Published: 11 December 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ALTHOUGH PUNCTUALITY isn’t a dominant trait among most Jewish leaders (and non-leaders) who agree to sit down with The Times of Israel, Michel Cohen Tenoudji, the president of the Jewish community of Marseille, apologised through his black cloth mask as he barrelled into his simple office on the second floor of the Great Synagogue compound a few minutes late. He was unable to let the interview run overtime, he said, because a local Muslim leader would be visiting him directly afterward.
The mid-October interview came just days after a Paris schoolteacher was targeted and beheaded in a terrorist attack — a gruesome retribution for having shown the class a controversial cartoon featuring the Prophet Mohammed.
Asked if he’d discuss the attack with the visiting Muslim leader, the 60-year-old Cohen Tenoudji, who since 2017 has been president of the Consistoire — the government-recognized body representing Marseille’s Jewish community — let slip that he would.
The local Muslim leader, who asked to remain unnamed for this article, intended to denounce the attack and all forms of terror, Cohen Tenoudji said. The two would also discuss some ambitious interfaith initiatives they were working on.
FULL STORY Work, history and dialogue keep Jews, Muslims happy together in sunny Marseille (Times of Israel)
Photo: Community president Michel Cohen Tenoudji with a local Muslim leader, who wished to remain unnamed (Times of Israel)
