Why Britain’s Jews look to France with fear

The Jewish New Year begins on Sunday and to mark the festival of Rosh Hashanah, Emmanuel Macron visited the Grand Synagogue in Paris on Tuesday. It was the first time that a president of France has attended and although he didn’t give an address (that would breach the laïcité protocol) Macron’s gesture was appreciated by the chief rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia. “You are like the Wailing Wall,” Korsia told the president. “We confide in you our hopes and our sorrows and although we get no response we know that somebody hears us”.

Joël Mergui, the president of the Israelite central consistory of France, was more forthright when he spoke. “Our children are leaving,” he said, referring to the 20,000 plus Jews who have emigrated to Israel in the last four years. “France, once a land of asylum, is becoming a land of exile for Jews.”

He also urged Macron to resist pressure from some elements on the right who want all religious practices – of whatever faith – to be curtailed, but Mergui’s strongest words were reserved for those whose passive complicity has enabled the resurgence in anti-Semitism this century.