An assailant, reportedly a mental patient of Iranian origin, stabbed a rabbi and his son as they entered a Paris synagogue, the French newspaper The Local reported.

The assailant was said to have escaped from a psychiatric hospital near Lyon two weeks ago, but police have not confirmed the report.

The 49-year-old rabbi, who was identified only as “Rabbi Baruch,” was going into the Beth El synagogue around 7:30 a.m. with his 17-year-old son, apparently for morning prayers, when the attacker lunged for the rabbi’s throat with a utility knife or a box cutter. The rabbi suffered light to moderate wounds as did his son, who was stabbed in the neck. Onlookers quickly overpower the Iranian, and police took him into custody.

French television reported that the assailant was wearing hospital clothes.

A music segment from a 2012 flash mob performance, from Paris, using decidedly non-traditional versions of the traditional Passover songs ‘Ma Nishtana’ (םה נשתנה) ”What has changed,” and “Let my people go,” by the band Cigarillos en el Shtruddle.

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Israel’s Jewish population crossed the 6 million mark during Passover, a symbolic sign of peaceful vengeance for the approximately same number of Jews who were exterminated by the Nazi regime.

The Israel Jewish community, which compromises approximately 75 percent of the total population outside of Judea and Samaria, now is the largest in the world, depending on one’s definition of “Who is a Jew?”

The American Jewish population is estimated by most sources as being 5.5 million, while it is up to 2 million larger if one includes as Jewish those who were born to Jewish fathers but not to Jewish fathers and those who were not converted according to Jewish tradition.

The largest American Jewish population center is in New York City, with approximately 2 million. followed by nearly half a million in Paris.

There are approximately 380,000 Jews in Canada, with most of them living in metropolitan Toronto. Next in Line is Britain’s 290,000 Jews.

“In the world today there are 13,800,000 Jews,” Hebrew University Professor Sergio Della Pergola told the Yediot Acharonot newspaper.

“Israel has indeed experienced a growth in the number of Jews last year, but world Jewry outside Israel did not fare so well. On the contrary, world Jewry has experienced negative growth,” reflecting assimilation.

Although most of the world’s Jews live outside Israel, Israeli historian and author Tom Segev told the London Daily Telegraph, “Within five, seven or 10 years, you might be able to say that most Jews in the world live inside Israel, and it will be legitimate to use the cliché that for the first time in 2,000 years, the Jews are in Israel. Then the question will be, what do you do with the Zionist ideology?”

Israelis are attracted to metropolitan Tel Aviv, but massive government programs, including new highways and rail links, are trying to reverse the trend and encourage Jews to settle in the Negev and the Galilee.

Three men who accosted a French Jewish teenager in a suburban Paris subway said they would do to him “what Mohammed Merah did.”

According to a report on the incident by the National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism, a non-governmental organization known locally by the French acronym BNVCA, the 17-year-old Kippa-clad male was threatened in the southern Paris suburb of Vitry-Sur-Seine on March 3 by three black men who asked him “why Israel was doing this to the Palestinians.”

The report said the men also told the teen, identified by the initials J.C., that Mohammed Merah, the 23-year-old Islamist who last year killed four Jews at a school in Toulouse, “was right to do what he did.” They added, “Now we’re going to do what Merah did. We will kill all of you Jews, one day we will kill a Jew.”

A witness corroborated the exchange to BNVCA, the watchdog group said. The presence of the witness may have prevented a physical attack on the teen, the organization added in a report on the incident.

The Jewish owner of the B’Paradise pizzeria in Sarcelles discovered the swastikas on his establishment’s walls on Monday, according to the French daily Metro. The newspaper reported that the swastikas were spray-painted Saturday on the shop display of the pizzeria, which overlooks the main synagogue of Sarcelles, a northern suburb of Paris, home to approximately 60,000 Jews.

In September, members of what French authorities described as “a dangerous Jihadist network” detonated a grenade inside a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles, lightly wounding one person.

Also Saturday, in Orgeval, an eastern suburb of Paris, unknown individuals spray-painted slogans praising Mohammed Merah, the killer of four Jews in Toulouse. L’Union reported that one graffiti called for the release of Youssouf Fofana, the leader of a gang who in 2006 tortured and killed Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man from the Paris region, because they wanted to kill a Jew.

