At the end of May, a seemingly small news story made it to the headlines of the British Jewish Chronicle and the American Algemeiner. The gist of it was that France was scaling back the security of its Jewish communities, even though anti-Semitic incidents average three per day according to the French anti-Semitism watchdog the Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisémitisme (BNVCA).
According to the Jewish Chronicle, “Congregants at some synagogues, particularly those outside urban centers, have recently noted that at some nonreligious evening events, soldiers are present at the beginning as participants arrive, but leave soon afterwards, leaving the buildings and the people inside unprotected. … Some small shuls [synagogues] have been told that they will not be guarded for an event that has fewer than 10 participants — this particularly has an impact on Orthodox communities, where a few congregants come regularly to pray every morning.” Similarly, according to the paper, the rabbi of a small Orthodox community on the outskirts of Paris, who asked not to be named, says his synagogue is now under fairly minimal protection. “Realistically, we knew that level of protection wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. At some point we won’t have any state protection anymore, so I’m planning to put in bulletproof windows and stronger locks on the front door. In fact I think that it’s more reassuring than otherwise — it means that the immediate threat level has gone down.”