IMMIGRATION
French Jews escape to United States
Anti-Semitism is on the rise in their homeland.
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
Miami Herald
Philippe Goldenstein, 39, once a bodyguard for France's Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk, doesn't scare easily.
So when his yarmulke drew hostility on the streets of his native Paris, where anti-Semitic attacks are escalating, he fought back. ''One Arab on his bicycle called me a dirty Jew,'' he said. ``I had to beat him up.''
But like many French Jews who have settled in South Florida recently, Goldenstein and his wife, Katia, began to fear for their children, now 2 and 3 years old.
''Since the intifada started [in 2002], things are degrading every month a little more,'' he said. ``They are getting violent with the kids. This is not how we are brought up to live.''
The couple emigrated in October 2002, leaving behind family and a busy restaurant. Earlier this year, they opened Weber Cafe, a kosher, 36-seat dairy restaurant in Aventura's Waterways Shops.
''In Paris, we had a big hall for the weddings, the bar mitzvahs, a tea room, my apartment -- I didn't need to come here,'' said Katia, 31. ''But I'm afraid for my children and when my husband goes to shul in a kippa'' -- Hebrew for yarmulke, or skull cap.
She believes that 1,500 years of Jewish life in France is ''finished,'' and that government measures to combat anti-Semitism come ''too late'' for France's 600,000 Jews.
The French Interior Ministry said 2002 was one of the worst years in the past decade for anti-Semitic acts and threats, with 932 reported. Things improved in 2003: 588 acts and threats, with 91 arrests and trials. The numbers are again rising, as they are in Belgium and Holland.
The Interior Ministry reported 510 acts or threats this year: assaults in the streets and subways; schools and synagogues firebombed; cemeteries vandalized. By last fall, French Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk was warning Jewish men to cover their yarmulkes with baseball caps.
While France's six million Muslims also have been the targets of racism, authorities blame most attacks against Jews and their institutions on disaffected immigrants from Muslim-dominated countries. The French government has spoken out strongly against anti-Semitism, mindful of the country's troubled history with its own Jewish citizens.
After Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, the collaborationist Vichy government passed anti-Semitic laws and rounded up thousands of Jews for deportation, among them some who had fled to presumed safety in France from Germany. An estimated 90,000 died.
In a July 8 speech, French President Jacques Chirac said ``odious and despicable acts of hatred are sullying our country. Discrimination, anti-Semitism, racism, all kinds of racism, are again spreading insidiously. . . . They are unworthy of France.''
Ten days later, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a controversial plea to all French Jews to make aliyah -- literally to ''go up'' -- to the Jewish state ``immediately.''
More than 2,000 have done so this year, according to Jewish resettlement organizations.
It's hard to say how many have come to the United States. French authorities are legally prohibited from tracking emigration by religion, said Yann Battefort, a spokesman for the French Consulate in Miami, where some 10,000 French citizens are voluntarily registered.
Vanessa Brakha, 25, and her husband, Michael, 29, were married 14 months ago and left France soon after, for the sake of their children yet unborn, they said.
GROWING COMMUNITIES
The Brakhas recently opened the strictly kosher Micky's Deli on Harding Avenue in Surfside, adjacent to Bal Harbour. The communities, with a half-dozen kosher restaurants, form the nucleus of French-Jewish life in Miami-Dade County.
Vanessa Brakha once again wears the Star of David with tiny diamonds she'd put away.
Like the Brakhas and the Goldensteins, most French Jews coming to Miami-Dade are Sephardim: of North African or Spanish/Portuguese descent.
Rabbi Yosef Galimidi of Miami Beach's Shaare Ezra Sepharadic Congregation, estimates ''98 percent'' of French newcomers are Sephardim.
''We have had visitors from France inquiring more and more what are the business opportunities, the Jewish schools, the community support. They are looking to Florida for the multiculturalism,'' he said.
Given visa requirements, most of those coming are relatively wealthy.
The Brakhas came on E-2 visas, requiring a $150,000 business investment. Vanessa holds a master's degree in finance and was an assistant communications director for Estee Lauder, the cosmetics company. Michael ran a successful Paris restaurant.
Some Jewish immigrants saw the handwriting on the wall years ago, like Laurent and Nicole Kadouch, who came in the mid-1990s. The couple, of Moroccan, Algerian and Eastern European ancestry, own an Aventura town house.
''Thank God I had the chance to leave,'' said Laurent, 41, an Aventura importer and kitchen designer.
But he also disagreed with Sharon's advice and said French Jews ``are very divided about it. They have a bad reaction because it made them more isolated. They already cannot be open about their Judaism.''
Franca and Luciano Benmoussa, both 63, immigrated 18 years ago: ''After 12, 13 years of anti-Semitism in France, we have enough and decide to leave for our children,'' now 35 and 33. ``We have a very Jewish name.''
They own Piccolo Cafe in North Miami Beach and have become U.S. citizens.
The problem is not that the government hasn't instituted tough laws, said Shimon Samuels, director for international liaison at the Paris office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. ``They don't filter down to the judges in the courts.''
SAD CASE
He cited the case of a 15-year-old Jewish boy from Sevran who was beaten by Muslim fellow students at a public school. Not only did a judge overrule the school's decision to boot the assailants, he assessed the victim's family the court costs.
''So what is the alternative?'' asked Samuels. ``They will leave to a place where they feel more secure.''
He added that ''breadwinner'' commuting is now so common between Israel and France that ``you can't get a flight on a Sunday evening from Tel Aviv to Paris, or on Thursday from Paris to Tel Aviv.''
But Florida ``is a different story. That's a real migration. Getting a green card and the logistics are more difficult.''
Katia Goldenstein said she and her husband came on L-1 visas, originally designed for international corporations seeking to transfer foreign executives to the United States. To meet visa requirements, the original Weber Cafe in Paris must remain open. They left it with relatives -- which Katia misses: ``I am here alone. I have two babies. I don't speak English. I cry every day.''
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