Winter in Provence

It was a Wednesday, or maybe a Thursday. The days were blending together. The sun was setting on the cobbled streets of a small town, cloaking it with a crisp, golden glow.

Someone would soon take note of the fact that our cheese supplies were dangerously low. A search party would fan out, in pursuit of a fromagerie, and return not even 15 minutes later, loaded down with an impossible amount of soft, pungent deliciousness.

Such an amount of cheese could never be consumed on its own - who are we, barbarians? - and so another group would set out for some bread. Invariably, a half dozen croissants, pan au chocolat, or assorted pastries would mysteriously make their way into the bag, along with three baguettes. A bottle of red wine - make that two - would materialize along the way, and finally our American family would make its way back to our rental villa outside a small town in the middle of Provence.

There was no one thing that stood out sharply from our trip, which started with a visit to Aix-en-Provence and then continued through the ruins of Arles, and the hill towns of the Luberon. And that, perhaps, was the best part. No life-altering moments, no travel crises, no extremes. We just existed, suspended in a gentle world without CNN, without politics, without work, without realities. Our luxury was in the fact that where to go for dinner was the toughest decision we would make all day.

We had escaped.

We read books. We hung out. We played badminton. We wandered endless markets, posed for an absurd amount of goofy family photos, and took in pretty landscapes.

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We took in one art exhibit that did blow me away: an interactive art and music show called Carrieres de Lumieres, set in a huge, abandoned quarry in the middle of what looked like a national park. We purchased our tickets from a small outdoor booth and were ushered through a small door into a dank, cold cavern, illuminated only by exit lights. Suddenly, we started to hear music. It grew louder, and as we looked up, we gasped to see a vivid display of Marc Chaggall paintings dancing across the cold stone walls, marching up the 100-foot ceilings in time with a synth beat, then the moan of a violin, a staccato of finger picking across the old strings of a guitar.

The light and music show went on for 40 minutes, and was followed by an even trippier Alice in Wonderland short. A chess board floated across the floor, challenging kids to jump from square to square, and finally to follow the board with their fingers as it swooned and dipped out of sight. It was quickly replaced by tea cups, then huge swirling cards, and finally, the glint of the Cheshire Cat's eyes, blinking at us one last time before the room went dark and the audience erupted in applause.

It's hard to describe, but imagine being inside of Disney's Fantasia, and you will start getting the picture.

To me, the exhibit was also unexpectedly moving. While the rest of the group preferred the Alice in Wonderland exhibit, I was fixated on Chaggall. Growing up, he had been the reference for a Russian, Jewish artist. As a Soviet-born Jew, I was exposed to him again and again. He was synonymous to me with Fiddler on the Roof, with Jewish pride (as opposed to hiding one's Jewish identity, which would have been the easier alternative), with folklore and culture.

But he had also symbolized something that grated on me a little growing up: what I perceived to be an overly aggressive emphasis by my community on "Jewishness";

making everything about Jewish identity, wearing it as a defining characteristic. Not the religious aspect of it, but the loud proclamation of Jewish ethnicity. I saw it as extra; almost like that guy at the cookout wearing an American Flag t-shirt.

This annoyance (which I cringe to admit) is entirely born of privilege. Unlike my parents, and really all of my relatives in the Soviet Union, I was never exposed to outright antisemitism and de jure discrimination based on the fact that I am a Jew.

That difference in upbringing really hit home a few years ago, when I dug up my birth certificate from the U.S.S.R. It says, in Russian: "Name: Yuliya Neyman; Nationality: Jew."

Nationality: Jew.

In the Soviet Union, being a Jew meant that you were not Russian, nor Ukrainian, nor really Soviet. You were an Other, a target. One look at your documents would allow universities to deny you admission, or police to detain and beat you up. Even less formally, discrimination was rampant and persistent. I remember my mom describing to me the social anxiety of hanging out with non-Jewish friends, the constant fear that the conversation would absent-mindedly turn towards making fun of Jews, her friends so casual in their racism that they wouldn't even realize that she was present, hearing.

And so, faced with such systemic hatred, my parents defended - and continue to defend - their Jewish identity with the same urgency that I imagine (but can never really know) African Americans defend Black Lives Matter and other similar movements. And growing up they exposed me to figures like Chagall, persistently, in the same way I imagine African American parents teach their children about Martin Luther King, about Marcus Garvey, about Booker T. Washington. Not in the way we learned about them in school, but in personal terms. In the "this shit Matters" way.

But to me, growing up in the suburbs of Washington D.C., in the comfort of an accepting, multi-cultural atmosphere, it didn't really matter. The only 'Jewish threat' I felt was the avalanche of friends' Bar Mitzvahs I was being invited to.

My parents had escaped the Soviet Union in large part to escape persecution, and to be able to live as Jews, whether or not they practiced or even believed. To allow me to grow up in an atmosphere where I could be as Jewish as I wanted. But in a way, by escaping persecution, they had eliminated one of the key drivers of their cultural expression as Jews: the fight of an out-group, fiercely protecting their heritage from a hateful and dominant mass. Their struggle was real to them, but foreign to me.

Fast forward many years, and here I was, immersed in the expressions of the poster boy for Jewish art. Surrounded by Jewish music, watching religious relics float up the walls, interspersed with Chaggall's signature collages and mosaics.

And, I felt proud.

Maybe it's the changing times we are living in. Trump, the swastikas on buildings, the ominous parallels to 1930's Germany. Or maybe it was the culmination of a year of travel to places where out-groups are fiercely persecuted. Maybe it was the Ta-Nehisi Coates book I was reading. Or the fact that we were in France, known for its ugly streak of antisemitism and xenophobia. Probably all of it together, gave me a sense that celebrating Judaism is important, and shouldn't be buried with embarrassed shrugs and 'really we're all the same' platitudes. And, for some reason, this random Chaggall exhibit in the middle of Provence was the vehicle to deliver this avalanche of thoughts onto me.

And so I stood in that dark cavern for 40 minutes, looking at the mosaic of Jewish symbols, art, history, dancing before me, and thinking about this.

I don't generally get art, but I understand the purpose of it is to make you 'feel' something. In that way, the Chaggall exhibit succeeded, powerfully.