French rabbi asks questions others hesitate to pose about Jews and Muslims

(The Christian Science Monitor) Michel Serfaty, a French rabbi, serves a congregation in Ris-Orangis, south of Paris. Not far away is the housing project where Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four Jewish people January 9 at a kosher supermarket in Paris, grew up.

Serfaty was attacked in 2003. He was on his way to his synagogue when he heard someone shout “Jews, Palestine will prevail.” Two men pulled up in a car; one, who turned out to be a boxer from Morocco, punched him across the face.

The next year he started the French Jewish Muslim Friendship Association, or AJMF. In its “friendship bus,” plastered with messages of tolerance, the organization has made eight tours across the country—each six to ten weeks long—and ten tours across Paris.