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.




local
Penn Hillel to Launch Inaugural Peer
Mental Health Partnership With BBYO
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
I t’s no secret that the challenges of an
Ivy League college, exacerbated by an
ongoing pandemic, have brought a host of
mental health challenges to students.

A cluster of student suicides last
academic year at the University of
Pennsylvania was a turning point for
Rabbi Gabe Greenberg, Penn Hillel’s
executive director. Every week, about
600-700 students, Jewish and not, walk
through Steinhardt Hall, Penn Hillel’s
on-campus home; Greenberg saw the
space and Jewish community there as
the foundation for an intervention.

top-down and a bottom-up approach,”
Greenberg said. “Th e top-down is having
a therapist who could just individually
connect with students, and the bottom-up
is empowering students to bring this out
to their friends and communities in a real
grassroots way.”
BBYO-CAW’s fi rst training for Hillel
leadership will take place this spring, with
a second training scheduled for the fall
of next academic year. Forty students are
expected to complete the training.

Founded in 2019, BBYO-CAW, part of
the larger BBYO Jewish teen movement,
has worked with youth-serving organiza-
tions across the country to provide policy
Courtesy of Penn Hillel
Penn Hillel and BBYO Center for Adolescent Wellness’ peer mental health
partnership will train 40 students in its pilot year.

On Oct. 25, Penn Hillel announced
a partnership with BBYO Center
for Adolescent Wellness “poised to
train students at the University of
Pennsylvania to be prepared to support
the mental health needs of their peers,”
according to a press release.

In addition to hiring a culturally
competent therapist to provide coun-
seling to students in Steinhardt Hall,
Greenberg plans to work with BBYO-
CAW to develop a curriculum geared
toward Hillel leadership, who will be
trained to provide resources and sup-
port for peers experiencing mental
health challenges.

“Th e biggest picture for how we’re doing
this is trying to approach it from both a
and procedure change and support to
promote mental health awareness and
advocacy. Th e center’s partnership with
Penn will be its fi rst time working with a
college or Hillel.

According to BBYO-CAW, 60% of stu-
dents are living with a mental health dis-
order, and about half of young adults have
reported an increase in stress, anxiety and
depression since the pandemic’s onset.

“In the post-pandemic world, we’re see-
ing increasing controlling behaviors, so
we’re seeing a lot of disordered eating,
a lot of substance use disorders, a lot
of nonsuicidal self-harming behaviors,”
BBYO-CAW Director Drew Fidler said.

“A lot of that is about control and trying to
take control back from places in their lives
where things are out of control.”
Greenberg added that attending a high-
ly-ranked school such as Penn mounts
additional pressure on students.

“Th ere’s a high degree of competition
and focus on achievement, and that leads
pretty directly to high degrees of anxiety
and worry,” he said.

Student leadership at Penn Hillel knows
this fi rsthand. Th e incoming Hillel lead-
ership team has navigated COVID for the
entirety of its time at college.

“COVID has had a huge mental impact,
not just in the ways that you would expect
of isolation, feeling alone, but also, these
trickle-down impacts,” said Lilah Katz,
a junior and co-student president of
Penn Hillel.

See Hillel, Page 31
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