‘Police would warn Jewish kids not go to the park’

When Hanna Chicheportiche, now 22, moved to Manhattan from Paris two years ago to study political science at Yeshiva University, she wasn’t so worried about herself.

“I’m lucky, because I look Arabic. I don’t look Jewish. I can blend,” she said. “But my brother looks like a Jew. He dresses like a Jew. [Two years ago] when he was 16, he got mugged by a Muslim man. The guy was like, ‘You’re Jewish, you have money, what do you care?’ ”

She recalls how, growing up, the children and teens of her community were taught to avoid certain parts of the city for their safety.

“The park where all the Jewish kids would hang out on Shabbat became a battleground,” she said. “Police would warn the Jewish kids not to go there because the Muslim aggressors came with bats.”

Now the single Murray Hill resident is desperate to get her family out of France. But, as they own a hotel business there, “they can’t just drop and leave everything.”

As for herself, Chicheportiche — who has US citizenship because her mother was born in America — has no plans to return to her home country.

“I don’t want to live in France,” she said. “Of course it’s going to get worse.”

From her first few days in New York City, she said, she felt safer and more liberated.

“It felt amazing just to see rabbis walking around with their kippa, just people walking around not being scared,” Chicheportiche said. “Being in a country where it’s normal to be comfortable with your Judaism is really a relief.”