At that demonstration, some Muslims held signs that not only echoed the rallying cry “Je Suis Charlie” but also proclaimed “Je Suis Juif” (“I Am Jewish”). The public overture was especially poignant at a time when the two communities are so often pitted against one another.
But on the same day that brought this and other messages of hope, the Jewish Agency for Israel reported that hundreds of French Jews attended an information fair in Paris, held under tight security, to explore immigration to Israel. Though the event had been scheduled before last week’s terror attacks, the turnout suggested that for some French Jews this unity rally may have come too late.
Numbering about a half-million, the Jewish community in France is the largest in Europe — and third largest in the world after Israel and the United States. Rising anti-Semitism in recent years, however, has chipped away at the numbers.
Seven thousand French Jews moved to Israel in 2014, according to the Jewish Agency. That number more than doubled the previous year’s figure, and for the first time more Jews moved to Israel from France than they did from any other country.
A year marred by anti-Semitism
The attack on the kosher market Friday came during a manhunt for suspects in the killing of 12 at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo two days earlier. Four died in the market, making it the deadliest attack on French Jews in nearly three years. In March 2012, a teacher and three students were gunned down at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
Like the victims of the supermarket shooting, the Toulouse victims were also buried in Israel. The practice of being buried there is a matter of faith, not nationality, CNN reported at the time, and especially meaningful to those who are religiously observant. The Consistory of Paris, which represents Jewish communities, said in 2012 that 40% of practicing French Jews opt for burial in Israel.
Before the Friday siege at the market even ended, Jewish businesses in the area were shuttered and Paris’ largest synagogue, the Grande Synagogue, was closed for Shabbat services for the first time since World War II.
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“The choice was made by the French Revolution in 1789 to recognize Jews as full citizens,” Valls told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg before last week. “To understand what the idea of the republic is about, you have to understand the central role played by the emancipation of the Jews. It is a founding principle.”
So if Jews were to leave en masse, the French Republic would be “judged a failure,” he said.
“If 100,000 French people of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is not France anymore,” said Valls, whom Goldberg noted is the son of Spanish immigrants. “But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France.”
While some people have left, and perhaps more will, Rodan-Benzaquen, the Paris AJC director, is not fretting about a “mass exodus,” which she called overstated. She’d rather wait to see if France will do everything it can to make Jews feel safe.
“I’m more worried about the state of mind of people who are in France and asking themselves if they have a future here,” she told CNN by phone late Monday. “It affects the way they live in this country.”
If they feel lonely or disconnected from France, that would signal trouble.
“Jews are totally intertwined with what the French Republic is about,” she said. “French Jews are French, and they want to continue living in the country.”
In fact, when Jews go to synagogue, she said, they offer up a special prayer. It is a prayer for the republic, the place that for centuries has been their home.
