The past few weeks have seen growing outrage at the situation in Gaza from representatives from across the European Jewish landscape. Starting off this strong wave of condemnation in April was an open letter signed by 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, expressing that they cannot “turn a blind eye or remain silent at this renewed loss of life and livelihoods”. Following this letter, which was published independently, after the Board of Deputies did not speak out against Netanyahu’s decision to resume the war in Gaza, as was demanded by the signatories, the Board is now undertaking an investigation into the deputies, with the vice-chair of the international division already having been suspended.
Following on, last week the prominent French rabbi and co-leader of the Liberal Jewish Movement of France Delphine Horvilleur published an op-ed entitled “Gaza/Israel: ‘(Truly) love your neighbor, refuse to stay silent.’” In it, she expressed her dismay at the situation in Gaza, denouncing Israel’s “political rout” and “moral bankruptcy,” while affirming that “the future of the Palestinians and that of Israel are linked.”
And just yesterday the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Joseph Schuster has called on the Israeli government to allow aid deliveries into the Gaza strip, saying that “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet must accept that it also has a responsibility for the civilian population in Gaza”.
This call to action and to “no longer remain silent” that has affected a large part of the European diaspora, to the point of dividing it, has been generally met with two violent injunctions to…
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How did a classic work of Jewish thought written in Arabic in the 12th century, which claims the absolute superiority of Jews and Hebrew, come to be cited by both the Israeli far right and the most radical fringes of anti-Zionism? To dispel this mystery and the misreadings of this text, David Lemler immersed himself in Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari. His interpretation reveals an unexpected utopia, that of the Jewish state of the Khazars, whose critical function could help us escape contemporary aporias.
Three biographical excerpts from a Jewish lineage, transplanted between Algeria and France, are what philosopher François-David Sebbah offers us here. He himself is at the end of the story, in the guise of a child. It is by becoming a child again that he has written the book "His Lives in Africa", from which these few pages are taken. He did so in order to better understand and reveal what has been secretly preserved and displaced within him from his eminently French Sephardic memory. We see that he himself is suspended in the manner of a paragraph attached to a longer text, impossible to unify, however, and therefore destined to appear in fragments.
After the sad period of Bolsonarism, Brazilian Jews, most of whom are progressive, were looking forward to a new term under Lula. But the new president's virulent anti-Zionism seems to have disappointed them. Renan Antônio da Silva and Eric Heinze guide us through this affair, from the long history of Brazilian Jewry to the open secret of the elites' longstanding antisemitic wanderings.
On May 8, Europe celebrates its rebirth following the defeat of the Nazis. But can Jews participate in this moment of jubilation that unites European consciousness? Through the experiences of playwright Ionas Turkov on May 8, 1945, Stéphane Bou examines the disconnect between the narratives and emotions of “the world” and those of the Jews. What place can the history of the Shoah find in the grand triumphal narrative of victory and European unity?
On May 1, cries of “dirty genocidal Zionists” and violence from hooded far-left activists targeted not only Jérôme Guedj, who is becoming accustomed to such treatment, but also, for the first time, several elected officials present at the Socialist Party’s stand. Bruno Karsenti provides a timely clarification and analysis: the logic of contemporary anti-Zionism does not merely lead to antisemitism; it is irresistibly anti-socialist.
From the unpaved streets of Sziget to the affluent suburbs of Manchester, Stephen Pogany traces the remarkable, often harrowing journey of Nóra Platschek, a Jewish woman whose quiet resilience defied war, exile, and loss. Through family records, personal memories, and historical insight, this deeply human narrative challenges antisemitic myths and reclaims the dignity of ordinary lives swept up in extraordinary times.
All massacres resemble each other when one deliberately decides to dispense with the analytical precision that would make it possible to differentiate between them. But where does this love of hackneyed comparisons, so common today, have its roots? Stephan Malinowski sets out to identify the intersecting and paradoxical intellectual lineages that give rise to this great confusion.
By coincidence, Danny Trom had planned his family vacation in Seville during Holy Week. Lost amid the processions of penitents, and with Xanax proving insufficient to counteract what was undoubtedly an atavistic Jewish anxiety, he improvised himself as a journalist covering this archaic experience of Catholicism.
The contemporary anti-Zionist left has decided to reject the idea that one can be both Zionist and left-wing. Yet this possibility is clearly attested to by a whole section of Israel’s political history, as well as by the political movements to which many Jews in the diaspora adhere. Julien Chanet, drawing on sources and references found in Paris and Brussels, examines the causes and consequences of this “anti-Zionist truism” that insists that “left-wing Zionism” is an oxymoron. By choosing to denigrate this reality rather than consider it, anti-Zionism not only aims to make Jews a little more alien to the left, but paradoxically becomes the objective ally of reactionary Zionism, blocking any prospect of a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
How does the most “critical” fringe of French universities justify its desire to boycott Israeli higher education institutions? Our resident watchdog, Karl Kraus, has looked into the report commissioned by a number of lecturers and students at Sciences Po Strasbourg to assert the need to break off all partnerships with Reichmann University. All he discovered was the frustration of searching for guilt without finding it, and the perfidy of maintaining the initial bias despite everything.
On 3 October 1989, at around 6 pm, Dr. Joseph Wybran, a leading doctor and president of the C.C.O.J.B, the Belgian Jewish federation, was shot at close range in the parking lot of the Erasmus hospital in Brussels. Thirty-three years later, justice has still not been served. Agnès Bensimon reviews for K. the twists and turns of an investigation into a murder whose treatment by the Belgian police and justice system raises questions. Until its latest development in March 2025, which has reignited disillusionment…
The aftermath of October 7 has profoundly reshaped Jewish identity and community practices, as well as how they are perceived by the rest of Western societies. In this article, demographer Sergio DellaPergola offers a general assessment of these changes from an Israeli perspective, highlighting what he believes are the major issues facing the future of the Jewish people.
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