Dear Friends:
My book, “The Committed Life” is, Baruch HaShem, available in five languages and is now being translated into French. While I find every translation very exciting because each one opens new doors to reach the hearts of our people throughout the world, there is a special urgency that accompanies the forthcoming French publication because our brethren in France are under siege.

To be sure, today Anti Semitism is evident all over the world, especially in countries with a strong Muslim presence, but in France, anti-Semitic incidents are higher than in any other European country. Alas, there is nothing new about French anti-Semitism, but just the same, every new attack is “new” and we dare not become complacent. Our brethren in France need chizuk - support. They need to know that we, the Jewish people, are not indifferent to their plight and are prepared to raise our voices on their behalf in Ahavas Yisroel - the message of Torah and love of Eretz Yisrael. It is for all of these reasons that I am looking forward to the publication of “The Committed Life” in France so that in my own small way, I may express my solidarity and commitment to Acheinu Kol Beit Yisrael.

To be sure, many may be under the impression that recent Muslim uprisings in France have opened the eyes of the French, but there is neither rhyme nor reason to Anti-Semitism, The hatred of the Anti-Semite is so all consuming that it eclipses all else.

To appreciate the extent of this crisis, allow me to share with you some excerpts from an e-mail that I just received from Paris.

I AM A JEW - therefore, I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists...I will not sit back and do nothing.
Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France.
In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil.

A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words “dirty Jew” were painted.

In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months.
Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming “Jews to the gas chambers” and “Death to the Jews.”

The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women so that their relatives will kill then to preserve “family honor”.

The French Ambassador to Great Britain was not sacked - and did not apologize when it was learned that he told guests at a London dinner that the world’s troubles were the fault of “.... that sh----y little country, Israel.
“At the start of the 21st century,” writes Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a well known social scientist, in a new book, “we are discovering that Jews are once again select targets of violence...Hatred of the Jews has returned to France.” But of course, it never left. Not France; not Europe.

Anti Semitism, the oldest bigotry known to man has been a part of European society since time immemorial. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, open Jew hatred became unfashionable, but fashions change, and Europe is reverting to type.
To be sure, some Europeans are shocked by the re-emergence of Jew-hatred all over the continent, but the most common reaction has been complacency. “Stop saying that there is anti-Semitism in France,” President Jacques Chirac scolded a Jewish editor in January. “There is no anti-Semitism in France.”

A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher shop (and of course the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their 20`s were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France. The woman was pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelle, France. This was in the past week.

According to the Anti-Defamation league, from Sept. 9, 2000, at the start of the Intifada, through Nov. 30, 2001, there were some 330 acts of anti-Semitism just in and around Paris. In addition to literally scores of fire bombings of synagogues, just before Rosh HaShana, 200 Arabs attacked Jews on the Champs Eelysee. The pace has only picked up since then.

We can understand anti-Semitism among French people. There is nothing the French love like their traditions, and on the question of hating Jews, they certainly have tradition galore. What, however, can explain the sometimes muted, sometimes defensively outraged reaction of French officials?

Simple. There are approximately five to six million Muslims presently living in France and many more arrive daily. There are only about six hundred thousand Jews still living in France. Moreover, France is the number one European exporter to Iraq, totaling over two billion dollars per year in exports since 2000. To those who are at a loss to explain why French elected officials seen “helpless” to stem the tide of anti-Semitism. I say that something smells awfully “Vichy”

So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do, at least these simple three things:
First, Care enough to stay informed, Don’t ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight.
Second, boycott France. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If we are resolved, we can exert amazing pressure and, whatever else we may know about the French we most certainly knows that they are as a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well-directed pressure.
Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Think of all the people of good conscience that you know and let them know that you and the people that you care about need their help. The number one best selling book in France is “September 11: The Frightening Fraud,” which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon.
Our only strength is the strength of our community and there can be no community without communication.

One Final Note: I have no personal knowledge of the author of this letter, but I take exception to his closing statement. While it is true that our strength is in our community “we must remember that that is not our only strength – our one and only strength is HaShem - our G-d. “If only My people would heed Me...If Israel would walk in My ways, in an instant, I would subdue their foes and against their tormentors, turn My hand...” (Psalm 93)

So simple, yet for many, so difficult to understand.

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