Paper short abstract:

I analyse the ambiguities in the life and work of self-titled “last Rabbi of the quartiers nord”, who, barely able to make a minyan is marginalised by Marseille’s community for his work with local Mosque-based groups to provide food, clothes, toys and education to some of the city’s poorest people.

Paper long abstract:

The words rabbin (Rabbi) and quartiers nord (northern neighbourhoods) do not go together. The first term, Rabbi, is synonymous with security, and increasingly so since l’alyah de l’interieur (Jewish displacement and re-convergence elsewhere in French conurbations). The second, quartiers nord, situated in the poor North of Marseille calls to mind high-rise social housing, socio-economic issues, youth disaffection and parallel economies particularly drug trafficking. Though neither image has any absolute truth, in such a discursive context it seems incredible to experience those words in tandem. The self-titled “last Rabbi of the quartiers nord”, marginalised territorially, monetarily and in terms of legitimacy by the city’s mainstream organised communities, concentrated in the wealthier south, while barely able to make a minyan works tirelessly with local French Arab Muslim Mosque-based civil society groups to provide food, clothes, toys and education to some of the city’s poorest people. Though his work is not Orthodox his vision of the world is traditional and conservative, for him groups have essences and we all have our place in society, conflict thus arises from change. Politically, his vision, strongly influenced by an immovable Zionism, aligns with the North African traditionalism of his synagogue. Intercommunal relations are therefore possible but hybridity cannot result from them. Through his biography and my exchanges with him I want to explore the tensions inherent in providing local human solidarity and relating to one’s neighbours through a racialised imagination and as well as his own precarity and marginality from the city’s Jewish centre.