FAILLESPodcast25 January 2026
Cracks and strengths: what we make of what happened to us
Noémie Sylberg-Klugman · 43 min
An entire podcast devoted to cracks and flaws, hosted by an interviewer whose mourning Delphine Horvilleur accompanied. Kintsugi and the founding breakages of Judaism, patriarchs who build with their disability rather than despite it, and impostor syndrome turned into a blessing. In French.
“I often tell myself that what allows me to accompany people through moments when existence collapses is, in fact, my own crack. […] I believe that if I were very strong, I could not do it.”
“We are not what happened to us; we are what we make of what happened to us.”
“We cannot live in a completely finished world. There has to be something to correct, to repair; in fact, we must inhabit the infinite, in every sense, in one word or in two. The infinite and the un-finished.”
“The real leaders, in the Bible and in life, are not people who manage despite what happened to them, but people who truly build with what happened to them. They are visionaries because they have a sight problem, they walk straight because they limp, and they are good spokesmen because they stutter.”
“This questioning of my legitimacy, rather than being a curse, was a blessing. It was my chance.”
“I believe I can and I want to talk with everyone, except with someone who denies my right to exist.”
The session
The conversation starts from a kintsugi pebble offered by the host: could gold on the crack be a Jewish idea? The answer comes through the rites: Moses breaking the Tablets, the glass shattered at weddings, the broken matzah, the wall left unfinished in every new home. Then the parable of the eagle and its three eaglets, told in memory of psychoanalyst Jean-Pierre Winter: nothing matters more than the next chapter of the story. And the École militaire story: after her half hour on the doubt of biblical leaders, a general answers that a great leader « never doubts », and the room laughs. Three cards close the episode: impossible carefreeness, the bridges that are always bombed first in every war, and the life decisions that were never difficult.