Paris Mayor Slammed For Respecting Yom Kippur
The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, has come under criticism for adjourning city council talks early for the start of Yom Kippur.
Following the early suspension of deliberations at the Council of Paris on Tuesday, council member Gilles Alayrac said, “The mayor devotes too much attention to religious sensitivities.”
The newspaper Le Parisien also quoted Alayrac, a representative of the Radical Party of the Left, as saying that “only the Republican calendar matters.”
Alexis Corbière, another representative of the Radical Party of the Left said, “The real problem is public spending on religious venues.”
They and other members of their party have expressed opposition in the past to subsidies given to approximately 20 Jewish kindergartens in Paris.
“My friend Gilles panics when he is required to be attentive to others,” Delanoë, who is not Jewish, told the French newspaper. “If we had scheduled a meeting for December 24, he would protest.”
In 2011, Alayrac said organizers of a song festival featuring all French classics should not have been allowed to hold the event because “under the guise of defending French traditions, their objective is to directly attack Islam.”
The Council was scheduled to hold discussions through Tuesday and Wednesday, until Mayor Delanoë of the Socialist Party rescheduled the planned deliberations to take place next month.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!