I haven't written any fanfiction in a pretty long time, and I haven't written anything for NCIS in a really long time. But since Israel was attacked by Hamas a week ago, I felt called to write this. For me, this is the mitzvah of K'lal Yisrael, solidarity with Israel and Jews worldwide. As a Jewish girl who's spent plenty of time in Paris, this is a very personal piece.
Paris was beautiful on summer evenings like this.
Since moving to the city with Tali, Tony had learned the hard way that living in Paris as a single father wasn't quite the same as visiting it with Ziva years ago. Hell, on that trip, their agency had footed the bill for everything. And it wasn't just the cost of living that Tony chafed at. There was that distinct Parisian smell, too.
Tony didn't subscribe to the American stereotype that French people had an odor. It wasn't the people at all. No, it was the smell of the Seine, the homeless winos, the street benches streaked with white clumps from pigeons. It was the stinking piles of dog crap left lying on sidewalks because nobody in Europe picked up after their pets. It was the stench of the Metro, where the worst stations sometimes still made Tony gasp, open-mouthed, as he descended the steps.
But on this summer evening, walking hand-in-hand with Tali along the broad, tree-lined Boulevard Haussmann, Tony couldn't deny that the city had its charms. This evening, he noticed the tall, neatly-trimmed trees on the boulevard, the delicate curly-cues in the wrought-iron balcony railings, the glowing signs for Metro stations. Tony had always liked the Metro signs, especially the ones with spidery black script that looked like something out of a classic '40s movie. There was still the smell, of course, but that was tamped down as they passed a boulangerie. Tali was holding his hand, humming to herself as she skipped alongside beside him, and they were going home together, and what more could he ask for than that?
It wasn't until later, after he and Tali had turned onto the Rue de la Victoire – one of the many Paris streets too narrow for any real sunshine – that Tony remembered one of the other things he didn't like about Paris. One of the things he hated most about France, in fact.
Tali noticed it as they were still approaching the synagogue. His little girl was too smart for her own good sometimes, but what else could he expect of his and Ziva's daughter? She stopped humming to herself, and when Tony glanced down, he saw her taking in the scene – the look in her dark eyes was so much like Ziva that it physically hurt.
It was a Friday evening. Shabbat services would begin soon, and the synagogue's heavy front doors were open, but there was nobody outside just now... except for the guard in the security booth at the main entrance. Tony couldn't see from this angle, but he could tell that man was armed and that glass was bullet-proof. And Tali, already as sharp and observant as an NCIS agent herself, could tell that man was some sort of police officer and that building was a synagogue.
"Abba..." Tali said, tugging on Tony's hand and pointing the guard's booth, "why do they have a gendarme outside the synagogue?" She used the French word for policeman.
There were a lot of things that Tony couldn't say to answer her question. He was no expert on Judaism, but he knew that because Ziva had been Jewish, Tali was, too, according to halacha. He couldn't tell his young Jewish daughter that anti-Semitism was roaring back into style in France. He couldn't tell her about the attack on a kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes. Or the Jewish men stabbed in Marseille. The attack on a Jewish community center in Nice. The Jewish graves vandalized with swastikas in Bas-Rhin. The elderly Jewish woman murdered in her own apartment, right here in Paris. And as young as Tali was, those incidents had all occurred in her lifetime.
Tony felt the bile rising in his throat and told himself to stop thinking that way. He kept his voice carefully calm as he answered Tali.
"He's there to make sure that synagogue will always be a safe place."
Tony himself was a lapsed Catholic, of course, but he knew Ziva would've wanted their daughter raised with some Jewish experiences, and he was doing his best to honor that. He and Tali attended Shabbat evening services – not every week, but regularly enough – at a small, welcoming congregation that Tony felt lucky to have found. The services there were in French, English, and Hebrew, and nobody judged him and Tali if they only came once a month.
But another plus for Tony was that Kehilat Gesher made its home in a ordinary, mixed-use building in the seventeenth arrondissement. On the street-level, there was nothing at all to indicate that Jews ever gathered there. He and Tali had never set foot in this beautiful old synagogue on Rue de la Victoire, but as they passed by, Tony looked at the Hebrew inscriptions over the door, the Stars of David in the stained-glass windows, and he felt a twinge of anger. Why were they calling so much attention to themselves? Why weren't they trying to blend in?
He looked away quickly and hung his head, ashamed of himself. It felt like a betrayal of Ziva to think that way even for a moment. He knew that the Jews of France shouldn't have to hide or blend in to be safe. He didn't want to cut Tali off from a Jewish childhood, and he sometimes wondered if it wouldn't be safer for her if they moved back to the US. But he knew that many American synagogues had armed guards, too, and in the US, Tali would be more at risk of a school shooting. France, at least, had better gun control.
At lo levad, he had said to Ziva once, years ago, before she boarded a plane to fly back to Israel. You are not alone. It was one of the first Hebrew phrases that Tony had learned – he could now recite a few Jewish prayers, too – and as he looked back at the security guard outside the synagogue, he thought it again. You are not alone. He almost said it out loud.
That synagogue will always be a safe place, he'd just told his daughter, and in his heart, he said a silent prayer to whatever God might be listening that his words weren't a lie.