In France, It’s Dangerous to Be a Jew

May 17, 2016

Lucien de Hirsch, a Jewish school located in the 19th [district] of Paris, looks like a fortress. The gigantic school, attended by 1,250 students from kindergarten to the 12th grade, is protected by a platoon of camouflage-attired commandos, rifles at the ready. Since the attack at a kosher Jewish supermarket in January 2015, in which four Jewish men were murdered, the French don’t take any chances, and there are just as many security personnel here as there are at the Eiffel Tower. This is the situation in France in 2016, where it is dangerous to be a Jew. This is how every Jewish school is protected, as well as synagogues and other institutions in the Jewish community.

Baron Hirsch, who founded the school in 1901, named it after his son Lucien. He wanted to preserve the Jewish identity of the students, but had no idea that 115 years later most of its alumni would be making aliyah [immigration] to Israel. This is not only because of the Zionist education they received, but primarily because of the growing anti-Semitism in France. Out of the 70 high school students that graduated in 2015, 40 of them immigrated to Israel without their parents.

A survey conducted recently by the Diaspora Affairs Ministry showed a substantial increase in the number of Jews wishing to make aliyah to Israel from France. The current number is about 57% out of about 500,000 Jews in France.

The students there [Lucien de Hirsch] feel safe. Their problems start when they go home from school. Zechariah Berkovich, an eighth grader, says, “Paris is now more dangerous than Jerusalem. We receive insults on the streets constantly, saying, ‘dirty Jews.’ I feel safer in Israel, because there are plenty of weapons there. Here there is not enough security.”

Source: Excerpt of article by Itamar Eichner, Ynetnews

Photo Credit: Claude Truong/wikipedia.com