New French Chief Rabbi Elected
The French Jewish community elected a new chief rabbi.
Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, 56, defeated the longtime incumbent, Rabbi Joseph Sitruk, by a vote of 184 to 99 in Sunday’s election for the seven-year term.
Sitruk, 63, is in his third term as the spiritual head of France’s 600,000 Jews. He had defeated Bernheim in 1994 in the vote by rabbis and communal leaders. Both are Orthodox rabbis.
Bernheim, who heads the largest synagogue in Paris, will take over January 1.
The election battle pitting the Ashkenazic Bernheim and the Sephardic Sitruk turned so rancorous that France’s two major Jewish communal groups, the CRIF and the Unified Jewish Social Fund, issued a joint statement urging calm on both sides.
Also Sunday, Joel Mergui, 50, was elected as the new head of the official Jewish Consistory, replacing Jean Kahn.
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.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
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.
