted to talk more about it at home.

Ella has always had a very strong Jewish pride, so I was surprised she hadn't wanted to say she was Jewish. So, I asked her why. She explained that since it was in French, there were some words she didn't understand and she didn't want to make a mistake or say something that she wasn't sure about because this was really important and not a joke, which I thought was pretty mature. For a kid who has up to this point only positive associations, like baking hamentaschen at the synagogue's Sunday Funday, with being Jewish, this news that something bad could happen to you because you are Jewish really shook her world. She had a few other questions about the incident. I tried to answer her questions honestly, but make her feel safe. I showed her the photos in the paper of the thousands of good people at the rally who are against this kind of thing, and told her there are so many good people in the world and only a few bad ones. She told me that this is probably the worst story the newspaper has ever had to publish. I wish that were true.

Earlier in the day, maybe because it was subconsciously in the air, Abe and I had gone for a lunch time walk to the ile de la cite and visited the memorial of the deportation that is at the tip of the island behind Notre Dame (and hidden behind a tall hedge). We only had a few minutes to visit it, as the guard was rather impatient to lock up and have her lunch break. You walk down a flight of stairs between stone walls that open up to a sunken courtyard with views only of the sky (supposedly characteristic of the views from the camps). There is also an underground room with a 6-sided ceiling and a wall of lights equal to the number of people deported by the Nazis in France. Although it is moving to see the prominent position of this memorial within the city of Paris, we were torn about how well it accomplished its goal of memorializing those people who were victims. Maybe if we had had more time to linger, we would have been able to experience it more fully.

(P.S. The photos - which have nothing to do with the text, but also happened this week - are of hamentaschen making and Ella doing her first ever homework assignment [which was to draw the events of her morning in comic strip format]).