#Crif - Francis Kalifat to the Jerusalem Post : "Jews feel threatened just like all French"

 

Half a century after the arrival in France in dramatic conditions of more than 100,000 Jews from Algeria, followed by tens of thousands of other Jews from Tunisia and Morocco, the Jewish community in France has just elected as its new president Francis Kalifat, born in Oran, Algeria. For a very long time Vice President and Treasurer of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), he succeeded his friend Roger Cukierman, son of Polish immigrants. 

 

As an introduction, I remind Francis Kalifat what many argue, not without reason : if the Jews of North Africa had not come to France with their exceptional power and dynamism, the synagogues in France would be as empty as the churches are. "The arrival in France of North African Sephardic represented a renewal and a revitalization of the Jewish community in France", says the new president of Crif. The businessman, 64 years old, was only a child when he had to leave Oran in haste, with his mother, in June 1962. It was the end of French Algeria. His father, a policeman, was forced to stay there for a few months. During this time he "saw horrors", says Francis Kalifat, "including people hanging from hooks".

 

"My election is not the replacement of a community symbol by another ; it is simply the result of a sociological evolution of the Jewish community in France", says F. Kalifat. And emphasizes : "I am the first president of Crif native from North Africa, but not the first Sephardic president, since Dr. Vidal Modiano, from Salonika, led the CRIF between 1950 and 1969". "For me, that Ashkenazi-Sephardi cleavage was never important. Even less so today, as we are witnessing a very common interbrewing, through weddings".

 

"We are in a community where Sephardim and Ashkenazim should face exactly the same problems, and show solidarity and unity. I was born in Oran, I have a Sephardic culture, but, because of my education, my youth and my activism in Zionist organizations (he was a member of the Betar youth movement), I also carry with me the weight of the Shoah. That's why the duty of transmission, which is one of the CRIF missions, is so important to me. It must continue and increase, at a time when the last witnesses are slowly disappearing". 

 

For the leader, no doubt the Jewish community of France "is experiencing one of the most difficult periods we have had to live, since the end of World War II". He recalled the series of attacks against the Jewish community that started with the murder of Ilan Halimi, then continued with the killings in Toulouse Ozar HaTorah school, where children have been shot at close range by an Islamist terrorist. Then finally, the Hypercacher and the massacre of the Porte de Vincennes.

 

"Today, Islamist terrorism also started to attack France, through its symbols, the police and the army", he notes. "It also attacked journalists, symbols of the freedom of speech. Jews were targeted simply because they were Jews. As such, they felt a little isolated in the national community, because they were the only group attacked. This isolation resulted in some a sense of foreboding ; for others, living in difficult areas such as the Seine-Saint-Denis, where the North African population is important, this danger has become much more concrete", says F. Kalifat. The result was a boom of aliyah, which saw about 8,000 Jews left France in 2015.

 

Oddly, he notes, the attacks of November 13 in Paris, that killed 129 people and wounded 350, did not increase these figures. "This is because, to me, the terrorists no longer targeted the symbols of France, or the Jews. It was France as a whole that was hit, through its youth and its lifestyle. At that time, the Jews realized they were not the only targets, and that they shared the fate of the entire French community. This awareness meant that, all of a sudden, they didn't feel excluded no more from the national community. I beleive it explains the fall of a third in the aliya numbers, during the first quarter of 2016. The Jews feel threatened, of course, but just like all the French", ensures the president of Crif...