Because of rampant anti-Semitism and the violence which results, Jews are fleeing the Muslim-dominated suburbs around Paris, and moving into neighborhoods which are, effectively, becoming Jewish ghettoes:
Over a period of just three years, roughly half the Jewish families in Villepinte have left. Some have gone to other suburbs or Paris neighborhoods considered safer for Jews; a few have left the country.
Of 300 families three years ago, only 150 remain today, community president Charly Hannoun estimates.
The reason, he says, is anti-Semitism.
Now Villepinte’s 40-year-old synagogue, which was torched in 1991 and 2001, is at risk of closing because there are barely enough regulars for a minyan. Jewish community leaders are wondering if Jews have a future here.
“It’s a whole history that's being erased,” says Hannoun, who worked with contractors and friends to build the town’s synagogue. “It's the end of the synagogue, and I say that with rage in my heart.”
Villepinte is one stark example of what is happening to many Jewish communities in the immigrant-heavy suburbs of the Seine-Saint-Denis region, north of Paris.
Scarred by the surge in anti-Semitism that swept through France between 2000 and 2005, roughly two-thirds of the mostly Sephardic Jews who once lived in these close-knit communities have left town.
Sammy Ghozlan, the president of the Seine-Saint-Denis Council of Jewish Communities, says more than 16,000 Jews have moved out of the suburbs since 2001. Left behind are synagogues weighing whether to close and mostly poor, elderly and religious Jewish families.
Experts say the Jewish flight from the suburbs is changing the demographics of France’s Jewish community and increasing the ghettoization of Jews in the country.
All of France is experiencing the problem, says University of Paris sociologist Shmuel Trigano, the author of "The Future of the Jews in France."
"It is a general shift, not a passing crisis," Trigano says. "The Jewish community is becoming a ghetto. It is no longer a community of choice but a community of necessity. In a democracy that shouldn't happen."
What did the wolf-in-Grandma's-clothing say to Little Red Riding Hood?
Jews should leave France in total.
ReplyDeleteEn masse in one parade.
Cash out, buy dollars and come here or Israel.
Maybe someone will actually notice.
Epa,
ReplyDeleteYou know what would be an interesting study?
The percentage of Jews (as part of the total population) leaving the various European countries,
as compared to the years leading up to WWII.
How do you think the numbers would compare?
Net exodus, no doubt, but what govt, even in western europe would make such a study easy or even feasible?
ReplyDeleteIt's would be an admitting that the govt cannot protect their citizens, OR that they won't
I have an acquaintance on a totally unrelated site who is a Jew living in Paris and who was afraid to give her newborn daughter a Jewish middle name. I can't discuss the issue with her because she goes into a rage about my "racism" in opposing the Islamists. Her hero is that savior of the modern world, George Soros.
ReplyDeleteThe people who understand the reality of the situation are the ones who are leaving not just the neighborhood but the continent.
I have an acquaintance on a totally unrelated site who is a Jew living in Paris and who was afraid to give her newborn daughter a Jewish middle name. I can't discuss the issue with her because she goes into a rage about my "racism" in opposing the Islamists. Her hero is that savior of the modern world, George Soros.
ReplyDeleteThe people who understand the reality of the situation are the ones who are leaving not just the neighborhood but the continent.
RRA,
ReplyDeleteIt won't help much for Jews to be all in one place in one little ghetto.
Phillip Roth made that point as well, with regard to Israel.