Roger Cukierman, the head of France’s umbrella grouping of Jewish organizations, CRIF, has joined France’s chief rabbi in deflecting a call for Marseille Jews to lose their skullcaps, saying it reflects “a defeatist attitude.”
The warning by Marseille Jewish leader Zvi Ammar came the day after an attack in broad daylight on Jewish teacher Benjamin Ansellem, who was wearing a skullcap and carrying a Torah.
Ansellem’s wife Mazal says her husband has already decided not to wear a skullcap “and encourages the community to do the same, not because he is afraid or ashamed to be Jewish, quite the contrary, but for security.”
“We have to hide ourselves a little bit,” he tells AFP, adding that making such an appeal made him “sick to the stomach.”
Monday’s attack by a 15-year-old Turkish Kurd was the third on Jews in recent months in Marseille, which counts some 70,000 Jews in a population of 855,000, making it the second largest Jewish population in France after Paris.
— AFP
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