Tensions within the French Jewish community have been simmering for a long time. The ingredients consist of suppressed frustrations, intercommunal jealousies and an intense dissatisfaction with the government’s anti-Israel policy. On the eve of the Six-Day War, when throngs of Parisian Jews went out into the streets singing Israeli songs and waving Israeli flags, the tensions reached near boiling point, but the lid remained on.
It nearly burst earlier this month as most Jewish communal organizations, Including the most prestigious among them, traded mutual accusations, communiques and denials with the Jewish Agency’s representative in France, Avi Primer, a 45-year-old Israeli career diplomat now on leave of absence from the Foreign Ministry.
On Wednesday morning, May 7, Baron Guy de Rothschild, the head of the famous banking family and one of France’s best known communal leaders, phoned Primer to ask for an immediate appointment. When the two met, that afternoon, the 71-year-old silver-haired banker, generally elegant and even suave in his approach, told him bluntly: “I have asked my son David (a member of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors), to telephone (Agency chairman Leon) Dulzin in Jerusalem and ask for your recall.”
BASIS FOR LATEST TENSION
Rothschild blamed Primer for the tone taken by most of the main speakers at the April 27 “12 Hours for Israel” mass demonstration. He said that the demonstration’s organizer, a 32-year-old lawyer, Henri Hajdenberg, “had deviated from his course” and instead of attacking the French government’s anti-Israel policy — “something we all would have supported”–rapped Jewish communal organizations and their leaders.
Hajdenberg, who heads a newly formed organization, “Jewish Renewal,” had said in his opening address that the community leaders were shy, scared and timid in defending Israel’s interests and accused the “Rothschilds of having taken us on the path of political bankruptcy.” Some 150,000 people, according to the organizers, attended the meeting and most of them wildly cheered Hajdenberg’s speech.
He also said at the time that “the Jewish vote” could be decisive in “at least 40 electoral constituencies, 10 of them in Paris alone.” He openly called for the creation of a Jewish lobby similar to that existing in the United States.
Rothschild told Primer that the meeting might have been useful but that finally it had mainly served to “break up the community’s unity of purpose.” He added, “You can rarely win a point for your cause by using insults and invectives.”
That some afternoon, Rothschild attended a meeting of the Fonds Social Juife Unite (FSJU) executive council. This body is France’s social welfare fund and also a half-partner in the French United Jewish Appeal. Its president is Guy de Rothschild.
PRESS SENSATIONALIZES SITUATION
Most of the communal leaders present believed that Primer had backed, some reportedly said manipulated, the “Renewal” group. Before the meeting started, a small group of participants asked Rothschild to have it discussed and to vote a motion of non-confidence in the Jewish Agency’s representative.
Rothschild turned down the suggestion and the FSJU meeting finally concluded with a vote expressing the organization’s continued confidence in the Representative Council of Major French Jewish Organizations (CRIF), the French equivalent of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The president of CRIF is another Rothschild, Baron Alain, a 70-year-old cousin of Guy and his partner in the bank.
Two days later, the discretion which the French Jewish leadership had hoped to maintain was broken. The Israeli press picked up the story and the French press sensationalized the situation.
France’s 700,000 Jews generally prefer, in the words of a prominent French Jewish attorney, for the general press “not to write about us at all, but when it does so, however, to do it in a positive way.” Most local Jews must have been bitterly disappointed throughout the month of May. Rarely, if ever have they and their organizations come under such close scrutiny from the media and the general tone was not always positive.
Provoked by the press, prodded by correspondents, often irritated by their own and their opponents statements, attacks and public communiques, organizations traded accusations for a couple of weeks. There was a clash of personalities between the elegant world-renowned banker and the Sabraborn former infantry officer twice wounded in the 1956 Suez War. But, basically, it was a clash over conflicting views over diaspora Jewry’s duties and responsibilities and many here fear that the French incident might renew itself sooner or later else-where, and mainly in the U.S.
STAUNCHLY PRO-ISRAEL
Organized French Jewry and its traditional leadership, have always been pro-Israel, have actively spoken out in Israel’s favor, but have generally chosen to do so through direct contacts with the government and in a relatively discreet manner Many Jews also consider themselves first and fore most French and secondly Jewish.
France’s national tendencies have been, since the days of the French Revolution, towards a strong, centralized country. Democracy in French tradition was incompatible with regional tendencies such as had prevailed in the days of the monarchy.
Nowadays, pluralism, in all its forms, is in fashion. France, for the first time in its history, is prepared to accept it in all its manifestations: political, sexual and religious. Now, it seems to many, including Primer, is the ideal time for French Jewry to openly express its differences and its own particular communal sympathies and tendencies. The difference between Primer and the community’s traditional leaders is also, however, one of style.
The intercommunal storm and the general press’ interest have at least served to clearly demonstrate the community’s basic unity in supporting Israel and coming out “into the open” to make known its views and passionate links with the Jewish State. This is probably what will remain once the storm abates.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
