As the world rightly focuses on the recent terror attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store, it should be noted that the second attack is part of a larger problem: the ongoing vitriol toward the French Jewish community.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders invited French Jews to move to Israel. That's a nice gesture, but it's not enough. The United States should join Israel and offer to also open up its shores as a refuge to the endangered Jews of France.
This past summer, I traveled to Paris with a colleague after the Abravanel Synagogue, a prominent synagogue in the center of Paris, was attacked by an angry mob in July. We went to stand in solidarity with the congregation and to carry prayers from their friends in the United States. What we saw deeply disturbed us. We stepped into Paris and saw a Jewish community under siege. We saw hatred of Jews expressing itself in a violent form. The police instructed us not to wear our yarmulkes on the streets of Paris, as it was considered dangerous and incendiary behavior to openly dress as Jews. At that time we were horrified to learn that some French Jews were afraid to post on social media for fear that the information could be used to track and assault them.
During our stay in Paris, we experienced, ever so briefly, what a French Jew feels every day — a sense of constant danger simply for being Jewish.
Since then, we've stayed in touch with our friends in Paris. This very proud Jewish community has been asking for our help to leave France. One of my friends, one of the most respected Jews in France (whose name I will not mention so that he can maintain good relations with the French government), wrote to me just two days before the attack on Charlie Hebdo. He expressed extraordinary concern for the safety of French Jewry and said that he feared a mass slaughter was coming.
When I speak with Jews in France today, I feel the return of a grave danger to Jews that has arisen too often in Europe. My father ran from the Nazis and, as a toddler, hid in the ditches of the French countryside to escape deportation and almost certain death. More recently, we remember the brutal killing of Ilan Halimi, the son of Jewish Moroccan immigrants, in January 2006. At that time, the French ambassador to the United States spoke in my synagogue and assured us that such an attack did not represent the French people. However, during my recent visit to France, people mentioned Ilan Halimi's name as a turning point for the Jews of France and as a harbinger of the tension that followed.
We must work toward saving France's Jews before it is too late. Many French Jews are moving to Israel; more than 7,000 Jews from France have moved there this past year. Yet Israel's existence as a refuge does not absolve the rest of the world from doing whatever is possible to save the Jews of France. Jews should not be forced to move to Israel to be safe. For some Jews, Israel is not an attractive option. (They might not know Hebrew; maybe they don't want to move to another place where terrorism is a daily concern; or maybe they are not Zionists at all.)
For several reasons, Americans have an obligation to answer this call. For one, as a superpower, the United States carries a certain moral authority. If we take a leadership role in protecting French Jewry, it will send a message to European countries that we do not have patience for their excuses about being unable to provide proper protection for their Jewish citizens.
