Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

French President Emmanuel Macron Attends Pre-Rosh Hashanah Ceremony

(JTA) — French President Emmanuel Macron attended a pre-Rosh Hashanah ceremony at the Great Synagogue of Paris, the first time that a sitting president has done so.

Macron, who was presented with several varieties of honey as a gift in honor of the Jewish New Year, did not speak at the Tuesday evening program, since France has a strict separation between state and religion, the French news agency AFP reported.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, French Senate President Gerard Larcher and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo also attended the ceremony. Macron was greeted by France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia; Joel Mergui, president of the Consistoire organization that provides religious services to French Jews; and the chief rabbi of Paris, Michel Gugenheim, according to AFP.

Jewish community leaders who spoke at the program directed their concern about rising anti-Semitism in the country to the visiting president.

“Our children leave” because “France, the land of asylum, is becoming a land of exile for Jews,” Mergui said.

He also said that ritual slaughter, circumcision and vacation on religious holidays should “no longer be seen as concessions at the margins of the law… but obvious freedoms.”

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.