This Thursday, at the Élysée, the Chief Rabbi of France Haïm Korsia lit a candle on the occasion of the Jewish festival of Hanouka. Many elected officials, mainly from the left, denounced a sequence that contravened secularism.
“Macron president, he’s a 10-year-old kid with a little chemist’s kit, but real nitroglycerin and real matches.” The metaphor is signed by the socialist senator, Laurence Rossignol, on X (ex-Twitter) this Thursday, December 7.
Several left-wing elected officials criticize the President of the Republic for not having respected the principle of secularism and in particular the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State in France.
At issue: a video which is circulating quite widely on social networks. We see, at the Élysée, the Chief Rabbi of France Haïm Korsia lighting the first Hanouka candle in the presence of Emmanuel Macron to mark the start of this Jewish festival of lights.
“Dangerous spiral”
“Unforgivable political mistake”, reacted Manuel Bompard, coordinator of La France insoumise, recalling that “Saturday we celebrate the anniversary of the 1905 law”.
And his colleague Matthias Tavel cites an article from this law that we owe to Aristide Briand: ”The Republic does not recognize, employ or subsidize any religion”. Still among the rebels, Alexis Corbière warned of a “dangerous spiral” and questioned:
“Will Macron do the same for all other religions? Some yes, others no?”
“This common is precious but fragile”
Reactions also multiplied among socialists. “We do not compromise with secularism. This common is precious but fragile,” warned Carole Delga, president of the Occitanie region, when the mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse, known for his attachment to secularism, wrote:
“The President of the Republic must be the first guarantor of the separation of churches and state.”
MP Jérôme Guedj also spoke. Recognizing “perfectly legitimate support for French Jews” in view of “the rise of anti-Semitism” in France since the Hamas attacks on October 7 in Israel, he nevertheless regretted this sequence, writing: “As sympathetic as it is , Hanukkah is a religious holiday. In which no elected official of the Republic should participate, like any religious demonstration.”
“Thwart this image”
“Are we imagining a Christmas mass or Eid at the Élysée? It’s not serious,” also reacted Julien Aubert, member of the Les Républicains party and former deputy for Vaucluse. A rare reaction from this side of the political spectrum, the staffs of LR and the National Rally remaining, for the moment, silent.
Laurent Jacobelli, of the RN, and David Lisnard, of LR, nevertheless both pointed out a gap between this event and the absence of Emmanuel Macron, Sunday November 12. From now on, the president seeks to “counteract this image that he was able to give to our Jewish compatriots”, sought to explain the first on BFMTV.
The second pretended to wonder about presidential?”
This Thursday, during this ceremony at the Élysée, Emmanuel Macron was awarded the annual prize of the European Conference of Rabbis (CER) which rewards the fight against anti-Semitism and the safeguarding of religious freedoms. The head of state promised to set “in the coming weeks” the date of a tribute to the victims of the Hamas attack, saying he had to wait because families “still have hostages”.