Elsa Cayat had little patience for God. In that respect, she fit well at Charlie Hebdo, for whom she wrote a weekly column as resident psychoanalyst. Still, she had been known for an extravagance of intellect, a contrarian flair that was, in the view of some, her inheritance as a Jew, and her siblings felt her funeral should acknowledge this. Their aged parents, mistrustful of religion in the manner of many on the French Left, were reticent, but said all right.
The ceremony was held on a blustery January morning, just days after the terror killings in and around Paris that left Cayat and 16 others dead. Her siblings introduced their parents to the woman who would be eulogizing their daughter. â??This is the secular rabbi,â? they said, and presented a kind-spoken, youthful woman in circular glasses named Delphine Horvilleur. This designation was a paradox, but not altogether misleading; Horvilleur, who is indeed a rabbi but is also religious, did not contest it.
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