Extrait de: Dreuz.info

Haim Korsia, 51, who was elected Chief Rabbi of France last Sunday, will preside over a shrinking Jewish community. From a Jewish population of 500 000 or so – the largest Jewish community in the European Union – it may quickly fall to 400 000 or even less. According to Nathan Sharansky, the Jewish Agency chairman, 2 254 French Jews completed aliyah – the immigration process to Israel – during the five first months of 2014, against only 580 last year : a staggering 289 % increase. By December 31 this year, the sum total may be well over 5000. Never did a Western country provide Israel with such immigration rates.

Moreover, a second group of French Jews is engaging into « gradual, informal, immigration » : without applying for Israeli citizenship, they buy appartements in Israel, register their children at Israeli universities, commute between France and Israel in terms of business, or come as « frequent visitors » upon retiring. « In the end of the day, many of them are likely to stay as full-fledged immigrants », a French-Israeli sociologist says. Actual French immigration to Israel may thus be closer to 6000 or 7000 a year.

And what about a third group : French Jews who emigrate to other countries ? It is gaining momentum too. Affluent people transfer their home and office to England, Belgium or Switzerland. Young professionals go to England, the United States, Canada, East Asia. Berlin, a favorite destination for expatriate Israelis, is attracting French Jews as well.

Joel Mergui, the lay chairman of Consistoire, the National Union of French Synagogues, concedes : « You can feel the bite at every level ». Emigration means less worshippers, less kids at school, less donations for Jewish charities. « At some synagogues, whole benches are suddenly empty ».

Antisemitism is the main reason why French Jews are leaving. Two years ago, a French-born jihadist trained in the Middle East murdered one teacher and three kids at point blank at a Jewish school in Toulouse, in Southern France. A couple of weeks ago, another French-born and French-based jihadist was involved in the massacre at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. More violence occur on an almost daily basis, according to Samuel Ghozlan, a retired police commissionner who founded BNVCA, a monitoring organization on antisemitic activities. Jews are also worried by the rise of the Far Right National Front (who won one third of the French seats at the European Parliament last month), even if its current leader Marine Le Pen is eager eager to distance herself from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s antisemitic rhetorics.

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Even more ominously, a new brand of explicit, « national-socialist » antisemitism is now very much in fashion among French youths of both European and non-European origin. Quite tellingly, its main leader is a French-Cameroonese performer, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala (the creator of the « quenelle », an inverted Nazi salute). « All of sudden, we realized there might literally be no future for us », a young Parisian couple says. They will move to Tel-Aviv in August. Just in time for their kids to join a French-Israeli school there.

Chief Rabbi Korsia, who, as a young Jewish army chaplain, developed in the early 2000’s a personal friendship with then president Jacques Chirac, is convinced that the French-Jewish symbiosis initiated under Napoleon will endure. As a rule, Chief Rabbis don’t carry much religious or political influence on French Jewry : except in times of crisis and upheaval like the Dreyfus Affair or the Holocaust aftermath. That may be the case with Korsia as well.

© Michel Gurfinkiel & The Jewish Chronicle, 2014

Source et auteur: Dreuz.info

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