It was supposed to be just another official visit on the busy schedule of US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner.
But when Yonès, an 18-year-old from Rennes in northwestern France, refused to accept an official letter from the embassy explaining his absence from school, the masks began to fall. Yonès did not want his teachers - and certainly not his classmates - to know he was a member of a Jewish youth movement. In fact, apart from his best friend, no one at school knows he is Jewish.
Yonès’s confession was only the opening moment of an emotional and unusual meeting held at the ambassador’s official residence on the prestigious Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Ambassador Kushner invited young leaders from CTeen, the worldwide Chabad youth network, to hear firsthand what life is like for a Jewish teenager in France in 2026.
For two hours, the ambassador and his wife Seryl spoke not about high diplomacy, but about real life. Kushner asked direct questions: “What does it feel like to be Jewish today in a secular French school?" The answers he received were simple and painful. Since October 7, 2023, schools have become a social battlefield for many of them.
“These are teenagers living on the front line of antisemitism," said Rabbi Mendy Mottel, director of CTeen France, who accompanied the group. “The ambassador wanted to know what is really happening in the hallways, what they feel when they walk into a classroom knowing they may be the only Jews in the room."
Salomé, a teenager from the city of Orléans, told the ambassador that until the local branch of the youth movement opened in her city, she believed she was the only Jewish girl there. “All week at school, I just wait for the moment when I can see my Jewish friends," she shared honestly.
The case of Orléans is not incidental. In March 2025, local community rabbi and Chabad emissary Rabbi Aryeh Engelberg was attacked in front of his 9-year-old son while returning from synagogue - a hate crime that resonated throughout the country.
France is home to roughly half a million Jews - the largest Jewish community in Europe - but the latest figures are deeply troubling. In 2025, 1,320 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the country. Although this marked a slight decrease from the previous year, the French Interior Ministry reported a worrying rise in physical violence: from 106 cases to 126 within a single year.
For Ambassador Kushner, the meeting was personal. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors and a longtime supporter of Chabad emissaries, he made clear to the teenagers that combating antisemitism in France has been his top mission since arriving in Paris last summer. “I love seeing motivated young leaders," Kushner wrote on his X account after the visit. “They are fighting hatred by building community."
Despite the fear and the need to conceal their identity outside, the atmosphere inside the ambassador’s residence was different. Kushner ensured that all refreshments were strictly kosher, and his wife gave the teenagers a personal tour of the historic building.
“What CTeen gives them is a place to belong and the courage to lead," explained Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, chairman of global CTeen from Chabad headquarters in New York City. “The fact that the ambassador sits with them, listens to them, and recognizes the weight they carry on their shoulders is extraordinarily meaningful for them."
CTeen France, which began in 2014 with a single branch, has grown rapidly to 120 branches spread from Strasbourg to Marseille. It serves thousands of the country’s 30,000 Jewish teenagers, offering them a refuge of Jewish pride, leadership training, and summer trips.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Ambassador Kushner gave each teenager a symbolic gift: a kippah specially made for the U.S. Embassy and an embassy medal. The meeting, they were promised, is only the beginning of a long-term partnership. As they stepped back out onto the streets of Paris, some may have tucked their Star of David necklaces back beneath their shirts - but they did so knowing that their voices had been heard in the highest places in the world.