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March 15, 2002/Nisan2, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 26
French Jews face escalating acts of hatred
BRIGITTE DAYAN
JUF News
Il ne faut pas exagerer, my friend Evelyne exhorted me. She was making a case against exaggerating the situation in her native France, where the country's Jewish population, numbering some 600,000, has been victim to an increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks. Each week, it seems, there is another violent incident, usually instigated by Arab youths.
A school bus outside Paris is firebombed, a school is burned, a synagogue vandalized. Of course, France (and much of Europe for that matter) has always experienced an occasional cemetery desecration, but the days of expected anti-Semitism are gone.
That much, Evelyne was willing to concede. A longtime family friend, she is a successful lawyer and admittedly a former member of the Jewish intelligentsia in Paris. Perhaps her desire to paint a rosy picture is a residual effect of her leftist days, when she believed that France was truly a country that would protect all its citizens.
Yet even as she argued against painting the situation as catastrophic, she lamented the deep sense of uncertainty felt by her community. Her religious friends don't wear kippot in public anymore, fearful of attracting hostility; she and other parents are questioning the viability of a future in France for their children, and many are seriously considering making aliyah.
Particularly troubling is that the rise in anti-Semitic incidents - estimated at more than 300 since the outbreak of the violence in Israel in September 2000 - is accompanied by a lackadaisical attitude by the government. It's not only a question of what the French government will do about the anti-Semitism but whether it recognizes the problem at all.
Evelyne points to a widely reported conversation between the country's chief rabbi, Joseph Citruk and its prime minister, Jacques Chirac, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in America. Citruk wanted to discuss the escalating anti-Semitic violence in France. Chirac's response to the rabbi was a perfect example of the political approach the French fable writer Jean de La Fontaine called "la raison du plus fort"- the reasoning of the strongest one is always the best (read: dominant) one.
"There are 600,000 Jews in France and 6 million Arabs," Chirac told Citruk, as if to say his hands are tied.
One can imagine that such statements, more commonplace than we would like in France, make the Jewish community rather anxious.
Says Evelyne, "The question we are asking ourselves today is what role the French police will play if Arabs decide to attack Jews en masse."
It reminded me of King Ahasuerus in the Purim story. Although Haman is the explicit villain of the megillah, he was able to advance his plan with the knowledge and inaction of the king, who meanwhile hid under the pretense of ignorance.
It's an attitude that permeates French politics. Only several months ago, the French ambassador to England called Israel a "shitty little country'' at a cocktail reception hosted, no less, by a Jewish journalist. And Jean Marie Le Pen, a veteran politician whose disdain for Jews is matched only by his disdain for Arabs, has announced that he has the requisite number of signatures to run in the April presidential primaries.
In truth, the situation in France is a paradox. New kosher restaurants open all the time, synagogues are built, conferences are held, and Jewish life - cultural and religious - is burgeoning. At the same time that French Jews are threatened, Judaism in France is flourishing. It's not a new paradox in Jewish life; Jews often have been most prolific and Jewish communities most active while persecuted.
Judaism doesn't wither under attack - it thrives. And it strikes me that this may be the best answer of all.
Brigitte Dayan is the managing editor of JUF News in Chicago. She may be reached by e-mail, BrigitteDayan@juf.org.
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