In France, primetime ad shows Jewish family forced to hide identity due to antisemitism
The commercial moved many of its millions of viewers to tears, but angered others who said it was superficial and avoided pointing a finger at those to blame
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
A television commercial in France about antisemitism is introducing millions of primetime viewers to the real-life effects of hatred on Jews who feel they need to hide their identity because of it.
The 100-second commercial, which millions have watched since it premiered on France’s national day, July 14, features the Cohen family in Paris and a Black man who is a close friend of their university-age son.
The ad breaks down into relatable parts the realities of life for Jews in France after the advent in 2000 of a phenomenon called “new antisemitism”: the targeting of Jews, often by people of Muslim descent, in and between recurring waves of Israel-related Jew-hatred.
The ad, which follows the Cohens as they transition from an openly Jewish life to practicing Judaism in secret, assuming a non-Jewish alias along the way, has moved many French Jews and non-Jews who saw in it a jarring snapshot of a tragic reality.
Others found it superficial and unrealistic theater that perpetuates perceptions of Jews as powerless victims and avoids naming the most recent iteration of the problem out of political correctness. Online, meanwhile, an army of social media users dismissed the ad as a Jewish attempt to deflect from the suffering of Palestinians.
“Everything in that ad is something that happens every day to Jewish families in Paris and France,” Philippe Karsenty, a former deputy mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris, told The Times of Israel. “It takes the viewer on a tour of those realities, going past the generalizations. Its specificity is its power because French non-Jews are generally unaware of how we Jews live here.”
In the ad’s opening scene inside the Cohens’ home, the family and friend watch a news report about an assault against three men wearing a kippah. The matriarch declares she’s changing the user name of the family’s online accounts for shopping and deliveries. A series of short scenes follow, each depicting aspects of fear and concealment by the family.
In one scene, the son hesitates before writing his first name in a chat with a prospective date. In another, the Cohens have their mezuzah removed from outside their apartment’s door. Jump to their youngest daughter telling the Black man she can’t wear her Star of David pendant outside anymore. Next, the son hushes the Black man when he asks on a crowded bus whether he plans to go to synagogue in the evening.
The Black man watches his Jewish friend move products from the branded plastic bags of a kosher meat shop into unmarked ones. The two are alarmed to see a university campus protest. It makes the Jewish man’s sister cry. The family identifies themselves to a delivery man as Dubois and draws the curtains of their apartment during candle-lighting before Shabbat. The Black friend is seen gripping his head on a lobby floor bearing graffiti that reads: “Jews live here.”
The ad is part of a campaign titled “Let us Retrieve Our Fraternity” – a reference to the national motto of France – by the International League against Racism and Antisemitism, or LICRA. Founded in 1927 as a Jewish group fighting mostly antisemitism, it has since broadened its mandate, taking on also perceived biases against Muslims and Blacks, among other minorities.
“When men and women hide their identity, France renounces its fraternity,” a text appears at the end of the ad. Funded by private donors, the ad “seeks to pour more meaning into the word [fraternity] and wake up the silent majority that still believes in universalism,” said Mario Stasi, the president of LICRA, who is Catholic. “This ad isn’t a Jewish issue. It’s a national one,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.
Chalom Lellouche, the rabbi of the Great Synagogue of Levallois-Perret near Paris, is among many Jews who were deeply moved by the ad.
“I’m watching and crying. The French citizen I am is crying, as is the Jew, the rabbi, the man. I cry for my France, our France. I’m crying on our national day of celebration, July 14,” Lellouche wrote on X about the ad, which is the brainchild of Jewish television presenter Jacques Essebag and Maurice Lévy, an advertising agency founder.
A missed mark
Hundreds of Twitter users dismissed the ad as Zionist propaganda.
For some, the ad failed to address or capture the real situation affecting Jews in France, where the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza last year unleashed a tide of antisemitic incidents. In 2023, France registered the highest increase in recorded antisemitic incidents of any country with reliable statistics: a near-quadrupling of cases from 436 in 2022 to 1,676.
On July 16, Barbara Lefebvre, a journalist and scholar, criticized the ad for not addressing the outsized share of people of Muslim descent who perpetrate antisemitic crimes. (The BNVCA, a Jewish watchdog group, says extremists from that demographic are responsible for nearly all violent antisemitic incidents.)
“You had to live in a cave to not understand during the past six months who the perpetrators are: […] the advocates of Hamas, the far-left supporter, the Islamo-leftists,” Lefebvre told i24 news, noting that this was “absent” from the ad. Also missing was any mention of Israel or the pro-Palestinian activists who for months have been demonstrating on French streets and campuses in anti-Israel rallies that have often featured antisemitism.
Veronique Chemla, a French-Jewish journalist and blogger, said this avoidance by LICRA is motivated by political correctness. LICRA undermined (French-language webpage) its credibility with many Jews on the right and beyond when it initiated in 2017 a lawsuit for incitement against a Jewish historian, George Bensoussan, for saying that Muslim Arabs were culturally preconditioned to hate Jews. A court acquitted Bensoussan.
“This ad doesn’t explain why this family is afraid, why Jews are assaulted,” Chemla told The Times of Israel. “This ad is a loop feed, conducive to no constructive action whatsoever,” she added. She also criticized how the ad “only describes Jews as passive victims, not as people who push back and fight.”
Some on the radical left also criticized the ad. Kamil Abderrahman, a French-Muslim anti-Israel journalist, opined that the ad’s Black family friend, whose character’s last name is Sissoko, is meant to suggest that Jews aren’t racist. Muslims are maligned regularly on primetime television, he wrote on X (in French), “but LICRA’s priority is to spotlight antisemitism, trying to make us think we don’t suffer from racism by placing Sissoko on the Cohens’ CV.”
Stasi, the LICRA president, addressed (in French) some of these criticisms in an interview he gave i24 News. The clip, he said, “isn’t perfect. There won’t be a consensus about it. It doesn’t describe all the situations of all Jews in France.” The ad, he said, “is not a sociological study of Jews in France.”
Michel Zerbib, news director for the Radio J Jewish radio station, retorted that the missing representation was not of Jews, but of their haters. The vast majority of antisemitic incidents are perpetrated by Muslims, Zerbib wrote on X. “It’s a reality we’re not supposed to acknowledge, and LICRA graciously avoids saying so clearly.”
