In just eight months, 4566 French Jews have finalized aliyah, the emigration process to Israel.
A moving ceremony took place last Sunday at the Rabbinical School of France in Paris. Samuel Sandler, the head of the Versailles Jewish community, donated a Torah scroll dedicated to the memory of the four victims of the Toulouse massacre in 2012 : his son, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, his grandsons Aryeh and Gabriel, aged 6 and 3, and his little cousin Myriam Monsenego, 8. All four of them had been shot at point blank by a jihadist terrorist trained in the Middle East, Mohamed Merah.
Haim Korsia and Michel Guggenheim, respectively the Chief Rabbis of France and Paris, were attending the ceremony, as well as Joel Mergui, the chairman of Consistoire (the national union of French synagogues), several government officials, and the head of the Muslim community in Versailles.
In addtion Sandler donated a Torah mantle, to be used for another scroll, which his own father, Robert Sandler, had purchased fifty years ago under almost unbelievable circumstances.
The Torah mantle was on display near Saint-Sulpice church at the window of a shop specializing in Christian books and religious items. Robert Sandler stepped into the shop and asked where this Jewish object came from. He was told that an unknown person had ordered for the mantle to be embroidered shortly before WW2 and had never reclaimed it ever since then. Realizing that the original owner had probably perished during the Holocaust, Robert Sandler saw it as a duty to redeem the mantle and to make sure it would be used for the Jewish purposes it had been intended for.
« I would never have imagined that this mantle rescued from the WW2 wreckage of Jewish life and religion would one day be associated with another Jewish tragedy », Samuel Sandler commented.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls is to greet the Consistoire Council at the Paris Great Synagogue shortly before the High Holidays. No doubt he will reiterate the government’s commitment to the French Jews safety. It is a fact, however, that growing numbers of French Jews feel deeply unsure about their future.
No less than 4655 of them have finalized their aliyah to Israel in just eight months, from January 1 to August 31. According to Ariel Kandel, the Jewish Agency director for France, a 6000 olim threshold will probably be reached by the end of the year. Many Jews are leaving for other countries, especially the United States. According to the New York Observer, French Jewish buyers have invested 1,44 billion dollars in property in New York only over the past twelve months.
Another sign of the French Jews fears is that some of them may be swinging to the Far Right. According to Ifop, a leading pollster, 13,5 % of the French Jewish voters cast a ballot for Marine Le Pen, the National Front candidate, in the 2012 presidential election. Which is less than the national average (18 %) but much more earlier National Front’s Jewish returns : in 2007, only 4,3 % of the Jewish voters supported Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father.
© Michel Gurfinkiel & The Jewish Chronicle, 2014