Jewish History Tour Of Le Marais

Emma is a wonderful person and knowledgeable, excellent guide. She shared her personal connection to the history of the city which made our experience even more meaningful.

Karen Reb Rudel is a great tour guide who provided a meaningful and memorable tour of the Marais district and the history of Jewish life in Paris. Highly recommend!

Excellent and informative. Wonderful information

An excellent tour. Karen is so personable and generous with all her stories. I truly enjoyed her istory as a connections in the community. I learned so much from her and the places we went were truly transformative along with the stories she shared. I would highly recommend for the Jeish and non-Jewish alike.

This tour was the true highlight of nearly 3 weeks spent in and around Paris. When I think about what I hope for in a walking tour it generally includes hoping it will be fun and insightful and increase my perspective of what I am seeing as a tourist. I’ve never been on a walking tour that also inspired and humbled me so. That connected me with a collective history far greater than I could have imagined while also filling me with pride and sorrow and laughs and elevating my perspective of my own sense of identity. And that was before the falafel and tefillin!!! Karen is hilarious and brilliant in how she shares all the many ways Jewish people have innovated and helped create the modern France and world while also paying deep respect to all the suffering and persecution that is sadly intertwined with being Jewish. This tour is a must for everybody who comes to Paris!!! -- with gratitude... Alec

Karen was amazing. She made our tour from beginning till the end with so much information, history , the place, Restarant, Synagogue and museum was everything on top rated And the most important it was very funny and pleasant Definitely will recommend to everybody Great job Karen 👏

We loved Karen's Jewish walking tour of Le Marais. The tour was insightful, informative, and enjoyable. Karen expertly provided historical context, and with her great sense of humor, created a truly memorable experience. Highlights of the tour included vivid examples of Jewish history and a visit to one of the oldest synagogues in Paris. Lunch at L'As du Fallafel was fantastic. Thank you for an amazing experience.

Karen was so knowledgeable, friendly, funny and personal. Her presentation was relaxed and factual. She knew so many local people and got us into a special restaurant without us waiting on line. Her organization was perfect

Love to share our experience from today’s Marais history tour with Sight Seekers Paris. Our guide Karen was absolutely amazing—knowledgeable, funny, and incredibly attentive. The way she structured the tour made us forget our fatigue, as we were completely absorbed in the stories she told, each one leaving a lasting impression. Although the tour was scheduled for 3.5 hours, she generously spent nearly 5 hours with us, and the time just flew by.

It was an extremely informative and enjoyable tour. Thomas was super knowledgeable. I would highly recommend.

Wonderful guide. Great experience. Karen is fun, engaging, knowledgeable and fun to spend time with.

We really appreciated Karen’s warmth and humor while learning so much about Marais Jewish history. We hope to book more tours from her company next time we are in Paris.

Our guide Karen was the best! She was extremely knowledgeable about the area and tits history. Meeting her felt like we had known her for years. Highly recommend this tour! Small and intimate.

We really enjoyed our Jewish tour of the Marais with Emma and learned a lot about the area and the history of Jewish people in France. Emma was very friendly and knowledgeable and made the tour fun and educational for our family of three on the tour. We also enjoyed meeting the two other families on the tour. Lunch was a lot of fun at Las du Falafel! I highly recommend this tour to better appreciate a great neighborhood in Paris.

Karen our tour guide was excellent. She is so knowledgable about Jewish history, customs, and Paris. She is funny, and entertaining. The tour also included a stop for lunch at the best felafel place in Paris.

Karen has read over 900 books on the history of Paris; this plus her theatre training make her incredibly fact-filled yet emotional tour a don't-miss opportunity to explore the Marais. Her excitement for the topic oozes out of every sentence on her tour; despite over 15 years of experience giving this presentation, she makes it fresh and relevant. The walk included numerous stops to sit and catch our breath -- great for the older members of the group -- while the conversation continued so that we were absorbing info and ambiance throughout. We will be back to enjoy other Sight Seekers Paris tours on our next visit to this city!

Emma was so knowledgeable! We really enjoyed the tour and highly recommend it. Lunch was easy & so lovely to not wait in line!!

We spent almost 4 hours with Karen, our wonderful guide. I was visiting my daughter who is studying in Paris from California and we wanted a better understanding of Jewish history in Paris. Karen’s detailed knowledge of Jewish history in France was brought to life with anecdotes, true accounts, and humor. Her many connections to local businesses made the tour more personalized. We even went inside of an old synagogue in the heart of the Pletzl and had an amazing lunch at L’As du Fallafel (with VIP entry). I highly recommend this tour with Karen. Her warmth, humor, and depth of knowledge make it a must!

Thank you Emma for a wonderful walking tour of the Jewish Marais. We were fortunate to have a small group (my husband and me and our guide Emma) and great weather, all contributing to the very interesting tour and information provided by the lovely Emma. Emma indulged my husband's desire to visit a kosher bakery and then we had lunch at the famous felafel restaurant, skipping the long line outside. Our last stop was the shoah memorial, which we took the opportunity to visit, and then returned to the Canavalet Museum - well worth a visit to explore the history of Paris in a beautiful building and excellent exhibits. Thank you Sightseekers for a wonderful experience!

