Jean-François Bensahel

Origins and early life

Jean-François Bensahel was born at Boulogne-Billancourt on 2 January 1964. He studied at the École normale supérieure from 1983 to 1986 and at Sciences Po, took the agrégation in mathematics in 1986, then trained at the École des mines from 1986 to 1989 and entered the Corps des mines before making his career as a company director.

Work and career

Alongside that career he came to lead the liberal current of French Judaism: in 2011 he became president of the Union libérale israélite de France, and he presides over its synagogue in the rue Copernic in Paris, the building that was struck by a bomb on 3 October 1980 in the first deadly antisemitic attack in France since the war. In 2019 he became co-president of Judaïsme en mouvement, the movement born of the union of the Union libérale israélite de France with the Mouvement juif libéral de France.

He is closely engaged in Jewish-Christian dialogue, and between 1991 and 2023 he published four books touching on that dialogue, on French sovereignty and on philosophy. He was made a knight of the Ordre national du Mérite in 2021.