“Sting”, “shock”, “disillusionment”. The French Jews of Montreal are astonished. They thought they had found a place of refuge where they could settle permanently, a safe haven to protect themselves from the anti-Semitism they had fled when they left France. But the conflagration in the Middle East following the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023 lit fire in the heart of Quebec. The Quebec metropolis, where the Jewish community has an estimated 90,000 members, is not the promised land they had dreamed of. This reality disrupts their present and threatens their future.
“I’m scared,” Rivka repeats again and again. 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 subtle makeup casts feverish glances at the few customers present. As he tells his story, his voice falls silent until it is lost in an inaudible whisper. She hesitated before agreeing to surrender. “The hatred against us is so great that I was afraid of being trapped,” she apologizes. She chose a Hebrew first name to hide her identity.
Called “Florence Foresti” by her friends for her jokes and joy of life, Rivka admits that she has lost the desire to laugh. But his eyes light up when he remembers the first images of his new life. Arriving from France in 2021, she was amazed at the spectacle of peaceful coexistence between communities that Montreal offered. « Cruise in Mile End [quartier du centre de la ville où sont installés les juifs hassidiques] an old ultra-Orthodox rabbi wearing his shtreimel [chapeau de fourrure] I found it calming to walk a few steps away from a girl in a miniskirt and fishnet stockings without anyone looking at her or objecting. I told myself that we would have an ideal life here. »
“Hide your Star of David”
Growing up in the middle-class 6th arrondissement of Lyon, she remembers sharing the Mediterranean culture of her Oran-born father with her Muslim friends. But it was in college that she suffered her first anti-Semitic insults. Later, she can no longer go dancing with friends without hearing her mother tell her: “Hide your Star of David.” »
At the beginning of the 2000s, she reportedly experienced a growing increase in insecurity. 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 The 2020 née Rivka began to “suffocate,” she admits. The Islamist attack, which was not directed against Jews but instead cost the life of Professor Samuel Paty in October 2020, convinced them to flee. “I didn’t want to raise my daughter in a country where we could no longer teach freely. »
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