My husband and I went on Karen’s tour . She has a magical way of explaining the past and weaving history into the present . We highly recommend Karen for her passionate storytelling, vast knowledge which she sprinkles with humour .

Emma was wonderful! Despite the rain and cold, she made the experience come alive for my husband and I and our 13&14 year olds. She was knowledgeable about the history and provided anecdotes and personal stories to help make everything relatable. We thoroughly enjoyed our morning and learned a lot.

An excellent tour of the Jewish quarter in Le Marais. Karen provided welcome context for non Jewish and Jewish visitors. She described not only the history but also the cultural aspects of everyday life. She placed her presentation within the larger story of Jewish life and historical experiences. Highly recommend for both Jews and non Jews so the memory and history are not lost. A great learning experience for all. Lunch was delicious too!

Emma was great, loved doing the tour with her. She was knowledgeable and easy to learn from. Learned a lot. Thank you Emma!

Fantastic tour! Meaningful, richly informative and a balance of history and humor. My partner and I loved this tour of the Marais on the eve of Shabbat. Karen is so knowledgeable and it’s obvious from the way the community greets her that she is well respected. She shared wonderful information about the Marais, Jewish history and French history. I would recommend this tour without hesitation.

Great tour with Karen!She is very knowledgable about Jewish history and was interesting to listen to her with her added jokes throughout the tour. Would totally recommend this tour and the kosher food tour too!!

We signed up to do the Jewish History Tour of Le Marais with Karen Reb Rudel on Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 10:00. Because of logistical problems on our end, we arrived about an hour late to the tour, which had already commenced with another couple that had also signed up for the tour. We missed a good hour of the tour. We joined in, and Karen managed to fill us in with a bit of what we had missed. We visited 1 synagogue, Karen showed us some sites of importance in Jewish Marais, and we did have lunch at L'as du Falafel which was GREAT. Unfortunately, we had to leave before the tour was over so that we could get to the airport in time for our flight home. We did in the end, perhaps, only a third of the walking tour with Karen totally because of our logistical issues. Karen, who is the founder and CEO of Sight Seekers Paris, graciously offered to do a personal zoom with us at a later date, on her own precious time without any additional cost, to fill in for us the bulk of what we had missed on the tour of June 4. I did arrange with Karen to do the zoom last week, and our zoom lasted over an hour with Karen's expertise commentary and virtual tour, with pictures and maps depicting Jewish Marais. Karen has a tremendous wealth of knowledge on this topic and has continued to add to her knowledge base facts and stories based on first-hand testimonies that she's gathered over the years from French Holocaust survivors and Righteous Gentiles that she's met. I was so very impressed with Karen. She for sure was not required to do a zoom with us, on her time, to fill in what we had missed on the tour because of our logistical screwups. In fact, I don't remember ever having been in a situation where a guide offered to make up for part of a tour that was missed because of participant's negligence. This tells you how kind and responsible Karen is, and how committed she is to telling the story of Jewish Marais. I definitely recommend Karen and her Sight Seekers Paris wholeheartedly.

We had a fun time on the Jewish History site tour. Karen took us to all the historical sites on Rue de Rosiers and pointed out the modern changes as well. Karen has lived in Paris for over thirty years. She knows all the inside tips, has access to synagogue and good restaurant.

If you’re interested in a true Jewish tour of the Murais section of Paris, don’t miss out on site seekers tour given by Karen. It was truly very special.

We walked historic streets, explored synagogues, and bakeries and had a delicious lunch at famous falafel place. Karen brough Jewish Paris to life, funny, smart and deeply human. Powerful stories about past and present. Don't miss the tour.

Our family took a Jewish history tour with Sight Seekers Paris in April and we learned so much. Karen is extremely knowledgeable. We saw the Marais through a completely different lens thanks to her expert guidance. Our falafel lunch at L'As du Fallafel was delicious (as expected) but what was extra special was how well we were treated there thanks to the relationship Karen has built over the years with them.

Sight Seekers Paris was highly recommended by a friend and boy am I glad we did it! We took the Jewish Tour of the Marais. Karen, the owner of Sight Seekers was our guide. She is awesome. Because she was in the entertainment industry, she made our tour both interesting and fun. And btw you don’t have to be Jewish to take this tour. My travel mate isn’t Jewish and she too thoroughly enjoyed it. History is history and if you’re interested it makes no difference whose history we’re talking about. After all how many cathedrals do we visit in Europe whether we are Christian or not? We’ve already discussed doing another one of their tours if we go back to Paris. Thanks Karen!!!

My friends and I went on the Jewish walking tour with Karen Rudel. I am an American who has lived in France for a few years, and my friends are Americans who had been to Paris before. Needless to say, we wanted something that was authentic and not just aimed at tourists who wanted to take photos with the Eiffel tour in a beret. We are so happy we found this tour. I have been on many walking tours but very few have been this enjoyable. If anyone is looking for a tour focused on a rich cultural history, that is moving, funny, touching, makes you laugh AND cry this is your tour. Karen goes into such a deep dive into the history of Judaism and the Jewish people in Paris, spanning from the Middle Ages, to the holocaust, all the way to the modern day. It is a great tour to learn about history, to laugh, and of course, to eat really good falafel. Karen is very funny, sweet, approachable and a wealth of knowledge. Definitely not to be missed.