“A fire is burning.” Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky declared this to European Jewry in the 1930s. Too few heeded his cry. Leaving Paris after a solidarity mission following the terrorist attacks at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, I offer a similar cry.
The French prime minister proclaimed, “France without Jews is not France,” meaning: you must stay; you belong here. But virtually every French Jew I spoke with expressed fear about being – remaining – in France. Their fear is palpable, and has prompted them to consider leaving.
During the solidarity mission I visited the legendary Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld, who lives in Paris with her husband, Serge. Years back, Beate and I joined in protests around the world against the Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, an ex-Nazi. With her customary candor, Beate told me, “If this past week was only about terrorism against Jews, there would be little outcry here…. It’s only because the attack at Hyper Cacher was linked to Charlie Hebdo that millions marched in the street.”
I was not alone on this mission. Several young rabbis and students – voices of the future – took part as well. As a result we were able to fan out, connecting with a larger portion of the French Jewish community. Our basic message was the same: students telling students, rabbis telling rabbis and other Jewish communal leaders: We Are One With You.
I’ll never forget our visit to an early childhood center, where little children were brought into an open area surrounded by fully armed French soldiers. A child’s innocence disturbed by a world gone crazy.
In fact, wherever you see soldiers in Paris these days, you pretty much know you’re near a site of Jewish education or worship. In one synagogue, soldiers use an outer room as a base to unload their gear and rest. Just 70 years after the Vichy government deported Jews, French soldiers are guarding Jews. How long that will continue, no one can know.
We had a long conversation with an extraordinary man who had been intimately involved in the tahara (ritual purification) of the murdered. A veteran of the Israeli army, and now a long-term resident of Paris, this strong but gentle soul needed someone to talk to. In telling his story he broke down.
“Those murdered in acts of anti-Semitism are considered kadosh,” he said. “During the tahara, I felt closer to God than ever, like the kohen gadol on Yom Kippur. One of the murdered, Yoav, was the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis.” (Yoav was killed as he heroically tried to grab the assassin’s weapon.) After the man shared with Yoav’s father how he had meticulously performed the tahara, the father had embraced him, saying, “We will be brothers forever. I raised Yoav in life, and you cared for him in death.”
In the midst of all the pain, French Jews expressed positive feelings about their government, especially its commitment to protect the Jewish community. All the same, I think the French government’s strong criticism of Israel during the recent Gaza War has contributed to the vulnerability of French Jews. You can’t separate “Israel“ from “Jew.”
Indeed, the dangers facing French Jewry are great; some say insurmountable. “It’s not Tisha B’Av” – the day the Temple was destroyed – one leader tells me, “but we’re in the beginning of the three weeks” – meaning the weeks leading up to that date. There is concern that support for the terrorists goes beyond radical Islam. In recent days, French security traced 21,000 tweets declaring solidarity with the terrorist who attacked Hyper Cacher and there were news reports that many Muslim students refused to participate in a national moment of silence commemorating the victims.