Spending Shabbat in Paris after a day of infamy
The last time I saw a Jewish minyan relocate from a synagogue to a private residence for security reasons was in 2010. I was in Rayda, Yemen, where the Jews were still reeling from the assassination of Moshe Nahari, the brother of a prominent rabbi.
I never thought I would find myself at the same exact same setting in Paris, only four years later.
On Friday night, I attended Shabbat services just off Place de la Republique in Paris. The services were supposed to be held in a synagogue, but the ongoing crisis made that impossible and they were moved to a private residence. Just hours earlier, French security forces had freed 15 Jewish hostages from a kosher supermarket. Four other hostages had been killed. As a precaution, authorities urged Jewish merchants to close for the day. They also approached Jewish leaders and asked them not to hold Shabbat services at the city’s synagogues.
Shabbat is supposed to be a festive occasion. But the atmosphere in the makeshift prayer house was anything but celebratory.
The gatherers had that same look I see anytime I travel to Jewish communities in Arab states: a worried look. Jan. 9, 2015 will go down as a day of infamy in France. French President Francois Hollande called the attack on Hyper Cacher (the kosher supermarket) an “appalling anti-Semitic act.”
Killings were not a surprise
Roger Cukierman, head of France’s Jewish umbrella organization, CRIF, told me he was not surprised by the attack on the Jewish shoppers.
“After French Jew Ilan Halimi was kidnapped and tortured to death in 2006, I said the Jews of France were all in danger,” Cukierman said. “In 2012, when three children and one man were killed by a gunmen at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, I doubled down on that statement. We must realize that there is a full-fledged war between two civilizations in France.
“Our democracy and our values are in the jihadists’ crosshairs, and the Jews are on the frontline because they represent some of the values terrorists want to destroy.”
