While the events of October 7, 2023, continue to haunt the lives of countless people, the ongoing reality of a “ceasefireless world” has come to shape how we experience ourselves and one another: a world that no longer knows peace and no longer even seeks it as a baseline. October 7 also permanently changed how Israeli writer and grief facilitator Ronnie Gross experiences life, love, and loss.

The murder of Ronnie’s friend Carmel Gat z”l in Hamas captivity pushed her to the edges of what she thought she knew about human endurance and loss. In its wake came an avalanche of losses: of home, of personal relationships, of belonging, and of certainty itself. These experiences eventually gave rise to her ongoing newsletter, the Grief and Travel Journal, excerpts of which were published in the yearbook Jewish Realities After October 7 by the association werkraum bild+sinn e.V. This journal is not a record of events. Rather, it is an attempt to explore how one remains human in a world that offers no ceasefire—neither internally nor externally.

Drawing on her writings from the past two years, Ronnie’s lecture weaves together impressions and reflections on life amid war, displacement, migration, and the profound personal transformations that accompany them. Rather than offering conclusions, she sets out to explore the possibility of remaining attentive—to beauty, to suffering, to contradictions—and the ability to remain human in a world where this requires a never-ending daily effort.

The lecture moves between moments from life in Israel during the war and periods spent elsewhere in Europe, tracing encounters with community, mourning, and belonging. Through selected texts, Ronnie examines how these experiences reshaped her relationship to language, identity, and belonging. Alongside these experiences, the lecture explores moments of calm and everyday life: walking through forests, translating Francis Weller’s book The Wild Edge of Sorrow into Hebrew, training as a psychotherapist, and discovering how ordinary beauty can become an act of resilience.

At the heart of the evening lies the idea of realities—in the plural and as opposites. Love and anger. Fear and safety. Beauty and devastation. Belonging and exclusion. The longing to leave, the longing to stay. Rather than choosing between these realities, the talk explores how seemingly contradictory truths can coexist without having to be reduced to certainty.

More than a lecture, the event is an invitation to listen to one another. Drawing on her work as a writer, translator, therapist, and grief facilitator, Ronnie Gross creates a space where writing becomes a form of testimony and where tenderness and terror are allowed to exist side by side.

The event will include readings from the newsletter, personal reflections, and a conversation with the audience.

PLEASE NOTE: Registration via the online form is required in order to attend: https://alter-leipziger-bahnhof.net/anmeldung-juedische-realitaeten/

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Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert aus Steuermitteln auf Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushalts.