French Jews Find Refuge — Where Else? — on the Upper West Side

On a recent Saturday, 70 congregants at the West Side Sephardic Synagogue gathered in the basement for the weekly festive meal after a Sabbath service. Moroccan dishes, dips, and salads are served, while French echoed through the room.

“Over the last few years we’ve had an influx of French Jews to New York City and especially to Manhattan and the Upper West Side in particular,” said Rabbi Eitan Bendavid, who heads the synagogue.

French Jews make up two-thirds of this tight-knit synagogue's membership. The recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris have drawn attention to the thousands of French Jews who have been immigrating to Israel. But over the last several years, Jewish leaders say, many others have chosen New York as their destination.

Noam Ohana, outgoing president of the West Side Synagogue, says New York is a great fit for many young French Jews. They get a shot at building a career and a friendly environment.

“Friday afternoon, if it’s kind of getting late, closer to Shabbat your co-workers are like you should go,” he said. "It’s very easy to be Jewish here. It’s part of the fabric of the city.”

Alex Benchimol, 28, who moved here four years ago, agrees. Walking home from the synagogue on Saturday, he pointed to his yarmulke.

“It’s something I don’t do in France or nobody does. You would put a hat or something just to cover it," he said. "Otherwise, you feel unsafe and very often you’re at risk of meeting someone on the street that’s not going to like that and just beat you up.”

In interviews, French Jews said the daily tension they felt being Jewish in their homeland fomented their fears. And they saw the government’s response to high profile anti-Semitic attacks over the years, such as the kidnapping, torture and killing of a young Jewish man in 2006, and the attack in 2012 on a Jewish school in Toulouse, where a rabbi and three young children were killed, as inadequate.

“You don’t feel safe as a Jew in France,” said Nathaniel Assayag, 24.

He decided to get a Master’s degree at Columbia so he could get a job in New York and now works for a French bank. Assayag’s brother and sister have moved to Israel. His parents plan to leave France as well.

“We just thought that there was no future as Jews in there,” Assayag said. "That’s sad to say because it’s a great country.”

Bertrand Lortholary, the French Consul General in New York, said it was “devastating to hear these views,” but pointed out that France, which has the largest Jewish population in Europe, is determined to combat anti-Semitic attacks. Since the attack on the kosher supermarket, security has been tightened at synagogues and Jewish schools. In the longer term, Lortholary said, the country needs to work on better integrating different communities and reducing unemployment, things that he sees as root causes of anti-Semitism.

“We would be devastated if French citizens, whoever they are, but first and foremost the French-Jewish community was leaving under the impression that they had no other choice than to leave France for security reasons,” he said. “It would be a complete failure for the country and for the nation as a whole.”