At kosher deli Charles Traiteur, customers exchange pleasantries at the checkout before heading out into the crisp morning air. Cars cruise along the road outside and locals stroll in and out of the cluster of stores nearby.

On another day, they may have done their shopping at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket a few yards away that has been closed since four Jewish hostages were murdered two weeks ago.

Heavily armed soldiers stand in front of the supermarket's windows, holed by bullets when police stormed the building.

But this is Porte de Vincennes, where normality is still a work in progress.

Flickering candles, signs declaring "Je suis Juif" and handwritten tributes to the dead surround the police barrier that encircles the boarded-up store. A man stops to read a sign and walks away, brushing a tear from his eye.

Jean-Jacques Bensoussan, who was working in Charles Traiteur when the jihadi entered the supermarket, has three children at local Jewish schools. They are now under police guard.

"We are scared when we take the children to school. We are scared when we go to work," he said. "The atmosphere is very hard now but we are here at work because you have to continue to live."

Across the road, Jacob Dery manages another kosher deli. He said: "There were 16 of us here, including customers, when we heard gunshots. My son ran outside to see what was happening and I ran after him to make him come back.

"Two minutes later the police were here, hundreds of them. They wouldn't let us out because they didn't know if it was just one gunman or more. We were scared for our customers, not for ourselves, because some of them were still trying to leave, they really wanted to go home. We started to panic, there were still people outside so we made them come in, then we locked the doors and brought down the shutters.

"The police didn't want us to stay on the shop floor so we went downstairs to the basement. Those who stayed in the shop were told to lie on the floor."

Mr Dery said that many customers had stayed away since the attack.

"The atmosphere is morose, there's no joy. We hope it will be forgotten. There's no point in being scared. Once the police guards leave, life will continue, we won't change anything.

"Some people want to stay in France and some don't. Everyone should do what they want. People are in shock, it will last a few weeks, then things will go back to normal.

His son and his family live just yards from Hyper Cacher. He feels the danger lies not just in Paris but everywhere.

"I'm not going to be scared just because there are people like that. You have to get on with your life," he said.

Two prominent views emerge from conversations. Some seem resigned to antisemitism, even cowed by it. They are desperate to get to Israel. Others remain defiant.

Kelfa Cohen came to Hyper Cacher to place a yarhzeit candle. She is a regular shopper there. She said: "We call the Jewish Agency every day about moving to Israel but we never get through because they are so busy. We can no longer stay here. It's finished in France for the Jews."

Estelle Benadiba, 67, lives in Netanya. She lived for 50 years in the building above Hyper Cacher, but moved to Israel three years ago. She said: "I always wanted to live in Israel, for Zionist and personal reasons, I didn't move out of fear. You must not be scared after the attack, you have to remain strong. People should stay in France.

"I'm not worried about my family here. There is always something happening in Israel and we should be scared, but we're not. So if we're not scared in Israel, then you shouldn't be scared here."

This week, four men were charged with assisting the Hyper Cacher gunman, Amedy Coulibaly. Also, police arrested five people on suspicion of planning an attack on an antisemitism conference in Lyon last year. Meanwhile on Wednesday, a 13-year-old Jewish boy was attacked with mace spray in Le Pre-Saint-Gervais, a suburb of Paris.