Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Roger Cukierman Voted Head of French Jewish Group

Roger Cukierman has been elected the head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, or CRIF.

It is the second time Cukierman, 76, has been elected to head the representative body of French Jewry. He also served as president of CRIF from 2001 to 2007. He succeeds Richard Prasquier, who has served for the last six years as president of the organization.

Cukierman won on Sunday in the second round of voting by the General Assembly of the umbrella organization with 61 percent of the vote. Arie Bensemhoun, president of the Jewish community of Toulouse, took 39 percent of the vote.

Following his election, Cukierman said he would work “under the sign of a relentless, constant and determined fight against anti-Semitism and the respect of memory,” according to The Parisian.

“I want a CRIF stronger, strictly independent and open to the civil society as a whole,” he also said.

Cukierman, who is of Polish extraction, holds a doctorate in economics and is currently a vice president of the World Jewish Congress. He has served in a number of other community posts.

Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, congratulated Cukierman in a statement issued after his reelection.

“Mr. Cukierman represents a wealth of knowledge and experience which will be necessary for French Jewry in the years ahead,” Kantor said. “He has represented French Jewry in the past and we look forward to working closely with him as we face many challenges ahead.”

CRIF is the umbrella organization for 72 Jewish groups in France. There are about half a million Jews living in France, according to The Parisian.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.