Jewish code - riddle in the Louvre - Marom Paris

Marom Paris organized a Jewish Code in Le Louvre museum (2010, March 7.)


The Jewish Code is a riddle-game on the history of the Hebrews, which took place a few days ago in le Louvre Museum, in partnership with Coexister, a French interfaith organization.
The purpose of the Jewish Code was to discover or refresh our knowledge of 2000 years of Jewish history, from Abraham to Bar Kokhba.
We were 20 players, organised in 5 teams, and had to run for 3 hours in the museum on a Sunday afternoon, from one room to another, to answer the questions of the game.
We had a great time, and le Louvre is a wonderful museum, as I could feel passing from the Ancient Egypt to the Babylonian or Ancient Greek rooms. The museum shows master pieces, as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1790 BC), very similar to the law of talion (“an eye for an eye”), or the Mesha's basalt Stele (Mesha was King of Moab, around 850 BC) which mentions explicitly wars between Israel and Moab). We greeted the pharaohs supposed to have welcome Joseph or thrown Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt. We stood gaping in front of a monumental piece of capital, supposed to have been part of King Ahashverosh palace.
Then we moved to a café, to listen to the good answers and a prize was given to the four winners : books upon the Hebrews and archeology, or French comic books about Le Louvre or Ancient Palestine.

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Marom Paris a organisé un Jewish Code au Louvre le 7 mars 2010


Cette session du célèbre jeu d’énigmes a été organisée par Marom Paris et les jeunes de Coexister, association pour le dialogue interreligieux.

Le Jewish Code, c’est un parcours ludique et culturel qui permet aux participants de découvrir ou redécouvrir le Musée du Louvre dans des conditions inédites: répondre à des questions sur l’histoire des Hébreux grâce à des indices disséminés dans les diverses salles du musée. Les équipes doivent rivaliser d’astuce, de culture générale et de sens de l’observation pour compléter leur livret d'enquêteurs.
Nous avons donc mené l'enquête le temps d’un dimanche après-midi dans le Musée du Louvre, passant de salle en salle au pas de course, dans une ambiance joyeuse de compétition !

Après le jeu, correction des réponses dans un café pour redérouler chronologiquement l’histoire juive antique, en la croisant avec les récentes découvertes archéologiques, et remise de prix à l'équipe gagnante.

Marom Europe meeting in London

After our kick-off meeting in Paris (December 2009) the Marom Europe group has met again in London. The timing was intentionally adjacent to the time of the Masorti Europe conference where the Marom Europe leaders have actively participated.

Participants of the Paris meeting were happy to welcome new members in the group. While in Paris there were ten Marom leaders attending, in London we had a core group of twenty people with an additional ten people attending some of the sessions creating a group of thirty young adults. This shows how quickly the group is evolving and how much there is an interest of young adults in many cities and countries to engage in Marom.

Representatives have come from the following cities:

Alicante / Amsterdam / Berlin / Budapest / Jerusalem (Marom Israel) /Ljubljana /London / Madrid / Nice / Paris /Prague / Stockholm / Valencia

On the meetings Marom leaders identified core values of Marom chapters, common vision, next steps in co-operation project and individual needs of the different Marom chapters.

While all of the Marom groups are on different stages of development we all agreed in the end of the meeting that challenges are often similar and both newer and older initiatives can learn from each other and inspire each other.

During the weekend we have learned Jewish text together, we have had social events, shared personal and professional stories. Among others the group has met Tzvi Graetz, executive director of Masorti Olami, Avigail Ben Aryeh, director of Marom Olami, Chaim Weiner director of Masorti Europe, Matt Plen, director of Masorti UK and Gill Chaplin, chair of Masorti Europe, chief organiser of the conference and rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg. These meetings offered a good opportunity for the representatives to speak out their fears, problems, dreams, questions and to receive answers of the professional and lay leadership of the Masorti movement.

A unique experience was the visit in the Moishe House where the group has met the co-founder of MOHOLO (Moushe House London), Joel Stanley, former Marom coordinator of the UK.
It is certainly not a co-incidence that the Budapest Moishe House was also founded by Marom members. The cutting edge initiative of Moishe Houses (see recent article in New York Times and JTA)

On Friday evening participants have visited the Bait Noam that is built on a similar concept of the Moishe house and during the meeting it was raised by several members that the existence of Marom centers built on a similar structure of Moishe house and the Sirály Marom JCC in Budapest belong to their vision.

As part of the seminar it is important to mention the special shabbath experience with the New North London Synagogue, especially the shabbath service with Assif (egalitarian minyen of New North london Synagogue). Many participants do not have the possibility of such services in their home country and many of them were inspired by it very much.

Last but not least the conference was closed by a panel discussion by three Marom leaders: Noemi Taylor (Paris), Adam Schönberger (Budapest) and Jackie Gerber (London, UK / US).
Schönberger has summarized the essence of Marom as follows: Marom is the outreach of the masorti movement, and being such has an enormous importance. Being such it is also the “PR” of the movement, needs to remain open, inclusive and requires special attention. At the same time, Marom has the potential of innovation, creativity, experiment which are values and needed elements of the worldwide masorti movements. An interesting result of the panel was the statement, that Marom is not necessarily the continuation of the Noam groups, as young people are searching for new group identities after 18/20. Both Noemie and Jackie has emphasized the success and importance of such simple events as Sabbath dinners. This was in line of the participants earlier statements about the needs of Marom people: young adults are searching for non-judgmental, open community spaces where they can feel at home – in their own ways.

