29 TAMMUZ 5776 • AUGUST 4, 2016 • VOLUME XXXVII, NUMBER 15 • PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID, SYRACUSE, NY
For Jews of Nice, terrorist Leslie Fund donation funds JCC attack came as no surprise summer camp scholarships BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ AMSTERDAM (JTA) – To the millions of tourists who visit Nice annually, the city in southeast France is an ultimate holiday destination that offers inviting beaches and luxury casinos, stunning architecture and world-class museums. Sandwiched between the Maritime Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, Nice is France’s largest tourist destination after Paris, with five million arrivals each year and the country’s second largest domestic airport. Nice sees $1.6 billion in annual tourism revenue – 40 percent from its region known locally as Côte d’Azur and abroad as the French Riviera. But Nice has a dark side, as demonstrated in the terrorist attack of July 14, when a Muslim extremist killed 84 people on the Promenade des Anglais by plowing his truck through the crowds gathered for a fireworks show on France’s national holiday, Bastille Day. After the attack, thousands of tourists checked out hurriedly from hotels that had not had occupancy issues in years. The attack came as no surprise to many locals, including many of the city’s 20,000 Jews, who for years have been the targets of antisemitic attacks and harassment by members of a growing minority of fundamentalists from within the city’s large Muslim population. “The only Jews you see walking around with a kippah are the foreign tourists,” said Chalom Yaich, a caretaker at the Michelet Jewish community center and synagogue. One of Nice’s dozen-odd shuls, Michelet is located next to a car repair shop at the northern downtown area about a mile and a half from the glitzier beachfront area. “We locals have stopped wearing it years ago or covered it with a hat for safety,” said Yaich, 53. He was considering immigrating to Israel before the attack, he said, and is even more inclined to do so now. “Many have left already because Nice is especially affected by France’s problem with Islam,” Yaich said, noting that its young Jews are especially prone to leave, either for Paris or Israel. “We have an aging local population with an average age of 50 or 60,” he said. Nice has at least 60,000 Muslims, or 17 percent of the city’s population, according to estimates published in Le Monde, compared to a national average of about eight percent of the population. Indeed, more than a third of those killed in the attack were Muslim, the head of a regional Islamic association told The New York Times. Other estimates say 30-40 percent of the city’s population is Muslim. One Jew, Reymonde Mammane, was killed in the attack. The attacker, who was shot dead by police while carrying out the rampage, was identified as a Tunisian immigrant,
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. Although Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, was a petty criminal with no known links to terrorism and little apparent interest in religion, the Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which French police believe involved several accomplices. Local Muslim leaders denounced the attacks and organized a blood drive for survivors, saying the attacker was hardly representative of their community. Yet several other terrorist cells have emerged from the community in recent years. In February, a Muslim man with suspected terrorist ties stabbed three soldiers outside a Jewish community center in Nice. Like other Jewish potential targets throughout France, the center has been under armed guard since January 2015, when four Jews were killed by an Islamist at a kosher supermarket near Paris. The following month, Nice police raided several homes of alleged Islamist terrorists who were “in advanced stages” of preparing an attack, prosecutors said at the time. In recent years, Nice was among the five most troublesome areas listed in the annual report of the Paris-based SPCJ, a watchdog group on antisemitism, with an average tally of 15-20 violent incidents per year. In relative terms, Jews in Nice are twice as likely to experience such an attack than their coreligionists in Marseille, a nearby city with 220,000 Muslims and 80,000 Jews that sees approximately 2535 physical antisemitic attacks annually, according to SPCJ. The difference is felt on the ground, according to Yves Kugelmann, the Swiss editor-in-chief of the Tachles Jewish weekly, who is among hundreds of nonFrench Jews with pieds-à-terre in and around Nice. “There is more tension and apprehension in Nice than in Marseille, where even despite all the trouble we’ve seen in recent years, you still also have cafés with a mixed clientele of Jews of North African descent and Muslims from the same place,” said Kugelmann, who was in Nice when the attack happened. “It didn’t fundamentally change things for the local Jewish population because, firstly, in France today terrorist attacks are no longer surprising,” he said, “and secondly because it wasn’t aimed at Jews.” Hours after the attack, Yossef Yitschok Pinson, the rabbi of Nice’s Chabad House, told JTA that synagogue services and community events would go on as planned in Nice. Amid growing concern about Islamism, Nice has become a bastion for the French far right, where Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a niece of party leader Marine Le Pen, garnered a whopping 34 percent of the See “Nice” on page 7
L-r: Andy Fox presented a $2,000 check from the Leslie Fund to Sam Pomeranz Jewish Community Center of Syracuse Executive Director Marci Erlebacher during the Center’s 153rd annual meeting gala on June 5 at Owera Vineyards in Cazenovia. The funds will benefit the JCC’s summer camp scholarships and provide financial assistance for children to attend camp at the JCC. The Leslie Fund is a memorial fund established in 2013 at the Jewish Community Foundation of Central New York in memory of Leslie London Neulander.
At 3.1 million members, CUFI continues to promote Israel support as core Christian value BY SEAN SAVAGE JNS.org While much of the media focused on the recent terror attack in Nice, the failed coup in Turkey and the Republican National Convention, thousands of evangelical Christians gathered in the nation’s capital recently to show their support for Israel as part of the 11th annual Christians United for Israel Washington Summit. Although world events may have overshadowed its latest gathering, CUFI’s base of support is considered louder than ever. CUFI has become not only the self-described largest pro-Israel organization in America, but also likely the largest evangelical Christian organization of its kind. As such, the group will likely play “a significant role” in shaping the future of American support for Israel. “Christians United for Israel in 11 short years has gone from 400 people in San Antonio, to 3,500 in our first gathering in Washington, DC, five months later... to 10,000, to 100,000, to 500,000, to one million in 2012, to two million in 2015. Tonight, we celebrate an active Zionist membership of 3.1 million people,” Pastor John Hagee, CUFI’s founder and national chairman, declared in his remarks at the Washington conference as part of its “Night to Honor Israel” celebration. CUFI defines “members” as e-maillist subscribers whose addresses do not produce bounce-backs when messaged. “I am often asked by members of the press, how did this [growth to 3.1 million
CUFI members] happen? I say that it is the Lord that has done this. The King of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, let His name be glorified, He has done this,” said Hagee. CUFI’s Christian-Zionist following has steadily grown despite the past decade’s erosion of support for Israel in other spheres See “CUFI” on page 7
2016 Federation Annual Campaign
Final 2016 Campaign Amount as of Aug. 1, 2016
1,100,235
$
THANK YOU!
To make a pledge, contact Marianne Bazydlo at 445-2040 ext. 102 or mbazydlo@jewishfederationcny.org.
C A N D L E L I G H T I N G A N D P A R AS H A August 5...................8:02 pm..............................................Parasha-Mattot-Masei August 12.................7:53 pm................................ Parasha-Devarim (Tisha B’Av) August 19.................7:42 pm................................................. Parasha-Vaetchanan
INSIDE THIS ISSUE In Lithuania...
Sisterhood Symposium
Tisha B’Av
A Lithuanian concentration camp The annual Sisterhood Symposium Community synagogues announce is now being used as a wedding will look at “Kabbalah: The Hidden their Tisha B’Av services and Wisdom of Judaism.” and party venue. classes. Story on page 3 Story on page 2 Story on page 4
PLUS Congregational Notes............ 4 Women in Business................ 6 Calendar Highlights............... 7 Obituaries................................. 7