A private meeting between Jewish teenagers from across France and US Ambassador Charles Kushner exposed the daily reality facing young Jews in French public schools, where some said they hide their identity, remove visible Jewish symbols, and wait all week for the chance to reconnect with Jewish peers.
Nine members of CTeen France, Chabad’s global Jewish teen network, visited Kushner and his wife, Seryl, on May 4 at the official US ambassador’s residence on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, Chabad.org reported. The teenagers, ages 14 to 18, came from CTeen chapters around the country and spoke with the ambassador for two hours about life as Jewish students in France.
One of the teenagers, Younes, 18, from Rennes in northwestern France, reportedly declined an official embassy letter explaining his absence from school because he did not want teachers or classmates to know he was active in a Jewish youth movement. According to CTeen representatives, only his best friend at school knows he is Jewish.
When Kushner asked the teenagers what it felt like to be Jewish in a secular French school, they described years of antisemitism in classrooms and a sharp rise in hostility since the October 7 massacre, Chabad.org reported.
‘They live antisemitism on the front line’
“These are teens regularly experiencing antisemitism on the front line,” Rabbi Mendy Mottal, who directs CTeen France with his wife, Chaya, said after accompanying the group to the residence. “The ambassador was very moved by them and how they spoke. Frankly, so was I.”
Salomé, a teenager from Orléans, told Kushner that before CTeen opened a chapter in her city, she thought she was the only Jewish teenager there.
“She told the ambassador that all week long in school, she waits to see her Jewish friends,” Mottal said. “It gives her strength.”
Orléans was the site of a widely reported antisemitic attack in March 2025, when Rabbi Arie Engelberg, the local Chabad emissary and community rabbi, was assaulted while walking home from synagogue with his nine-year-old son. French authorities treated the assault as an antisemitic hate crime, and President Emmanuel Macron condemned what he called the “poison of antisemitism.”
The teenagers’ testimonies came against the backdrop of persistently high antisemitic incidents in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community. France recorded 1,320 antisemitic acts in 2025, a 16% decrease from 2024, but still a historically high figure, according to Interior Ministry figures cited by the European Jewish Congress. Antisemitic acts accounted for 53% of all anti-religious incidents recorded in the country, while Jews make up less than 1% of the population, estimated at between 450,000 and 500,000 people.
A diplomatic meeting with a personal tone
Kushner, who is the father of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was confirmed by the US Senate as ambassador to France in May 2025.
For Kushner, the meeting also carried a personal dimension. Chabad.org described him as the grandson of Holocaust survivors and a longtime supporter of Jewish causes. He invited the teenagers, according to the report, because he wanted to hear directly from them about the state of Jewish life among their peers in France.
After the meeting, Kushner wrote on X that he loved seeing “motivated young leaders,” adding that CTeen was “developing youth across France” and, like him, focusing on countering antisemitism “by combatting all forms of hatred in our communities.”
The Kushners also sought to make the teenagers feel at home inside the residence. The food served was kosher (prepared according to Jewish dietary law), and Seryl Kushner led the group on a personal tour of the historic building. Before the teenagers left, the ambassador presented each of them with a custom-made embassy kippah (Jewish skullcap) and an embassy medal.
A growing Jewish teen network
CTeen France, launched in 2014 under Mottal’s leadership, now operates more than 120 chapters across the country and serves a significant share of the estimated 30,000 Jewish teenagers in France. The network offers weekly programming, leadership training, retreats, summer trips, and participation in the annual CTeen International Shabbaton (weekend retreat) in New York, which drew 4,500 participants from 60 countries this year, according to Chabad.org.
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, chairman of CTeen International, said the movement offers French Jewish teens a sense of belonging at a time when many feel isolated in their schools.
“These are teens who walk into their public school every morning knowing they may be the only Jew in their classroom,” Kotlarsky said. “What CTeen gives them is a place to belong and the courage to lead.”
For some of the teenagers, the return to school meant returning to a reality in which Jewish identity is often kept quiet. Yet the meeting gave them public recognition from one of the most senior American officials in France and signaled that their stories are being heard beyond their classrooms, communities, and weekend youth programs.
