The Society That Abandons Its Jews Abandons Itself

“The Tel Aviv shoreline has turned into the French Riviera,” says a colleague who spends his summers in Israel, and I hear it’s the same along the beaches of Netanya. French immigrants who haven’t gravitated toward the Israeli coast are raising property values in Jerusalem and Modi’in. Until now, mass immigration to Israel has come from countries lowest on the freedom index. What are we to make of the current flight of Jews from the country that gave us enlightenment, emancipation, religious tolerance, political liberty and freedom of thought?

That is the main question of Alain El-Mouchan’s essay on the rise of anti-Jewish violence in France and consequent increased Jewish movement to Israel. Analyzing the causes of departure, he charts the familiar debate between those who urge flight and those—including French Prime Minister Manuel Valls—who urge French Jews to stay. As it happens, this very predicament is the subject of A Happy End, a new play by Iddo Netanyahu, younger brother of the prime minister of Israel. The play is about a Jewish family that struggles with the decision of whether to leave Germany in the 1930s. A Happy End doesn’t have one.

Yet history is not repeating itself. When Israel’s prime ministers—Ariel Sharon in 2004 and Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015—invite the Jews of France to make their home in the Jewish homeland, they are offering an improved quality of life and a potentially higher standard of living. Most importantly, from the perspective of this Mosaic essay, Israel invites French Jews to enjoy the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness that are no longer available to them as citizens of France.