Because there is no longer a shochet, a kosher butcher, in Carpentras, Ms. Levy must order the meat from Marseille, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) away. “Once, the community’s shochet slaughtered chickens, lamb, and goats right inside the synagogue building,” she said.

Carpentras became a center of Jewish life after 1306, one of many occasions on which Jews were expelled from the Kingdom of France. Like other nearby sanctuaries such as Avignon and Cavaillon, Carpentras was not in France, but within the Comtat Venaissin, a papal state, where Pope John XXII decreed that refugees would be welcome. With more than 1,000 Jews among its population of about 10,000, Carpentras became known as “la petite Jerusalem,” with a large ghetto arising around its famous synagogue.