FRANCE OR FARATZTA?

We hope you had a wonderful Tishrei, b'H. We come back to a world that moved while we were at the table. October 7 marked three years since the massacre. In Israel, flags flew at half-mast and the "One Thousand Memories" exhibition opened in Tel Aviv with personal belongings of the murdered. In New York, a counter-demonstration organized by Within Our Lifetime marched from Union Square to Wall Street, where a Nova memorial exhibit had been set up. Protesters lit flares outside the exhibit, flew the flags of Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades and Hezbollah, carried banners reading "Long live October 7," and chanted "Globalize the intifada." Governor Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James both condemned the rally.

"Globalize the intifada." The intifada was a campaign of suicide bombings targeting buses, cafes, and Passover seders. To globalize it means to export that campaign everywhere. The phrase is not a metaphor. It is not ambiguous. And it was chanted in the open, on a weekday afternoon, in midtown Manhattan, three years after 1,200 people were butchered in their homes. One wonders whether the people chanting it understand what they are saying, or whether they understand perfectly.

Either way, it is not only an American problem. Across the Atlantic, in France, the same sickness is playing out in a form that may be harder to ignore.

Masked teenagers blocked the entrance to a high school in Carpentras on October 1, waving a Palestinian flag and chanting "We burned Israel." In Marseille, students spray-painted swastikas on a schoolyard wall. Across France, what began as union-led walkouts over pension reform has turned into something else: open, public, daylight antisemitism coming from children.

The French Interior Ministry recorded 533 antisemitic acts in the first six months of 2026 alone, 46 percent of all anti-religious incidents in the country. Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli wrote directly to Prime Minister Lecornu and Interior Minister Nuñez warning of a surge tied to the October 7 anniversary. Nearly 4,000 French Jews have made aliyah this year, a 40 percent increase over last year. Aliyah Minister Ofir Sofer told the cabinet that Israel should prepare for a potential mass wave.

Meanwhile, the 250 Chabad shluchim in France have not moved. They are building new mosdos, opening new schools, running new programs. Asked about safety, one shaliach's wife cited the same principle the shluchim have cited after every attack: the Rebbe taught that you don't run from terror. You increase light.

The coverage depends on who is telling it. Fox News ran the story as a diplomatic clash: Ambassador Kushner accused Paris of failing its Jews, France summoned him and called the letter "unacceptable," and the whole thing folded into the broader Trump-era tensions over trade and Lebanon. JNS ran it as an Israeli security crisis: Chikli's warning letters, absorption plans, activists petitioning the governor of Paris to ban the October 11 aliyah fair. The Jerusalem Post quoted Chief Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of the Grand Synagogue of Paris: "There is no future for Jews in France."

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On Erev Shabbos Parshas Vayeishev, 23 Kislev 5752, the Rebbe spoke about France. A group of French Jews had come to 770 for Kislev, and the Rebbe addressed them directly.

He began with the haftarah of Vayishlach, the prophecy of Ovadiah: “וגלות החל הזה לבני ישראל אשר כנענים עד צרפת … ועלו מושיעים בהר ציון, and this host of exiles of the children of Israel, among the Canaanites as far as France … and saviors will ascend Mount Zion.” The Rebbe pointed out three things about the word Tzarfas, France's Hebrew name.

First, the gematria. Tzarfas — צרפת — equals 770 (צ=90, ר=200, פ=80, ת=400). The address of “בית רבינו שבבבל, our master’s house in Babylon,” the house from which the wellsprings of Chassidus flow outward to the world.

Second, the letters. צרפת rearranges into פרצת, the root of “ופרצת ימה וקדמה וצפונה ונגבה, you shall burst forth west and east, north and south,” the mandate to break through every boundary in spreading Torah. The Rebbe said this is the visible proof, in our generation, that the world is ready for Moshiach: the work of the Nasi HaDor in France, the country whose very name spells "breakthrough," in the building numbered 770.

Third, the root. Tzarfas shares a root with צירוף, refining, smelting. France is the place where the dross is separated from the precious metal. The Rebbe identified this as the completion of the birur, the refinement of the entire world.

Then he told a story that everyone in the room already knew.

On Simchas Torah 5734, the French visitors had come to 770 for hakafos. The Rebbe gathered them and began to sing “האדרת והאמונה לחי עולמים,” to the tune of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, the anthem of the Revolution. The Rebbe said that every great nation has a heavenly minister, a "sar," and the anthem of that nation is connected to its sar. When Chassidim took the melody and set it to words of holiness, the sar of France felt it above, and it caused a change below.

And then, the Rebbe noted, something remarkable happened. A few months after Chassidim began singing the Marseillaise as האדרת והאמונה, France changed the anthem. The government altered its tempo and arrangement. Some people, the Rebbe added, don't even know the niggun came from "somewhere else." They think it was a Chassidishe niggun from the start.

The Rebbe concluded the sicha with the prophecy of Ovadiah in full: “ועלו מושיעים בהר ציון לשפוט את הר עשו והיתה לה' המלוכה, and saviors will ascend Mount Zion to judge the mountain of Eisav, and the sovereignty will be G-d’s.” At that point the French guests said l'chaim, and the room sang האדרת והאמונה. In the middle of the niggun the Rebbe motioned with his fingers to whistle, connected, the sicha notes, to the verse “אשרקה להם ואקבצם, I will whistle for them and gather them,” the ingathering of the exiles.

The practical directive: build new mosdos in Tzarfas. Print new seforim. This, the Rebbe said, is bound up with the birur of the entire world. He then added that guests from Canada were in the room as well, from a country that had once had a connection to France.

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That was 34 years ago. The shluchim did exactly that. France now has the largest Chabad infrastructure in Europe: schools, mikvaos, shuls, camps, youth programs, Gan Israels, kosher restaurants, community centers, in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nice, Bordeaux, and dozens of smaller cities.

The Rebbe spoke of the refining of France as done. The anthem, he said, was a wonder that showed openly, to the eye, the refining and transformation that had been carried out in France, and he brought it partly as an answer to those who complain that nobody sees miracles today.

Carpentras, Marseille, 533 acts in six months, a chief rabbi who sees no future: none of it can change the Rebbe’s words. What we can do is ask to see them fulfilled, now. He gave that instruction in the same sicha. Since everything has already been accomplished and the Geulah has still not come, he said, the right thing is to publicize the miracles Hashem does for us, to ourselves and to others, knowing that this is bound up with the true and complete Geulah.

That is our strength: to believe the Rebbe’s words about France as he said them, and to know that what he said will very soon be seen outwardly, by everyone, with the coming of Moshiach. He closed with a blessing that the refining and transformation of France, together with the completion of that work in the whole world, bring the prophecy about in actual deed: “ועלו מושיעים בהר ציון לשפוט את הר עשו והיתה לה' המלוכה.”