French President Emmanuel Macron attended a pre-Rosh Hashana ceremony at the Great Synagogue in Paris. It is the first time that a president of the country did it.
Macron, who received honey varieties as a gift in honor of the Jewish New Year, did not speak during the ceremony, because France has a strict separation between state and religion, the French news agency AFP reported.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Senate, Gerard Larcher, and the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo also attended the ceremony.
Macron was received by the Chief Rabbi of France, Haim Korsia, Joel Mergui, president of the organization that provides religious services to French Jews and by the Chief Rabbi of Paris, Michel Gugenheim.
The leaders of the Jewish community who spoke highlighted the president’s concerns about the rise of anti-Semitism in the country.
“Our children are leaving” because “France, the land of asylum, is becoming a land of exile for Jews,” Mergui said.
He also stressed that ritual work, circumcision and religious festivities should “no longer be seen as concessions outside the law … but obvious liberties.”