Eszter Susán, current coordinator of the Marom Europe initiative has emphasized quality above quantity and the advantages of being a smaller organization and being more flexible to changes. Both the need of intimate groups and the focus on quaility are genuine characteristics of the generation X needs mapped by the survey of Jumpsart / The Natan Fund / The Samuel Bronfman Foundation that was also quoted by Joel Stanley, Moishe house director. ) The survey describes the new type of eco-system of young Jews in America that seems to be very similar to many initiatives in Europe, even if in Europe there are still much less such ventures as of today. Besides, Susán was also emphasizing the importance of social justice in Marom programming.

In the conference closing session Tzvi Graetz has mentioned the importance of support of Marom - the future of the masorti community, whereas Eszter Susán has emphasised the power of innovation through Marom.

Concrete results:

Communication as priority
Home hospitality between Marom Europe chapters
Ideas of further bilateral co-operations (Amsterdam-Valencia, London-Paris, etc.)
Exchange of existing projects (Jewstock, skype hevrutah)
Ideas about next meeting (probably in the fall, depends on EU funding)
Idea of extension of online hevrutot
Common blog
Mapping values of Marom Europe
Networking, information distrubition
Defining special needs and challenges of the Marom communities

After spending three days together the participants left with new ideas, new friendships and a more clear vision of Marom Europe - its mission, goals, challenges and their role in advancing it.

Adath Shalom (Paris) accueille la première réunion « brainstorming » de Marom Europe

De Budapest à Madrid, en passant par Londres, Berlin ou encore Valence, les jeunes représentants des «Marom» (Merkaz Rouhani Ou-Massorti : centre spirituel et Massorti) européens ont répondu présents, début décembre, à l’invitation de Marom Paris, le groupe des jeunes adultes d’Adath Shalom. L’objectif de cette rencontre ? Poser les premiers jalons de la création de « Marom Europe ». Ce nouveau réseau de jeunes adultes juifs Massorti européens permettra à la fois une mise en commun des expériences et activités de chacune de nos communautés, mais aussi de développer ensemble des projets internationaux audacieux.

Dîner shabbatique, offices à Adath Shalom, promenade sur les bords de Seine et séances intensives de brainstorming ont joyeusement ponctué le séjour de nos invités. Ce shabbat de décembre a d’abord été l’occasion de faire connaissance et d’en apprendre un peu plus sur le développement des autres groupes de jeunes adultes Massorti, sur le vieux continent : très actifs et innovants à Budapest et à Londres, en pleine expansion à Paris, occasionnel à Berlin, en projet à Madrid et Valence... Quant à Nice, Amsterdam et Stockholm, séduits eux-aussi par le concept « Marom », ils devraient être conviés à la prochaine rencontre du groupe.

Pour Eszter Susan, fondatrice de Marom Budapest et coordinatrice du projet européen « l’idée est de définir une vision commune de réinvention et de re-création de la vie juive à travers l’Europe». Et en matière d’innovation, Eszter ne manque pas d’imagination. Très impliquée dans le renouveau de la vie juive dans la capitale hongroise, elle et son groupe d’amis ont notamment crée un minyan, Dor Hadach, ainsi qu’un café culturel juif, Siraly, devenu très populaire à Budapest. De quoi inspirer Marom Paris et ses frères européens …

Parmi la grande variété des projets évoqués ce week-end là : le dépôt d’un dossier de candidature auprès de l’Union Européenne afin de bénéficier de subventions qui nous permettront de développer et d’enrichir nos programmes. Par ailleurs, suivant les exemples allemands et hongrois, la France, l’Angleterre et l’Espagne travaillent à l’accréditation de leurs communautés auprès du Service Volontaire Européen (SVE), dans le but d’envoyer et de recevoir des volontaires de Marom Europe dans chacune de nos kehillot respectives. Ont aussi été évoqués, le développement de programmes avec Israël ou encore la création comme à Budapest, de nouvelles « Moishe Houses », sortes de kibboutz urbains proposant de nombreuses activités culturelles, qui devraient voir le jour, pour l’instant, dans les capitales allemande et britannique.

Enfin, Marom Europe souhaite développer des partenariats bilatéraux privilégiés entre nos communautés, sur le modèle de celui qui existe entre Budapest et Berlin. Paris et Londres, qui ont décidé de s’associer, y travaillent déjà et nos jeunes amis Anglais envisagent de faire un saut outre-manche pour nous rendre visite, sans doute au printemps.

Quant au prochain rendez-vous « remue-méninges » de Marom Europe, il est lui prévu à Londres, en marge de la conférence de Massorti Europe qui se tiendra du 5 au 7 mars à la « New North London Synagogue », sur le thème de « l’héritage juif européen ».

Kick-off -Paris

Marom Europe has been established as a network of Marom chapters over Europe as a result of Masorti Olami's, Masorti Europe's and Marom Olami's lay leaders,' professionals 'and members' efforts in the fall of 2009. The group's first meeting was in Paris, in the beginning of December 2009, where we have spent shabbath together as guests of the Adath Shalom synagogue and Marom Paris.

We have exchanged about our existing projects, vision and needs, and we have defined future focus areas and concrete common project ideas, i.e.:

-European Voluntary Service exchanges
-Marom Europe conference
-Bilateral exchanges
-Online communation through common calendar
-Searching for applications based on project ideas

We had havdalah together


We have met Claude Machline, honorable chair of Masorti Europe, founder of Adath Shalom masorti synagogue

we have spent time together after Motzei shabbath in a nice bar

and we have discovered a bit of Paris together - of course!


Last but not least we had a lot of fun together! We left Paris as a group of new friends and have decided to meet again on London, during the time of the Masorti Europe conference, in March.