A Muslim cultural association Al Badr purchased the Or Thora synagogue and will reopen the religious site as a mosque this summer — hoping to cater to the overflow from the organization’s other mosque, filled to beyond capacity with a growing number of worshipers.

The synagogue was sold for €400,000 ($455,000) is located in the area of the Saint-Charles train station.

According to the newspaper, the synagogue, which has a capacity of 250, sometimes had no more than 10 worshipers at once.

In contrast, Al Badr’s mosque is often so full that congregants have no choice but to pray outside the complex on Friday, Islam’s holiest day of worship.

Marseille has a population of 800,000, of which approximately 250,000 are Muslims and some 70,000 are Jewish.

Elie Berrebi, Director of Marseille’s Central Jewish Consistoire, a body governing Jewish congregations, said many of the Jewish residents in Marseille are leaving the city, mainly for Israel and the UK, because of rising anti-Semitism in the area.

He said that more than 80 percent of Marseille’s Jews have stopped frequenting central synagogues, since the areas around religious sites are viewed as a high security risk, choosing rather other districts of the city. There are 58 synagogues in Mareille, 23 Jewish schools and more than 60 kosher restaurants.

Last January, a social media campaign using the hashtag #TousAvecUneKippa, or Everyone with a Kippa, was launched showing well-known French figures adorning the kippah, Jewish religious headwear,after an anti-Semitic attack in the city.

The campaign was launched to show solidarity with French Jews after a teenager claiming to be acting on behalf of the Islamic State terroristgroup (IS)attacked a Jewish teacher, Benjamin Amsellem, with a machete and a knife while he was traveling to his religious education workplace in Marseille.

Following the attack, the head of the Jewish Consistoire in Marseille, Zvi Ammar, called on Jewish men to stop wearing their kippahs and “being identified as Jewish” in order to prevent further attacks and deaths in the city because of the rising anti-Semitism.

The call stirred a controversy in the French Jewish community.

(Source: EJP)