“Me and my friends think about it all the time. When are we going to leave for Israel and do our alya ? said Nathanael, using the Hebrew word for “ascension,” which refers to the act of a Jew emigrating to Israel. “For now, I have decided to stay. But until when? I don’t know anything about it. »
Son of an Algerian father (Sephardic) and a Polish mother (Ashkenazi), this electrician laughingly describes himself as a “bastard”. He has always lived in Contades, the peaceful Jewish quarter of Strasbourg with elegant Haussmannian buildings. Between passers-by doing their Sabbath shopping and mothers walking their children in the large park of the Peace Synagogue, rebuilt after the Second War, life seems peaceful.
But it’s only an illusion, says Nathanaël. “Here, life is no longer the same as before. Today, when I go out of the neighborhood, I take off my yarmulke, which I had never done before. In the tram and metro, insulting remarks are common. When school leaves, parents no longer linger. It’s often a question of looks. I too thought about leaving France. Here, we feel less and less welcome — it’s sad, this country has been so welcoming — but in Israel, there is war. We are caught in the crossfire. »
In front of the large synagogue, next to which the French flag flies, two police vans stand permanent guard. It is here that a 15-year-old Chechen boy was arrested with a knife in October 2023. Earlier in the year, in the Meinau district, an individual attacked a mother and her children, as well as than to a plainclothes police officer who came to their aid, shouting “ Allah Akbar “. At the police station, he declared: “You will all go to hell because of what you are doing in Palestine. »
While Jews represent less than 1% of the French population, anti-Semitic acts have experienced a meteoric rise, reaching 1,676 last year. In the three months following October 7, 2023, they jumped by 1000%, according to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). And during the first quarter of 2024, there were three times more than during the same period the previous year, according to data from the French government.
“Death to the Jews”
With around 20,000 people, Strasbourg is home to one of the main Jewish communities in France. In this city where the first Jewish traces date back to the Roman era, not all anti-Semitic acts have the scale of the attack on the Christmas market committed on December 11, 2018 by Chérif Chekatt, which left five dead and 11 injured. . But they are commonplace. This is evidenced by the many young people who joined the Islamic State group from Meinau, Schiltigheim and Wissembourg, where one of the Bataclan jihadists, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, came from.
Anti-Semitism takes more subtle forms, like that of this illegal Algerian immigrant who refused to deliver meals to Jews.
“The day after the pogrom of October 7, children who took the tram to go to school saw inscriptions “Death to the Jews”,” explains Pierre Haas, president of the CRIF of Alsace. “Israel had not even reacted yet when we immediately witnessed a liberation of anti-Semitism. However, if there is a city where interreligious dialogue takes place, it is Strasbourg. Jews are very attached to France, which is the first country in Europe to grant them citizenship. »
“Happy as God in France,” says an old Yiddish adage. Last September 27, we celebrated the 233rde anniversary of the emancipation of French Jews in 1791 by the Revolution. Then came Napoleon, who, despite certain controversial measures, granted full citizenship to the Jews and created the structures that still exist for Jewish worship in France. This is why every week, during Sabbath morning services, the faithful recite the Prayer for France.
This did not prevent more than 1,600 Jews from making their alya since October 7.
