Reform Reflections: French without tears

In honor of the visit of President and Madame Sarkozy to Israel, it's time for all good citizens to dust off their arsenal of French phrases. One or two of them seem particularly germane (although not German).

Let's start with  plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Attributed to the great nineteenth-century man of letters Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, this expression has received a variety of translations, most frequently; the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's an epigram which captures something profound about culture in general, and we may find some particular resonance for Jewish culture and contemporary life.

Change is indeed a feature of human civilization, much more than most people are prepared to admit. I have recently read Orlando Figes' tremendous Natasha' Dance, A Cultural History of Russia, in which he chooses a number of examples to demonstrate that what is often considered to be quintessentially Russian may in fact be a late interloper. One example which stood out for me is the famous Russian doll, which Figes exposes as a late interloper to the ranks of the quintessentially Russian. They appear at the every end of the nineteenth century, probably under the influence of Japanese artefacts.

As it is with Russian dolls, so it is with many of the items and beliefs we believe to be ancient and unchanging. In the case of Jewish civilization, the range and depth of innovation and change can be breathtaking. Think for a moment of all those aspects of the faith and practice of the Biblical Hebrew which have been excised or altered radically by subsequent eras. Think of the innovations of the Sages of the Talmud (often presented as hyper-traditional, but revolutionary nonetheless), of the philosophers of the High Middle Ages, of the masters of the Kabbalah, of the Hasidic movement.

Change is a central feature of the Jewish story, and acrobatic attempts to deny this usually involve a studied ignorance of Jewish History. It is sometimes particularly galling to consider that those who promoted most vigorously the doctrine of Judaism's eternal unchanging character were themselves involved in radical innovations of the intellect and the spirit. But just because change is a cause of discomfort doesn't mean it can be denied or ignored for long.

And yet - our Francophone friends are on to something with their pungent epigram. For indeed as much as things change, so indeed do they stay the same. Or rather: the existence of radical transformation is matched by something equally undeniable - texts, practices, experiences and places which pre-date our current interpretations and extrapolations. To put it another way: the instruction to 'Sing to the Lord a New Song' is very ancient: the new is mandated out of the old.

The proverb has another meaning, of course. It implies a skepticism about every new dawn. It tells us that every fresh start is more stale than it appears. Russia provides another classic example of this - after all, Communist despots may have presented themselves as radical innovators, but they ended up looking remarkably familiar to the despots who came before them. Here in Israel, where we are thankfully low on despots, followers of the political system often have recourse to Karr's famous expression, because it usually transpires that the Next Great Thing looks remarkably similar to the Last Old Thing. Sometimes he is the Last Old Thing But One.

For me, however, the attraction of the saying is not its cynicism, but rather the way it expresses one of the key paradoxes of Life, The Universe and Everything. Things change; things stay the same. Come to think of it, Yehudah Amichai found a way of expressing this idea in a late poem, translated here from the Hebrew:

I would like to add two more commandments to the ten: the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not change," and the Twelfth Commandment "Thou shalt change. You will change."

There are other great French expressions - the pluralistic sentiments of chacun à son gout are simple, true, and easily overlooked. This week, as the paparazzi reach new heights of pap, Monsieur le Président may have cause to think of another famous French view, to be found in the writings of Alexandre Dumas:

Il y a une femme dans toute les affaires; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis: 'Cherchez la femme'. One way of translating this would be: There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, 'Look for the woman'.

This was certainly the philosophy of Israel's journalists, who seem to be spending much of Monsieur S's visit looking for Madame S. Still, this shouldn't surprise us. Men have been blaming women since the Garden of Eden, and probably ogling them just as long: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.