Twitter Campaign Launched to Show Solidarity With France’s Jews

A recent series of attacks on Jews in France have stirred controversy as to whether Jewish men should stop wearing the skullcap in public. A solidarity campaign has been launched on Twitter to support the Jewish community.

Tweets marked with a "#TousAvecUneKippa" hashtag and featuring photoshopped images of celebrities, movie characters and politicians wearing the traditional Jewish male headdress, overflowed the social network on Wednesday.

Users posted photos of public figures including Michael Jackson, Robert De Niro and Russian President Vladimir Putin with a skullcap on their heads while calling on members of the general public to join the campaign and wear a kippa on Friday at 10 A.M.

King of pop and King of kippa! #TousAvecUneKippa pic.twitter.com/sg2iqzX47T

— Sophie (@mllesosso) January 13, 2016

​"You're talking to me?" #TousAvecUneKippa pic.twitter.com/tbVVBpiNr9

— Sophie (@mllesosso) January 12, 2016

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The campaign was launched in the wake of recent hate crimes committed against Jews in France. Those assaults included the stabbing of a Jewish man in Marseille on Tuesday, allegedly by a 15-year-old Muslim radical. Another incident took place in November when a Jewish teacher was stabbed by a man who yelled insults at him along with two other men, one of whom was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of the Daesh extremist group. There have been other incidents involving knifes and other cutting weapons.

Amid racial tensions, several leaders of the Jewish community in Marseille called for taking off the skullcap while in public as a safety consideration. Tzvi Ammar, president of the local office of the Consistoire, the French Jewish community's organization responsible for religious services, said Tuesday that Jews should "remove the kippa during these troubled times" because "the preservation of life is sacrosanct."

The calls, however, were met with harsh criticism from other representatives of the community, including Michele Teboul, president of the local branch of CRIF — a political umbrella group that lobbies for French Jewish communities.

Teboul told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she "could not support a measure which dials back hundreds of years during which Jews were able to practice their faiths and live freely as citizens of the French Republic."

According to population estimates, about one third of the 850,000 residents of Marseille are Muslims and around 80,000 are Jews.