Limor Alon ’04

Posted on August 2, 2024

“[N]ever has it been so hard to take a stance, and never has it felt so crucial.”

My name is Limor, I’m a 2004 bogeret (alumna) of the Bronfman program, currently writing these lines as an Israeli living in Paris for the past 7 years. I’m writing in these difficult times to share some thoughts and impressions – nothing consolidated, more like some free associations.

When I first came to Paris I was only relocating temporarily, following my husband’s postdoc position here. I opened a clinic as a psychologist and started learning French, feeling excited and refreshed by the discovery of a new culture, a new perspective, a new life. I started working in a hospital, sent my kids to school, found friends and integrated into the hustle and flow of Parisian life. I’ve never seen myself as an immigrant, though, and I have since found myself turning to my husband every summer and asking, “Is now the time to go back home?” Home always meant Israel.

That question has never been so charged as it was leading up to this current summer. October 7th came less than a year after I lost my dad and my heart was again shattered to pieces, my identity, too, now scattered all over the place.

I couldn’t understand myself – parts of me were desperate to now leave everything in Paris and go back home. I almost wished I would get called up by the army. Yet I froze at the idea of my kids growing up where October 7ths can happen. Would it be irresponsible of me? But can I live anywhere at all in a world where Israel as I know it could be lost? I realized that my relocation was in fact an immigration, and that my choices carried weight. The lightness I experienced with the move to Paris was replaced with a heavy dreadful feeling that I may be considered a refugee one day, as are so many immigrants I’ve met in this city of light. And that Israel may go back to the dark ages.

Israeli patients started showing up in my clinic and contacting me online, with many different stories: Israelis married to non-Jewish partners, who don’t get it; a student who watched their kibbutz being attacked on the news and just needed a shoulder to cry on; a soldier who fled his reserve service because he couldn’t imagine entering Gaza; a mother to a newborn, haunted by thoughts of babies burning to death; an artist who had lost numerous friends over their criticism of Zionism; an Israeli researcher who was no longer invited to conferences; a woman who suffered from anxiety attacks, leaving her house in Beer Sheva; people who lost a family member or a best friend; a person who got into a violent fight with a right-winger over a bumper sticker saying, “free the hostages;” a young man who had gone back to fight and, returning to Paris, felt misplaced; a chef whose brother was saved from the Nova Music Festival, and decided to move back to Israel and open a restaurant; a start-up entrepreneur who set his mind to bringing peace through his relationships with his Arab colleagues in Paris; a family who was preparing for their return
to Israel after their long stay in Paris, but now that their kibbutz in the north had been evacuated, had no home to return to.

My international patients were reacting as well – a patient who identified strongly with the Palestinian “resistance to colonialism” made me appreciate the power of narratives. An English patient who wondered where all this polarization would eventually lead us reconnected me to the importance of moderation. And then my patients working in the humanitarian sector, in international law, in international organizations, working on Ukraine and in the Middle East, reminded me how many of us have influence in this. And an unforgettable Iranian mother and her daughter, who were the first to say, “We know what this means and what you’re going through.” All these experiences and more accumulated in my mind like a mosaic of human reactions.

What a year it has been. Never has the world felt so small to me, never have people felt so intimately linked to each other worldwide, and yet never have I personally felt so estranged. In my life, never has the truth felt so elusive; never have words and historical facts mattered so much; never has it been so hard to take a stance, and never has it felt so crucial. And it struck me – everyone is asking identity questions. Everyone is asking hard moral questions. This goes beyond October 7th, beyond nationality and religion. We all have to redefine what we believe in, what we will vote for,
and what we are willing to die for.

A Jewish friend I met here a couple of years ago once said to me, “I raise my kids to be nomads. Yehudi Noded” (a wandering Jew),” she said. “Don’t get comfortable anywhere. Not in Israel, not in the States, not in France. You are a Jew, you might eventually be persecuted everywhere.” At the time I thought she was living in another century. We are safe, after all, in all those places she mentioned. When I met her again this winter she said, “Now you understand me better.” And I did. I realized I felt like a “nomad Israeli.” Something I didn’t think existed. Maybe now it does. I can’t get too comfortable anywhere. In fact, maybe my kids need more than one passport, maybe more than two… And how far can this go?

“How are you feeling now, after the elections in France?” my good friend Elie writes to me from the States. This question is a tough one. Like most of my friends, I feared the far right would be voted in, only to eventually discover that the far left has as much – if not more – support here, and that’s concerning too. So now my French liberal friends are happy, but my Jewish traditional friends are terrified. And I’m sort of keeping my head down and hoping this will turn out to be good news after all. And yet, this week was the first time I told my son to hide the fact that he’s an Israeli. He didn’t understand why. I mumbled something about the war and that some people think Israel is overreacting. He was always so proud of being “Israeli-Parisian” as he calls it. I guess now he’s thinking that’s not so cool anymore. The truth is, I felt better telling him we’re sleeping in the safe-room during our last visit to Israel, the night of the Iranian attack. Telling him to hide his Hebrew felt somehow much worse. As if I had sold him a lie and now he can see right through me.

I’m not proud of the current government in Israel. But honestly, the most difficult part of these past nine months, for me, has been hearing the intense criticism of Zionism itself. It felt like very quickly we were going back to the fundamental question. Both mothers have a claim on this baby, and you cannot split a baby, or an idea, in half. So whose baby is it? Or can we, will we, lose this baby we adore – change our ideas – and give birth to yet something new? Maybe Zionism is not the end goal, but another stepping stone towards something the Jews should care about even more. In that respect, The Abraham Accords felt like such a wonderful vision to look forward to. We were getting closer to something unifying coming from the very roots of modern civilization.

I’ll end with an optimistic note. This year has been rattling and confusing but it has also been the year I rediscovered the meaning of pure survival, of psychological resilience, and of community. I was amazed at the willpower I saw in people, amazed at the strength they showed when they had no choice, at how strongly they connected – in pain and solidarity – to other members in their community. The human ability to find meaning in everything, even in the worst of losses. Some good things have become ever so clear. We might need to be strong in new ways with every generation, but knowing that our ancestors were resilient people has been very empowering and got us through many nights of nightmares these past nine months. I feel we are now faced with a
difficult moral question, and that we carry the burden of survival. I wish us to be smart, assertive, strong and yet unyieldingly compassionate. We mustn’t ever get used to a child’s suffering. Some of us unfortunately have. We must hold on to complexity with all our might, and hope the world gains more moral clarity soon, and that leaders be brave in dreaming for the peace we deeply long for again, and in taking the risks to get there.