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| By: Israel Insider staff |
| Published: August 23, 2007 |
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The president of the umbrella organization of the Jewish community in Paris, Dr. Joel Mergui, told Haaretz in an interview that Zionism could severely deplete the Paris Jewish community.
"Out of 600,000 Jews living in France, only a third is in contact with the community, and educate their children in Jewish schools. A third is in the process of becoming assimilated, and another third is in the middle, on the fence - and we need to pull them in. All of the education of the Jewish community for years was based on ties and identification with Israel. My worry is that we succeeded too well, we worked so hard with the third of the community whose strong ties with Israel may possibly empty out the Paris community. This is not a fear of anti-Zionism," Mergui said.
According to Mergui's calculations, there are 80,000 people with dual Israeli-French citizenship living in Israel today. Out of about 800 Jewish couples from Paris who married last year, about half held the wedding in Israel.
"It may be very heart-warming but the result is many fewer people passing through our synagogues in Paris and fewer use the community's services," he said. "You have to remember that for many Jews, the only time they go to the synagogue is for a wedding or bar mitzvah; and that is our chance to contact those Jews, and it is disappearing."
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