Podcast PAUSEPodcast26 June 2026
Faith, grief, humanity: the great lessons of Delphine Horvilleur
Alexandre Mars · 1h 35min
An in-depth conversation with Alexandre Mars on the PAUSE podcast, on doubt and complexity: family history, grief, faith, antisemitism, the place of women, and what makes us human. Conducted in French.
“People often think that in life you must lean on something solid to keep going. […] I believe exactly the opposite: we move forward when we recognize the quicksands of existence, when we see the fractures in our lives and build ourselves by composing with those faults.”
“I don’t believe in destiny, but I believe in signs. I don’t believe the last word has ever been said about who we could be.”
“The first thing that gets torn down in times of war or crisis (it has always been true in history) is the bridges. Everything that joins must be broken, so that we may feel, we think, a little safer inside our own group. And so whoever tries to build bridges is seen either as a fool, a naïf, or a traitor.”
“When I speak, it is because I cannot keep silent. I would not even know how to begin.”
“I must be strong enough not to collapse in their place. […] But I can only do this work because I am myself sufficiently broken: there are cracks in me, faults that let me resonate with what people are living through.”
“Why is it that radicalities always speak in the first person plural, while the silent majority only ever says I?”
The session
An hour and thirty-five minutes in which Alexandre Mars follows the thread of a life. A happy childhood in Épernay, crossed nonetheless by two irreconcilable stories: the Righteous who save on one side, Auschwitz and the grandparents’ silence on the other. Then the bifurcations: medicine in Israel, abandoned after Rabin’s assassination, journalism, and in New York a course on Abraham that opened a door. Then grief and its broken language, the Japanese bowls with golden cracks, doubt preferred to any certainty, and the aftermath of October 7: the bridges torn down, the May op-ed, the attacks from both extremes. In counterpoint, friendly voices: Father Nicolas, her brother David, her daughter, and a certain Schmulik.