The activist organization Yad Laachim is concluding a successful round of lectures in Paris, the capital of France, in light of the numerous cases of local Jewish women who converted to Islam and married Muslims living in the country.
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This lecture series, like the previous ones in recent years, was organized by members of the "French Department" of the Yad La'Ahimah, who are responsible for addressing the problem, at the request of rabbis and educators in France.
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""Despite the war in Israel and the significant increase in cases of anti-Semitism, there are unfortunately quite a few Jewish women who are in contact with Muslims living in France," Yad Laachim says. "Some of these Muslims are second and third generation of Arab families from North Africa, and some are immigrants who arrived in recent years from Syria or Africa.
""Unfortunately, as in Israel, in most cases the girls are forced to convert to Islam in order to marry those Muslims, and this scourge does not spare any city or neighborhood.".
Yad L'Achim reports that girls from religious and ultra-Orthodox families have also fallen into such relationships, given the atmosphere of permissiveness in France and the difficulty of setting boundaries and restrictions.
""The phenomenon of assimilation among French Jews has been a cause for concern for many years, and it also occurs in religious and ultra-Orthodox families. Every week we receive one or two new cases from France. The conferences we hold are intended to give the public tools to deal with the problem, to open the eyes of parents and to prevent young women from taking disastrous steps in advance.".
To illustrate the danger, the Yad L'Achim team included Ruth (a pseudonym), a French Jew from an ultra-Orthodox home who fell into a relationship with an African Muslim that quickly turned into a violent, destructive, and dangerous relationship.
Her family, who discovered the relationship too late, contacted Yad Laachim, and the organization's French department managed to quickly smuggle her to Israel and arrange for her to have her own furnished apartment in a city where many immigrants from France live. Ruth, who told her story at conferences, illustrated more than anything else the danger of destructive relationships, the easy way to fall into them, but above all the fact that there is a way out of even the most difficult places we find ourselves.
The lectures were held not only in the various quarters of Paris but also in its more distant suburbs, in areas where vibrant Jewish communities live, such as Saint-Maurice, Carteille, Montaigne, and Pantin.
""Over a thousand women of all ages have participated in the conferences we have now held, and during them, two girls who participated in them have already contacted us and asked for our help in getting out of these relationships," concludes the French Department at Yad L'Achim. "The enthusiastic responses we received indicate the necessity of holding the conferences, and we are confident that the echoes they have caused will cause and help many girls to get out of such destructive relationships. Given the necessity of the matter, we have already begun planning the next round of lectures.".
