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MARSEILLE, France — It was the heavy leather-bound volume of the Torah he was carrying that shielded Benjamin Amsellem from the machete blows.

His attacker, a teenage fanatic who the police say was inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, was trying to decapitate Amsellem, a teacher at a local Jewish school. But Amsellem used the Torah — the only defence at hand — to deflect the blade and save himself.

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It was the third such knife attack since October on a Jew in Marseille, where the Jewish population, at about 70,000, is the second largest in France after Paris. And it was the latest example of how France is confronting both the general threat of terrorism, especially after two large-scale attacks in Paris last year, and a particular strain of anti-Semitism that has left many French Jews deeply unnerved.

“This was something claimed by an individual who invoked Daesh, who wanted to kill a Jew. It is extremely serious,” Marseille’s top police official, Laurent Nunez, said in an interview. “Daesh” is an Arabic acronym for ISIL.