Macron meets French Jewish group amid anti-Semitism concerns
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PARIS -- A heated debate that has split French intellectual circles over whether to publish anti-Semitic pamphlets of a renowned writer will reach French President Emmanuel Macron when he addresses a leading Jewish group Wednesday.
Macron will be the guest of honor at Wednesday's annual dinner by the group CRIF, whose leaders plan to question the president about fighting anti-Semitism online and recent attacks on French Jews or Jewish sites.
Macron has pledged to fight persistent anti-Semitism in France, which has the largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the United States.
Leaders of the French Jewish community also want to take advantage of the president's presence and media coverage of Wednesday's dinner to call broader attention to a controversy that has inflamed the French publishing, cultural and academic circles for three months.
Gallimard, one of the largest, most influential and most prestigious French publishing houses, said in December it planned to republish a series of three fiercely anti-Semitic lampoons written between 1937 and 1941 by noted French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine, for the first time since World War II.
