France elected a new chief rabbi on Sunday after a lengthy presidential-style campaign described by one communal figure as “an unprecedented battle between two radically different characters”.
The victor, Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, the 56-year-old rabbi of Paris’s La Victoire Synagogue, beat Chief Rabbi Joseph Haïm Sitruk, 63, who led the French rabbinate for 20 years.
According to communal figures, the election had “turned American”, with a campaign that included video clips on the internet showing the younger rabbi jogging through Paris, comments on social-networking site Facebook, and advertising in the Jewish press. France’s main communal organisation, the Consistoire, responsible for electing the chief rabbi, had never seen such effort and cash invested in an election. One of the 300 members eligible to vote said: “I never got so many phone calls. The chief rabbi [Sitruk] himself left a message on my mobile phone and asked what he could do for me to get my support.”
Rabbi Sitruk was seen as the traditional candidate, “friendly and always ready to tell a joke”, and with a keen interest in business opportunities, such as the launch — during his term of office — of his own kashrut label in competition with the Consistoire label, a move which provoked fierce criticism.
