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MONTREAL — When a gunman stormed into a kosher supermarket in Paris, seizing hostages and killing four people, Julien Catan felt tremors all the way to Montreal. A Paris native, he had walked the streets around the Hyper-Cacher market thousands of times. His fiancée’s mother had been shopping there 20 minutes before it was attacked.

“What happened in January was a real shock, like never before,” Catan said in an interview. “I think the impact it had is very profound, and I think the Jewish community has taken a real hit.”

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The murderous targeting of shoppers buying groceries before the Sabbath, two days after an attack on the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, came amid a surge in anti-Semitism that has Jews questioning how long they can remain in France. More than ever, Canada is seen as a safe haven, and leaders of Montreal’s Jewish community are only too happy to extend a welcoming hand.

It was love that brought Catan, 28, to Montreal last year when he joined his fiancée, who had moved from France five years ago to pursue her studies. But the rise of anti-Semitic hatred back home makes the Jewish couple reluctant to return as they contemplate raising a family. Among their circle of Jewish friends in France, many are planning to leave. “It was perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Catan said of the January attacks. “It will lead people who were thinking of leaving to take action.”