Watch the Recording of Our Conversation on French Jewry’s Existential Dilemma

French Jews are in a difficult situation. On the one hand, France has endured a significant uptick in radical Islamist terror in recent years, of which Jews have been a chief target. On the other hand, and in order to moderate threats from religious violence, France has recently emphasized a strand of its political culture that fiercely separates private religious beliefs from the public arena. Laïcité, as French secularism is known, would eliminate almost all public displays and accommodations of religion—Judaism included. Jewish leaders in France seem willing to accept a more empowered laïcité in part as a way of defending their community against Islamism. Are they right to? In this month’s feature essay, the French writer Anael Malet argues that their choice is understandable but ultimately short-sighted.

To think more deeply about the problem the Jews of France face and to put Malet’s arguments to the test, we convened a discussion involving her, Angelique Talmor, a writer who worked in the French government, and Michel Gurfinkiel, the founder and president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think-tank in France. They were moderated by the Mosaic columnist Neil Rogachevsky, a scholar of French history. The event took place on Tuesday, May 24, at 12 pm Eastern time, live on Zoom.

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