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11-12-2023
PARIS: Emmanuel Macron has been accused of betraying the French Republic after he took part in a Jewish ceremony inside his official residence, the Elysee Palace.
In a country where the separation of religion is itself a religion, the lighting of a Hanukkah candle inside the historic Salle des Fêtes on Thursday was immediately denounced by politicians of both right and left.
The president had invited France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia to light the first of eight candles on a Hanukkiah, or candelabra, marking the start of the Jewish festival of lights. The occasion was the award to President Macron of a prize for his efforts against antisemitism but when video of the ceremony appeared shortly afterwards on social media, there was furore.
For French opinion-formers of all stripes, the president had committed an enormous faux-pas by allowing religion into the secular hallows of the presidency.
“As far as I know this is the first time this has ever happened. It is a breach of secularism,” said David Lisnard, a prominent right-wing opposition figure who is also mayor of Cannes.
“The Elysee is not a place of religion. You cannot compromise with secularism,” said the Socialist president of the Occitania region, Carole Delga.
“Will Macron now do the same for other religions? Some yes, some no? It’s a dangerous spiral,” said Alexis Corbiere of the far-left France Unbowed.
Even some French Jews were perplexed. “This is something that shouldn’t be allowed to happen again,” said Yonathan Arfi who heads the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (Crif).
“French Jews have always considered secularism as a law of protection and of freedom. Anything that weakens secularism weakens Jews,” he said.
The idea of “secularism” was put into a French law of 1905, after years of struggle between the state and the Roman Catholic Church. It enshrined freedom of belief, but ended state involvement in the Church and removed all signs of religion from public buildings.
The law has since come to be regarded as a cornerstone of modern France, ensuring strict neutrality between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, and guaranteeing that citizens are seen as individuals-in-a-state and not as members-in-a-community. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
