Adir Glick talks about his experiences in France

As Jews around the world tried to understand the events in France in the past month, the local community got a snapshot of what’s going on through the eyes of Adir Glick.

Glick, a rabbinical student in his last year at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a Conservative rabbinical school in Los Angeles, spoke at Temple Emanu-El during Shabbat Feb. 7.

“The French are very humanistic,” he said in an interview Feb. 6 in Rabbi Wayne Franklin’s office. It is a deeply secular society, he pointed out. “They look at things differently.”

“Religion is a matter of personal choice,” he said. Though he was wearing a kippah during our interview, he indicated that he does not wear one in public in France.

Born in Israel, reared in France, Glick also studied in England, Canada and the U.S. He started out as a journalist, earning a graduate degree in journalism before settling on a career in the rabbinate. This was not an unusual career choice for him. His family still lives in southern France, where is father is a rabbi. Although he now lives in Los Angeles, he said he understands what the country is going through, and he looks at events in the country with a French point of view.

When the terrorist attacks took place in France, Glick was interviewing for a job at a synagogue in Marseille. When he arrived in Marseille, shortly after the news of the hostage-taking, he and his hosts watched news reports instead of completing the planned interview. The community briefly considered canceling services for security reasons, he said. They did not and twice as many people as usual showed up. And the parshat for the week was Shemot, the beginning of the book of Exodus. Glick said that he talked about fearlessness to the congregation. “This is not that different than walking out of Egypt … not going to live in fear,” he said. “Though I’m not sure fearlessness is the right image anymore,” he said. But the general consensus was that people were not afraid.

From Marseille, Glick went to Paris to participate in the march for unity on Jan. 11. He said it was a moving experience. “Hearing la Marseillaise gave me goose bumps,” he said.

The people were marching for an idea, he said, for something great that they couldn’t quite express. “You could see it in the signs. ‘Je suis Charlie’ – that meant freedom to me,” he said. “People were chanting ‘We are not afraid.’ People were applauding the police. That was unusual.”

“You have to understand that this was a huge, shocking moment for the French,” he said. “In France, you [individuals] don’t have guns, so there is a lot less gun violence.

“This was particularly barbaric act for that reason. The scene of the police car retreating down the alley is practically unheard of.”

As he explains it, the chronology of events in France is unique. Because free speech is so important, it was no surprise that the magazine Charlie Hebdo would publish again so quickly. The French people demonstrate and proclaim they are not afraid because they believe in the idea of freedom.

According to Glick there is anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli feeling in France. But Jews have lived in France since the time of Napoleon and are an integral part of society. Today, there is a small but growing Conservative Jewish movement there – that brought Glick to Marseille in the first place. There are also approximately 6 million Muslims in the country; many of them have come from north Africa, and some feel disenfranchised.

What does he hope will come of all that has happened so far?

“I hope there is concrete change, that they [the French] can come to grips with religious extremism. I hope this serves as a wakeup call. I hope that French Jewry will survive. That the French can go forward and find out who they are within a new society, that they can go forward and be dynamic.”

FRAN OSTENDORF is the editor of The Jewish Voice.