If the Jewish population of Strasbourg remains stable, it is because hundreds of Jews are fleeing the North African suburbs of Paris, Lyon or Toulouse to take refuge there. But hundreds more have left the city. This is the case of Antoine Strobel-Dahan, who left Strasbourg for Toronto seven years ago. “We first moved from 14e district of Paris to live in Strasbourg with our three children because we had family in the region and it was a welcoming city with a very open Jewish quarter. An ideal place for a young family. But after the attacks of Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan, it was no longer possible. »
Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Review Tenou’aAntoine Strobel-Dahan personally knew the journalists from Charlie Hebdo and stayed a stone’s throw from the Bataclan every time he came to Paris. “We couldn’t stand seeing the police vans outside our children’s school — and everyone panicking when they weren’t there. But above all, in this stifling atmosphere, we found ourselves among Jews. We had never lived like that. We didn’t want to stay in a country where young imbeciles sing in the subway: “We are Nazis and proud.” We thought about Israel, but it is a socially harsh country and, with three children, there is the obligation of military service. »
Antoine Strobel-Dahan defines himself as a liberal Jew who is very critical of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. But nothing helps, “for a certain left, like La France insoumise (LFI), we are guilty as Jews”. “They do not criticize a government or a policy, but want the disappearance of a country. »
“My North African friends no longer speak to me”
The same type of reasoning led to the cancellation of the Israeli film festival Shalom Europa, which had returned every year for 16 years. “Seven months after October 7, we were ejected,” explains its spokesperson Alice Ullmann. “We are accused of being accomplices of a genocidal state. But that doesn’t make any sense! Most of the filmmakers we feature are very critical of government policy. We seek to highlight the diversity of Israeli cinema, which is also very free. »
All it took was the threats from Palestine support committees and a lesbian collective echoed on social networks for Star cinemas to withdraw. Cinemas which also host a Palestinian film festival and until very recently hosted a lesbian film festival. Shalom Europe could soon be hosted in a large hall owned by the City, but it will never be like a real cinema, says Alice Ullmann.
This anti-Israeli activism finds its hard core at the University of Strasbourg, whose president, Michel Deneken, denounced the attack on three Jewish students who were putting up posters calling for the release of Hamas hostages and against anti-Semitism.
Nicole Milman knows something about this. “We’ll find you.” We know where you live. We will do to you what you do to the Palestinians. » These are the kind of messages that this Israeli citizen, who came to study in France five years ago, found one fine morning in her Instagram box. This is nothing exceptional. According to an IFOP survey published in September 2023, 9 out of 10 Jewish students in France have witnessed anti-Semitic comments or acts.
A student of civilization and literature of the English-speaking world, she also gives distance learning courses to Canadian federal civil servants wishing to improve their knowledge of French and English.
Seven of his acquaintances were killed on October 7, 2023, and his cousin was lucky to escape. One of the hostages lived in her neighborhood. “I didn’t feel the slightest empathy. My North African friends with whom I studied no longer speak to me. If I express myself in Hebrew, I am insulted in the middle of class and people refuse to work in a group with me. These people are telling me to go home, but at the same time, they are telling me that my country must disappear. You should know! »
“Anti-Semitism has migrated to the left”
In Strasbourg, it is difficult to find a Jew who, after 15 minutes of discussion, will not talk to you about LFI. Everyone is appalled by the refusal of the main left-wing party in France to label Hamas as terrorist and by the “Death to the Jews” slogans heard in its demonstrations.
“This liberation of speech has even become a voice,” says the rabbi of Meinau, Mendel Samama, whose brother is a rabbi in Brossard, on the South Shore, in the Montreal region.
“Strasbourg is the last shtetl of Europe,” he says ironically, using a term which designated the Jewish neighborhoods of Europe before the Second War. Over the years, Meinau has radically transformed: the Jews who fled Algeria in the 1970s were gradually replaced by Muslims from the Maghreb. “It is no longer good to walk around there with a yarmulke,” admits the rabbi. Here, we are on a powder keg! Our threshold of tolerance has widened. The age of comfort is over. »
According to him, Emmanuel Macron committed a serious political mistake by not participating in the great march against anti-Semitism on November 12, 2023 in Paris.
“Today, anti-Semitism has migrated to the left,” says Pierre Haas. He hides behind the scapegoat of Israel. It has morphed into anti-Zionism, but it’s the same thing. » Same story at the Jewish Consistory of Bas-Rhin. “Anti-Zionism has today become the pretext for anti-Semitism,” said its president, Maurice Dahan. It has become the seemingly democratic and proper way to express anti-Semitism. This is what we discovered with amazement on October 7. I say it, my France hurts! »
But for Rabbi Samama, “thealya will not be the solution.” “It is not by leaving one ghetto for another that we will solve the problem. To do this, Jews will have to wake up from their slumber and become activists again. The time of comfort is over, but the cause of the Jews in France is not lost. »