Yonathan Arfi

Yonathan Arfi is a French CEO and activist. A member of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France since 2002, he was elected as vice-president on 4 February 2014, and ran for president in 2022. On 26 June 2022, he succeeded Francis Kalifat as president of the CRIF.

Biography

Yonathan Arfi was born in Toulouse to a Sephardic Jewish family of Algerian and Moroccan descent.

Arfi spent his childhood in the Yvelines. He was a member of the Éclaireuses et éclaireurs israélites de France, and obtained his degree at HEC Paris.

From 2003 to 2005, Yonathan Arfi was president of the Union des étudiants juifs de France.
He was a member of the CRIF's executive office in 2007, then vice president from 2014 to 2022.
As the leader of the association, he began a protest against Dieudonné.
As the vice-president of the CRIF, he took a public stand against Marine Le Pen, condemning antisemitic graffiti at Paris Nanterre University.
He protested against statements made by Éric Zemmour.
Yonathan Arfi participated in the Alliance Israélite Universelle as a member of the board of directors. He was also a member of the Oeuvre de secours aux enfants.
Shortly after his election as president of the CRIF and following a controversy about an Avignon fresco of Jacques Attali, he denounced the worrying rise of antisemitism in France and spoke on the difficulty of being Jewish in current French society during an interview with France Inter.