The restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral

OPINION:

On April 15, 2019, I was in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, for meetings with various officials. During one of our meetings, one of the meeting participants, who had been looking at his cellphone, interrupted our deliberations.

“Notre Dame is burning,” he declared.

Although we were thousands of miles from Paris, with those words, everything came to a standstill. It was as if an announcement that a cherished national leader or even a member of someone’s family had just taken seriously ill. Our collective attention turned from the business at hand to growing concern and even anguish about the state of France’s preeminent religious edifice.

Those in the room were of different faiths; they were Christians, Muslims, Jews and adherents of local faiths. Yet everyone present shared a sense of concern about the plight of the cathedral. Ecumenical grief struck all who were watching the conflagration that was steadily engulfing the Gothic structure and which would quickly topple its spire. I found myself mesmerized by the flames rapidly enveloping a building I have known since my earliest years.

I am an observant Jew living in the United States (although I did spend my first years living in Paris). But as the dimensions of the destruction wrought by the fire became apparent, I felt a personal sense of loss. The thought that Paris could be without its 800-year-old cathedral was profoundly distressing. I had never appreciated the extent to which I had any personal attachment to this edifice. Yet the possibility that it might disappear was painful to contemplate.

Skilled French firefighters extinguished the flames, but the impact was terrible to see. The spire was destroyed, the fire consumed all of the original wooden roof elements and major damage was done to the interior of the cathedral. Fortunately, many of the historic and artistic treasures inside the building were rescued and safeguarded, and much of the exterior of the church survived, albeit in a precarious state.

Expressions of anguish came from all sectors of French life and people worldwide. French President Emmanuel Macron, by law a representative of secular France and traditionally required to maintain a formal distance from religious matters, immediately came to the cathedral and declared that it would be repaired and restored within five years. There were many skeptics.

Yet on Saturday, Dec. 7, less than five years from the date of the conflagration, a fully renovated Notre Dame is to be reopened for worship and visits. People from all over the world will be present, including President-elect Donald Trump.

Thousands of artisans and specialists will have performed the restoration with private funds from sources scattered across the globe. French people of all denominations and French corporations from all economic sectors will have provided the preponderance of the funds for the massive renovation. People and entities from all over the world will have also joined in the funding. Americans constituted the second most important source of funds for this effort.

At a time when religion and Western culture are suffering unparalleled attacks and even sometimes seem on the verge of abandonment, it is startling to note the extent to which the Notre Dame restoration endeavor has engendered attention and interest. Perhaps this serves as a sign of the profound discomfort that so many feel with the attempt to undermine the religious and historic foundations of our civilization.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, himself the product of a mixed religious and ethnic background, may have said it best as he contemplated the ravages of the fire, declaring, “France is touched in its flesh, in its identity, in its history.”

He could have amplified his message by noting that, to some extent, much of humankind was emotionally and intellectually touched by the damage to this prominent symbol of Western civilization.

In so many ways, our times challenge the values upon which much of our world is based. For good or ill, our religious and historical roots have formed who we are, both personally and collectively. We cannot turn away from those origins. To do so is to deny how we became what we are.

The resurrection of Notre Dame de Paris and the massive effort it has taken to achieve it are powerful signs that many of us are still attached to the Judeo-Christian Western values that are the pillars of our societies. They emphasize the importance of cherishing those values and renewing our attachment to them when attacked.

For those of us who recognize and treasure those societal values, even if we are not Christians, the rededication of Notre Dame is a powerfully affirming sign that the positive forces of tradition are alive and well.

• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” published by HUC Press.