Construction has begun on the future Centre Européen du Judaïsme (European Centre of Judaism) in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, a space dedicated to Jewish religion, culture and heritage run by the Israelite Central Consistory of France—an organisation established by Napoléon Bonaparte to administer the country’s Jewish population. The project was celebrated at a “founders’ evening” last night, 29 June, at the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) of Paris, attended by the interior minister Bernard Cazaneuve and Paris’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, AFP reports.
The planned cost of the project is €10m, with €2.7m in state and regional public funding, and it is due to be completed in spring 2017. Covering 4,900 sq. m over eight floors, the Jewish centre will include a synagogue, library, theatre and classrooms. The new building has been designed by the local architects Bruno Fléchet and Stéphane Maupin, and the city of Paris provided the land on a long-term lease.
France, which has the largest Jewish population in Europe at around 500,000, has seen a rise anti-Semitic violence in recent years, including the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris in January that killed four people. Joël Mergui, the head of the Central Consistory and the Paris Consistory, calls this new centre a “symbol of hope”.