November was a month of commemoration. Not just of 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 1918, which is a national holiday in France without red poppies, but rather 13 November when in 2015 a series of terrorist actions killed 130 and left 500 wounded.
As an act of defiance, the Bataclan Theatre was reopened with a highly emotional concert by former Police front-man Sting.
Public ceremonies were held and television documentaries soberly revisited the confusion and delays by overwhelmed police and medical services who had unprepared for such terrible events.
As December begins, the atmosphere is still heavy in France. The state of emergency has been prolonged, new arrests have been made and mosques have been closed.
Tourist numbers are still down, but a certain nervous normality is returning and politics have reclaimed centre stage.
Millions of viewers watched four TV debates before choosing the conservative candidates for the Presidential elections in May 2017.
François Fillon, the runaway winner, confounded the experts who had seen him as too dull to compete with former president Nicolas Sarkozy and reassuring former prime minister Alain Juppe.
After three years’ intense campaigning to general media indifference, Mr Fillon is now in the spotlight as the front runner for the Presidency.
Nothing is decided, of course, and six months is a very long time in politics. But the political landscape has changed decisively.
Republicans of various persuasions have lined up behind their new champion whose solid seriousness suddenly seems an asset after the flamboyant Sarkozy and indecisive Hollande.
Mr Fillon may take votes from Marine Le Pen on the extreme right because he has credibility with social conservatives, rural voters and anyone concerned about terrorism and radical Islam. Meanwhile the Left is struggling.
Notwithstanding President Hollande’s dramatic withdrawal from the race, left wing candidates are numerous and deeply divided, as if positioning themselves for reconstruction after an expected loss in May 2017.
The Centre, at least for now, is claimed by Emanuel Macron, the brilliant young economy minister who quit the government to launch his own party En Marche.
Among many unknowns: are the French ready for Mr Fillon’s ambitious economic programme? It has been described by some as a reactionary Thatcherite adventure that would destroy France’s public service and cherished social security system.
What are Jews to make of this? The Chief Rabbi and the lay Jewish institutions (notably the “CRIF”) weigh in to defend Israel and protest anti-Semitism.
Community leaders do not play party politics and Jews vote for candidates across the full political spectrum, though they have kept a distance from Marine Le Pen despite her warming to Israel and her efforts to shed her party’s anti-Semitic past.
Mr. Fillon is a practising Catholic, but a staunch defender of France’s secular society. He has challenged Jews as well as Muslims to reject narrow community life and to graft their religious identity onto an historical narrative of the French nation.
He wants the narrative taught in primary school to children in uniform by teachers with authority, not unlike schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle that emancipated generations of Jewish children in North Africa.
On foreign policy, Fillon wants a European frontier, European defence, a strong Euro zone government and closer relations with Russia. During the television debates, he spoke in defence of “the Christians of the East and the Jews of Israel”.
As a foreigner, I cannot vote and the options are not yet clear. As my wife, has just been naturalised perhaps she will vote for me, but for which candidate?
Reuven Levi, Paris.1.12.2016
