Shalhevet girls speak and France listens

About 100 students from Midreshet Shalhevet High School for Girls rallied outside the office of the French Consulate on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue this week, decrying the recent spate of Anti-Semitism in France.

The event was covered by reporters from French media.

Rosh Mesivta Rabbi Zev Friedman began the rally by thanking the NYPD and discussing the serious attacks against Jews in France that occurred since the treacherous murder of four Jews last January in a kosher market.

Jewish students and teachers have been under attack over the last few months and “it has now come to a point where many Jews are afraid to publicly wear a yarmulka or display their ‘Jewishness’ in public,” said Rabbi Friedman. 

France has been accused of not doing enough to prevent further attacks.

A report in Vanity Fair magazine noted that when Palestinian sympathizers scrawled a swastika on the Statue of Freedom in Paris, police refused to stop or arrest the perpetrators. The French government eventually condemned this hate crime but made no arrests and did not take any other action. The students of Midreshet Shalhevet respond by saying,  “J’accuse — Save the Jews!”

A passerby noticed the rally, and mentioned that she herself came from France and happened to be Jewish.

She told reporters that what the Shalhevet team was protesting against is in fact a problem. French police “’no longer protect us,” the passerby said.

Rikki Vatch, a Midreshet Shalhevet senior from Queens, played a key role in organizing this rally along with her committee of Sarah Austin, Hannah Zerbib, Naomi Davidowitz, Naava Yastrab and Alexandra Anthony.

The students, with the support of Director of Student Activities Ilona Diamond, coordinated the purchase of 100 yarmulkas themed in the French colors of red, white and blue to present to the French government. The challenge of the rally was ‘‘whether or not the French government would accept or reject the offering, presented as a gesture of solidarity with the French Jewish community,” said Vatch.