Paris – A leader of the Freemasons in France said he was assaulted
on the street by a woman carrying a hammer who called him a Jew.
Christophe Habas, the master of the Grand Orient of France,
suffered superficial wounds in the incident Wednesday night as he was walking
to a metro station in the French capital. The assailant shouted “Jew” three
times as she hit him with the hammer before fleeing.
The
report did not say whether Habas is Jewish, but according to Le Parisien he
recently returned from a trip to Israel that received considerable coverage in
the media in France, where the Freemasons movement has 50,000 members.
The Freemasons are members of societies, or lodges, who engage in
secret rituals that promoters of the movement say “instill in its members a
moral and ethical approach to life.” The rites include “a series of ritual
dramas – a progression of allegorical two-part plays which are learnt by heart
and performed within each Lodge,” as the British lodge describes them on its website. They
“follow ancient forms, and use stonemasons’ customs and tools as allegorical
guides.”
Francis
Kalifat, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities
in France, expressed his group’s solidarity with the Freemasons community in
France.
“This
assault reminds us that we need to fight with uncompromising firmness against antisemitic
discourse, and all other forms of hate and exclusion,” he said in a statement
Friday.
