The Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John's Wood, North London, has appointed a French rabbi after the volume of French Jews escaping France and moving to London increased, making London the most popular destination for Jews escaping from France.
A record 9,880 western European Jews moved to #Israel in 2015, nearly 8,000 from #France. It's not hard to get why: pic.twitter.com/cgy3rT0JE2
— AJC (@AJCGlobal) January 14, 2016
Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldsmith, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, has called France "the main battleground between hope and fear for the future of Europe, especially for the Jewish community".
If you had said 15 years ago that French Muslim anti-Semitism would cause Jews to flee France, you'd have been mocked.
— Basil B. (@1917Petrograd) January 12, 2016
The new part-time French rabbi, Rene Pfertzel, will divide his time between London and Lyon. "People are starting to feel insecure," he said, adding that about 100 French people had joined the synagogue recently, according the London Evening Standard.
Wave of Anti-Semitism
There has been a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France — most recently with a radicalized teenager attacking a Jewish teacher with a machete in Marseilles, claiming to have done it in the name of Daesh, also known as ISIL.
Marseilles' Jewish leader, Zvi Ammar, called on Jewish men and boys to stop wearing the kippa (skullcap) "until better days", saying:
"Unfortunately for us, we are targeted. As soon as we are identified as Jewish we can be assaulted and even risk death."
In January 2015, following the Charlie Hebdo attack, a third assailant, Amedy Coulibaly entered a kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in east Paris, killing four people and taking several hostages. Police stormed the store, rescuing fifteen hostages and killing Coulibaly. The incident put panic among the French Jewish community who was themselves as a target of Daesh.
The number of anti-Semitic attacks in France have soared in recent years, according to official statistics. increasing by 84 percent between January and May 2015. It has resulted in a record 2,900 jews leaving France for Israel and many hundred crossing the English Channel for London, where some primary schools are now 50 percent Jewish.
