(JTA) Joining the stream of people converging on Trocadero Square, I soon realized that this event would be significantly different from the dozens of Jewish community gatherings I had attended in France.
The atmosphere, rhetoric, symbolism and attendance at the “Justice for Sarah Halimi” protest rally on April 25 suggested to me that France’s Jewish community is entering a new phase in the decades-long slip of its members’ confidence in their future here.
The rally — an event with 20,000 participants, one of the largest communal gatherings in decades — was sparked by an April 14 decision by France’s highest court. It affirmed that 31-year-old Kobili Traore was unfit to stand trial because Traore, a Muslim, had smoked so much marijuana before the 2017 slaying that it rendered him temporarily psychotic.
