More than a dozen Torah scrolls were stolen from a Paris synagogue on Sunday in what the local mayor suggested was a targeted attack.
Unidentified individuals stole between 13 and 15 scrolls, valued at an estimated €80,000 to €100,000 ($90,000-$113,000), from the main synagogue in Levallois-Perret near Paris, local authorities said.
Two men entered the synagogue through a window using a rope before taking only the Torah scrolls. Surveillance cameras captured images of the suspects, Mayor Agnès Pottier-Dumas said.
The mayor said that the crime targeted the Jewish community “at what is most sacred and precious to it”.
Philippe Cohen, president of the local Jewish community association, described the theft as "a spiritual trauma for the entire Jewish community in France and around the world," noting that no other property was damaged or stolen.
Rabbi Chalom Lellouche, who discovered the theft while preparing for a barmitzvah service, called the incident "an antisemitic act that targeted the Torah."
The Hauts-de-Seine prefecture said the theft was "not a simple robbery" but an attack that deeply wounded the Jewish community.
The attack comes amid a climate of escalating antisemitism in France, with the latest official figures suggesting a steep increase in anti-Jewish incidents year-on-year.
In 2025, there were 1,320 hate incidents, with a record number of physical assaults, according to data from the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community (SPCJ), the French equivalent of the CST.
The service also found that said that references to Israel, Palestine and “genocide” were present in about one-third of the recorded incidents.
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