It does not happen often that a rabbi makes it to the cover of a fashion magazine. However, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur can also boast a cover of the French lifestyle magazine Elle, as well as several books, a successful congregation in Paris and meetings with the highest authorities in her country and abroad.
In spite of the fact that among the 600,000 French Jews, very few identify with Reform Judaism, Horvilleur’s synagogue affiliated with the Liberal Judaism Movement of France has a membership of several hundred families.
She is also the editor of Tenou’a, a quarterly magazine which describes itself as “a series of workshops and spaces of collective intellect rallying together the full spectrum of Jewish thought,” and “a place of inquiry, of daring, of creation.”
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Raised in Paris, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, mother of three, Horvilleur studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as in New York, where she was drawn by the opportunity to study Talmud, something that as a woman she could not do in her native country.
It was during her period in the US that she decided to pursue rabbinical ordination, which she eventually received from the Hebrew Union College in 2008.
Thanks to her books and her public engagement, she has become a prominent voice in the public debate in the country.
In her writings, Horvilleur addresses questions related to contemporary issues, feminism and innovative readings of traditional Jewish texts.
In 2015, the rabbi was called to eulogize one of victims of the Charlie Hebdo slaughter, Elsa Cayat, a Jewish psychiatrist who wrote a column for the satirical magazine.
In 2018, she officiated – together with France’s (Orthodox) Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia – the funeral of Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor who became a prominent French political leader and the first woman to serve as the president of the European Parliament.
Horvilleur has met with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss questions related to religious extremism.
She has also steadily denounced the rise of antisemitism within French society, including by authoring a book about it – In Reflexions sur la Question Antisemite – in 2019.
“The fight against antisemitism is not just a problem of the Jews, it is something that must mobilize the whole of French society,” she said in a 2018 interview after the murder of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll.
“There is no longer just the traditional far-Right antisemitism,” she added. “The new development is represented by the children of Arab-Muslim immigrants, fueled by sermons from some religious leaders. Mine is a very provocative view, but we need to face it. Only someone blind can deny that there is a new growing antisemitism among these young people.”