Ce n’est pas normal!
Curt Leviant and Erika Pfeifer Leviant, in discussing the January massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, make the startling claim about Paris that, “several months after this incident life seems back to normal and Jewish neighborhoods thrive with local shoppers and tourists.” (Paris — City of Jewish Lights,” July 16).
Really? Just a few weeks ago, on July 7, a 13-year-old Jewish boy was beaten and robbed by six men in broad daylight outside his Paris school in a vicious, blatantly anti-Semitic attack. According to data published by The Jewish Agency for Israel in its “Voices” blog on July 28 so far this year Israel has seen an 11 percent increase in immigrants from France compared with the same period last year. Even more startling, there has been a 30 percent increase in “aliya files” opened in France compared with the same period last year, indicating an enormous surge of interest on the part of French Jews
in emigrating to Israel.
Even if not all “aliya files” result in actual emigration, the authors’ claim of “back to normal” would certainly seem to be naive and premature to say the very least.
Dr. Edward Lipper
East Brunswick
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