While Some Lament French Jewry, A Jewish Community in France Blossoms

PONTAULT-COMBAULT, France — Few communities with 3500 Jewish families today have no Jewish community center. But this one in France’s 77th District, home to Euro-Disney, had not, until recently, a single hub of Jewish community life.


France may be atypical among the rest of Diaspora Jewry, and some Jewish leaders have been lately expressing concern. In an interview with an Israeli paper last week, Dr. Joel Mergui, president of the umbrella organization of Paris’s Jewish community, spoke of his fear that the between the recent increase in aliyah by French Jews and the high rate of assimilation, “fewer people are passing through our synagogues in Paris and fewer use the community services.”

But, says Rabbi Yossi Amar, Chabad’s representative to Seine-et-Marne, “the Rebbe realized this problem 60 years ago. He didn’t wait for community leaders to be scared that the shuls will be left empty. He sent his Shluchim there not because the shuls will be left empty, but because a Jew needs to be connected to Yiddishkeit.”

So the news that a newly dedicated building—a Chabad Center—in Pontault-Combault will formally open for Rosh Hashana services is a bright spot in the pessimistic forecasts of French Jewish life. It’s all the more remarkable considering the fact that the 7,000 square foot renovated building is the result of a collective effort by community members who admit that only a few years ago, a relationship with Judaism was decidedly not a point of interest in their lives.

“People didn’t move here from Paris because they were looking for a vibrant Jewish lifestyle,” says Rabbi Amar matter-of-factly.

Of the eight existing denominational synagogues in the area, he says, only one–70 kilometers away–is open daily.

NO DESIRE TO CONNECT

”People felt no desire to attend synagogue with any regularity or any real commitment,” he explains, and there was certainly nothing going on in the area to change people’s attitude towards their Jewish identity.

In fact, it might be true that many if not most of the Jewish families who live in this highly assimilated area 35 kilometers outside of Paris, could not have been more disinterested in Judaism.

Article continued (Lubavitch.com)