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Jews Fleeing Paris Suburbs
Devorah Lauter


Altabe leans his elbows on a table set for the Sabbath and sinks his furrowed brow in his palms.

"We do what we can, but it's hard,” he says. “I don't know why I stay. I ask myself that question all the time.”



The reason, he says, is anti-Semitism.









Though increased security has helped reduce anti-Semitic crime in France, bringing the level of anti-Jewish incidents in poorer suburbs down to the levels in Paris, the change has come too late for many suburban Jews fed up with worrying about what might happen.

Altabe says he recently had a glass bottle thrown at him from a passing car while walking with his 3-year-old child.

"If you hit us over the head enough times, we'll protect ourselves," says Marc Djebali, the president of the Sarcelles Jewish community, north of Paris.

Djebali says the Sarcelles community of 10,000 Jews lost about one-fifth of its population over the last decade.

“We don't attack," he says. "The Jews just take their bags and they go.”

Jews from the northern suburbs who are wealthy enough to live in Paris are moving to eastern Paris and its suburbs, where anti-Semitism is minimal and Jewish schools are available.





Exact numbers are hard to access because by law, public schools cannot identify or count their Jewish students. Patric Petit-Ohayon, the director of the education department at the Jewish community social welfare umbrella group, the Jewish Unified Social Funds, says Jewish school enrollment in the northern Paris suburbs increased rapidly during the 2000-2005 period.








Despite the drop in anti-Semitic crime, which Hannoun attributes to the declining number of Jews in town, Jews have continued to leave Villepinte.





In 2002 Hannoun's son, Olivie, 40, moved with his family to Miami from France because of anti-Semitism.

Olivie Hannoun says he misses a lot about home, but his three children have become accustomed to life in the United States.

"They can't understand that it can be difficult to be a Jew elsewhere,” Hannoun says. “They don't know what that is, which is exactly what I wanted.”