Kippahs campaign shows solidarity with French Jews

The Jewish skullcap - known as a kippah or yamulke - has begun appearing in some odd places following a call by a Jewish leader in France for Jews to refrain from wearing the item in case of provoking anti-Semitism.

Zvi Ammar, head of the Israelite Consistory of Marseille, said that Jews in France should stop wearing the kippah in public "until better days".

His call came shortly after a 15-year-old Kurd attacked a Jewish teacher on the street in Marseille, leaving him with an injured shoulder and hand.

In response, two French women began a campaign on social media - #TousAvecUneKippa (Everyone with a kippah) - to raise awareness and wear the kippah as a sign of solidarity at 10am on Friday.

Activists took up the call and began photoshopping the kippa into the most unsual of places:

"We wanted to do something funny. There was black everywhere, so we wanted to do something funny," said Sophie Taieb, one of the organisers of the campaign.

"The idea is that everybody - Jewish or not - should wear a kippah, because if everybody wears one, nobody is a target anymore."

Haim Korsia, France's Chief Rabbi, has already dismissed the idea of going without the kippah.

“We should not give an inch, we should continue wearing the kippah," he said.

As many as 8,000 French Jews made aliyah - the Hebrew term for emigration to the State of Israel - in 2015, according to the Jewish agency, in part due to rising concern about anti-Semitism in Europe.

“That a record number of European Jews feel that Europe is no longer their home should alarm European leaders and serve as a wake-up call for all who are concerned about the future of Europe,” said Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky.

"At the same time, the fact that Israel has become the number one destination for European Jews seeking to build a better future elsewhere is a tribute to the appeal of life in Israel and the values the Jewish state represents,” Sharansky said.

However, a call for French Jews to emigrate to Israel by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015 was strongly condemned by Jewish and non-Jewish leaders in the country.

French President Francois Hollande said he would not let people "believe that Jews no longer have a place in Europe and in France in particular," while Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the European Jewish Association, said emigration was not the answer.

“Anyone familiar with the European reality knows that a call to aliyah is not the solution for anti-Semitic terror,” he said.