” Stab “, “shock”, “disillusionment”. The French Jews of Montreal are in a state of astonishment. They thought they had found a refuge where they could settle down permanently, a safe shelter to protect themselves from the anti-Semitism they had fled when leaving France. But the conflagration in the Middle East, after the massacre perpetrated by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, lit fires in the heart of Quebec. The Quebec metropolis, where the Jewish community is estimated at ninety thousand members, is not the promised land they had dreamed of. This reality disrupts their present and threatens their future.
” I am scared “, Rivka keeps repeating. On the first floor of a small, discreet café in the Plateau district, in the heart of the city, this 37-year-old woman with short hair and discreet makeup casts feverish glances at the few customers present. As he tells his story, his voice fades away, until it is lost in an inaudible whisper. She hesitated before agreeing to give herself up. “There is such an outpouring of hatred against us that I feared a trap,” she apologizes; she chose a Hebrew first name to conceal her identity.
Nicknamed “Florence Foresti” by her friends for her banter and joy of life, Rivka admits to having lost the taste for laughing. However, his eyes sparkle when he recalls the first images of his new life. Arriving from France in 2021, she remembers being amazed by the spectacle of peaceful coexistence between communities offered by Montreal. « Cruising in Mile End [quartier du centre de la ville où sont installés les juifs hassidiques] an old ultraorthodox rabbi wearing his schtreimel [chapeau de fourrure] walking a few steps from a girl in a miniskirt and fishnet stockings, without anyone looking at them or finding fault, I found it calming. I told myself that we were going to live an ideal life here. »
“Hide your Star of David”
Raised in the middle class 6e district of Lyon, she keeps the memory of having shared with her Muslim girlfriends the Mediterranean culture, which is that of her father, who came from Oran. But, in college, she suffered her first anti-Semitic insults. Later, she won’t be able to go out dancing with friends without hearing her mother say to her: “Hide your Star of David. »
At the turn of the 2000s, she claims to have seen insecurity rise crescendo. The litany of names of victims of anti-Semitic crimes and attacks seemed endless – from the Sandler and Monsonégo families, at the Ozar-Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012, to Mireille Knoll, in Paris in 2018. Married and mother of ‘a little girl born in 2020, Rivka began “to suffocate”, she confides. The Islamist attack, which was not directed against Jews but cost the life of professor Samuel Paty in October 2020, convinced her to flee. “I did not want to raise my daughter in a country where we could no longer teach freely. »
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