Hi, I’m Claire.
Perhaps the best way to introduce myself is to tell you what brought me here. I came to writing the way I came to Judaism: not by design, but by need.
I wasn’t born Jewish or Israeli—just French—and I certainly wasn’t born a writer. After cutting ties with my family at twenty-one, I married into a different culture and found myself in Israel, navigating the space between outsider and insider.
My life has been shaped by a restless need to see the world from a young age—a drive confirmed during a teenage year in the U.S. that never faded. Though I studied law, my heart belonged to photography. Though I had no interest in religion, I chose conversion. My husband had nothing to do with that decision—in fact, he was quite against it.
That journey became the basis for my memoir and the reason this site exists.
A long-term expat, immigrant, or simply a nomad, I’ve lived in nine countries, for now calling London home. Along the way, I’ve worn many hats: professional portrait photographer, gymnastics coach (bars will always be my favorite), founder of a baby-product business, and editor for an expat magazine.
Writing a book was never the plan. But when I moved to the UK just before the pandemic, I began typing—in confinement.
Where it will lead, I don’t yet know.