Meanwhile on Monday, a headmaster of a school in Meilla, a Spanish city on the Moroccan coastline, denied reports that the recent assault of a Jewish high school student by Muslim classmates was motivated by anti-Semitism or related to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

The boy was assaulted on Nov. 23 at the Enrique Nieto school, according to a report in Melilla Hoy, a local newspaper. The report did not say whether the boy sustained any injuries.

France’s main Jewish student union reportedly has petitioned a Paris court to order Twitter to divulge details about users who post anti-Semitic comments.

Attorney Stephane Lilti, who represents the Union of French Jewish Students, or UEJF, told the French news agency AFP on Tuesday that a hearing is set for Jan. 8 in a Paris court.

In October, the UEJF asked Twitter to take down offending tweets that had flooded the site under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew), with examples including: “#agoodjew is a dead Jew.” The hashtag became the third most popular in France. UEJF said it would sue if Twitter did not comply with demands to remove the tweets and disclose details about the users that posted them.

The decision to remove the messages came soon after Twitter shut down an account used by a German neo-Nazi group based in Hanover. The block was imposed at the request of German police. Facebook and YouTube have agreed to block the group’s accounts.

A Twitter spokesman refused at the time to comment directly on the tweets about Jews and reiterated the company’s standard response that it “does not mediate content.” According to the standards, Twitter cannot delete tweets, but does allow for accounts generating content in breach of its rules or considered illegal to be suspended.

Twitter also said it would not hand over details of account holders unless ordered by a judge.

French police reportedly arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of scrawling “death to Jews” on a synagogue near Paris.

The man is suspected of writing the message with a black marker on Nov. 7 or Nov. 8 on the entrance to the synagogue of Pantin in Seine-Saint-Denis near Paris, according to the municipality.

The radio network Europe1 reported that the man was arrested in the Paris suburb on Nov. 9 and was remanded. The 11-inch graffiti was discovered early on the previous day when a group of “young men wearing hoods” was seen near the synagogue, according to the radio station’s report.

In a separate incident from Nov. 4, seven unidentified people attacked an Orthodox Jewish man in Sacrelles near the French capital. They pelted the 55-year-old man with eggs as he was making his way to his synagogue, according to the French daily Le Parisien, then hit him on his legs after he turned around and walked away from them.

The report did not say whether the attack at Sarcelles was anti-Semitic in nature.

Last September, members of what French police described as “a dangerous Jihadist network” tossed a homemade grenade into a supermarket in Sarcelles, home to some 60,000 Jews. One man sustained minor injuries in the explosion.

In a nearly dark corner of lower Manhattan, in an area otherwise known as Tribeca, Rabbi Zalman Paris stands tall, cellular phone in hand, to answer another call from a young volunteer eager to offer assistance. Days after Hurricane Sandy left millions across New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey without electricity, food or water, there are plenty of people who want to help victims and their communities recover.

From his window, Paris, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Tribeca and SoHo, watched the storm hurl itself into the homes and lives of residents nearby. The storm prevented him from venturing outdoors, but the moment he was able to, the rabbi assembled a plan and a team to help his neighbors.

“Many organizations have joined us in our efforts to help those in need during this hard time,” he said.

Paris partnered with Rabbi Levi Shmotkin of Chabad Young Professionals, Ari Teman of JCorps, and Julie Menin, a candidate for Manhattan Borough President.

“We brought in a paramedic to aid the elderly, who with no way out of their buildings needed immediate medical attention,” Shmotkin relayed.

Menin detailed that she kept the 10,000 people on her contact list updated by email.

“People would email that they needed food, water, diapers and baby formula. I then sent an email blast to Rabbi Paris,” said Menin.

All told, more than 100 volunteers traversed lower Manhattan, crisscrossing the city’s streets to visit nearly 3,000 apartment units in one day alone.

One longtime JCorps volunteer named Jillian described her experience as “eye opening.” More than 100 volunteers assisted the Tribeca effort.

“Today we visited some housing developments of the lower east side to bring food and water to the elderly and disabled citizens who are without,” she said. “You really become thankful for what you do have during a time like this.”

With the Sabbath approaching, they are hoping that the electricity will be restored.

“We may not have power, but we will definitely be spending the Sabbath with the many people and volunteers who are here with us,” said Paris. “Although many fled the neighborhood prior to the storm, our focus was on those that didn’t have anywhere to go.”