Rabbi Alain Shlomo Senior, the veteran rabbi of the town of Créteil in the suburbs of Paris, has been elected Chief Rabbi of Paris and the metropolitan area.
The vote was held at the offices of the Paris Jewish Consistory, and the elected rabbi won a substantial majority among members of the electoral body.
Rabbi Senior will replace Rabbi Yitzhak Gugenheim, who is now completing two terms totalling 14 years. The elected rabbi is expected to assume his duties in the coming weeks.
Rabbi Senior was born in 1958 in the city of Saida in Algeria. After the migration of North African Jews following Algeria's independence, his family moved to France, where he was educated in religious institutions.
In 1994 he accepted the rabbinate of the town of Créteil, which is home to a large Jewish community of thousands of families. For more than 30 years he led the community.
His election is seen as a strengthening of the haredi community within France's official Jewish communal institutions. In recent years the haredi community's influence in communal bodies has increased, and the selection of a candidate from the haredi camp as Chief Rabbi of Paris reflects this trend.
The Paris Jewish Consistory, which has served as the official communal body since the days of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, is responsible for religious and communal affairs, including kashrut and kosher meat slaughter, registration of marriages, divorces, conversions, and the management of the burial society. The elected rabbi will head the spiritual activities of the Jewish community in Paris and the metropolitan area, which numbers over 100,000 people.
The election takes place at a sensitive time for French Jewry, against the backdrop of a rise in antisemitism in the country in recent months.
Figures in the French Jewish community expressed hope that Rabbi Senior will lead the community's affairs in the capital with a firm hand and strengthen the standing of French Jewry.