Weekly Kibbitz
Popular Comedian Who Has Been Source of
Pride for French Jews Converts to Catholicism
“Although, if you ask them what’s going on with
me, they’ll probably say ‘he’s working through
something at the moment, he’s not exactly 100%
with it right now,’ ” said the comedian.

He explained his conversion in mystical terms,
saying the “Virgin Marie took me under her wing,”
adding, “I turned to her gradually, and began asking
her to help me, especially before shows.”
Elmaleh recalled being afraid to enter a church
as a child growing up in his native Casablanca. He
moved with his parents to Canada when he was
17 and from there to Paris in the 1990s. “It was
completely forbidden. My dad told me: You see this
building? You do not enter there,” he said.

Elmaleh, who had lived in the United States for
several years until returning recently to France,
was voted the “funniest man of the year” in 2007
by viewers of the TF1 television channel.

His mother has been less understanding when he
fi rst told her about his change of faith.

“She told me: ‘You’re changing a God, so you may
as well change parents,’ ” he recalled from a con-
versation that made its way also into the screen-
Gad Elmaleh is shown at the Angouleme French-
Speaking Film Festival in Angouleme, France, on
Aug. 27.

play and the fi lm. Those words “were very violent,
they hit me very hard,” acknowledged Elmaleh.

“But here’s the thing, which I also explained to her:
I’m not changing Gods. I still believe in the same
God.” Reactions to his announcement were mixed.

Some fans, including Jews, on Twitter congratu-
lated him on following bravely and fully a spiritual
journey, while others berated him.

“This is no doubt a joke,” wrote Pierre-Ange
Zalcberg, a lawyer for an association promoting
blood donations in France, on Twitter.

Alain Jakubowicz, the previous president of the
LICRA anti-racism group, who is Jewish, expressed
his confusion in the form of a question. “How to
make a successful fi lm out of a personal journey?”
he tweeted about Elmaleh’s conversion.

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G ad Elmaleh has been one of the most famous
Jews in France’s entertainment industry in the
past two decades.

The son of Moroccan immigrants, who has often
referenced his Jewish identity in his wildly successful
sketches, has been nominated for a Cesar award, the
French equivalent of an Oscar, and he has crossed
over into the American comedy landscape. He made
further headlines for having a child with the daugh-
ter of a princess from Monaco.

In a country with high rates of antisemitism,
his success was a source of pride and comfort for
French Jews.

But on Nov. 7, the 51-year-old actor said during
a television interview promoting his new auto-
biographic fi lm “Reste un Peu” (“Stay a While”) that
he is converting to Catholicism.

The new fi lm, which is due to premiere in France
next week, features Elmaleh’s actual mother and
father, Regine and David, portraying themselves.

His parents are not too happy about his decision
but decided to “support me anyway,” he said on
France 2’s “Quelle Epoque” talk show.