A letter to Rachel Polin-Goldberg

A letter to Rachel Polin-Goldberg - Mother of 23-year-old American-Israeli Hersh Polin-Goldberg, who was murdered after 327+ days held hostage in Gaza.

Dear Rachel,

We don’t know each other.

You live on the other side of the world -

But Our circles are not so far apart

It is not impossible that we someday we would, we might meet

And if that day comes

I will tell you this.

I’m sorry. So deeply sorry. For what we couldn’t do for Hersh. Your beloved, funny, sweet, music loving boy.

Who deserved to be free.

Who deserved to travel and to dance and to grow old and build the world he dreamt of

I know my words cannot heal your grief and your agony.

I would have rather met you at a Jerusalem shabbat dinner -

Where your three children would be on their way in and out, sharing a joke or a hug on the way over to a friends house

Or perhaps we would meet at the Shuk some early autumn morning, inspecting pomegranates for a Rosh HaShanah table

I wish that is how I would come to know your face - your softness, your strength

But we are trapped inside a different story

A terrible one

And all I can do is tell you that I have watched and listened and cried with you and that you have reached into my soul like the words from a prophet

I would tell you that

I would add you to our list of beloved Matriarchs -

Elohei Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, Leah, and Rachel Polin-Goldberg.

Rachel -

As I held my sweet, sweet 4-month old baby girl on October 7th

I saw a world that I couldn’t explain to her

I asked,

Where I would get strength

Where I would get wisdom

And then, we all met you.

Rachel, Hersh’s mother.

Rachel, our mother. Our matriarch.

You have been my teacher.

You taught me that every child is the perfect child for their parent.

You taught me that sometimes parents have to apologize to their children.

You taught me how to be a fierce Jewish mother.

You taught me that every day with my child is a blessing.

Rachel, you have shown me what the depth of a parent’s love sounds like out loud

You have been relentless. Full of passion and never lacking compassion.

You have taught me what it is like to wake up every morning and choose to face your despair

I know, you said all you wanted to do was to “lay in a ball on the floor crying” - but you knew that wouldn’t save them -

So - “Wake up and pretend to be a human” you said.

You taught me that every person - in every conflict - has a name and a story -

You reminded us - Hersh is a human being who needs help, not just a hostage.

You taught us that you can fight for your child - be their strongest warrior

And still care about others - facing the same plight, or another.

You taught us that in a “competition of pain, there are no winners.”

You taught us that strength does not mean that you don’t show your tears or your pain.

Rachel - we heard your piercing cries. Trying to reach your son. Crying out for those who held his life in his hands to remember their own humanity

Pleading with anyone who had any ability to do anything - to bring him home. To bring them home.

You asked them - “as mother to other mothers: If you see Hersh, please help him. I think about it a lot. I really think I would help your son, if he was in front of me, injured, near me.”

Rachel -

You taught us the power of a piece of masking tape

You showed us how psalms and prayers might give us language for an impossible, unspeakable time

And You told us it was ok to scream at God.

To look up and say, “Stop turning your face away from me. I want you to answer me now.”

Rachel -

You reminded us that amidst the worst of anything

We can choose two paths

To let it consume us

Or to let it make our lives into something bigger -not because we want to be known but because the fire and terror will consume us if we do not grow larger than it

And you taught us empathy

At each moment that you worked for the return of your son

You fought for every hostage to come home

You spoke of the thousands and thousands of suffering Gazans

You implored our leaders and their leaders to “do what they have to do so that just the normal people can stop suffering”

And you urged them, ““Don’t do the political thing: Do the right thing, do the ethical thing, and the moral thing,” she said. “Do the thing that makes you look in the mirror and be proud of who you are. Do the thing that makes you know that 100 years from now, history will be talking about you doing the right thing. Don’t do the easy thing. Do the right thing.”

Even at your own son’s funeral

You spoke of the others he died with - the beautiful six.

Hersh, and Carmel, Ori, Eden, Almog and Alex.

And you prayed that his death would be about something bigger -

Could be a turning point.

That enough people were paying attention - enough people were hurting

That finally this terrible war could end - that this terrible suffering would end.

You shared Hersh’s own light with us - and tried to make it light a new path forward - one of true shared society, of justice

Rachel -

You taught us how to make hope mandatory.

Hope is mandatory.

Hope is still mandatory.

And You asked to plant seeds of hope.

You wrote this,

And I know that way over there

there’s another woman

who looks just like me

because we are all so very similar

and she has also been crying.

All those tears, a sea of tears

they all taste the same.

Can we take them

gather them up,

remove the salt

and pour them over our desert of despair

and plant one tiny seed.

A seed wrapped in fear,

trauma, pain,

war and hope

and see what grows?

Could it be

that this woman

so very like me

that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years

laughing without teeth

because we have drunk so much sweet tea together

and now we are so very old

and our faces are creased

like worn-out brown paper bags.

And our sons

have their own grandchildren

and our sons have long lives

One of them without an arm

But who needs two arms anyway?

Is it all a dream? A fantasy? A prophecy?

One tiny seed.

Rachel -

I am so very sorry we could not help you bring your sweet boy home.

I really believed you could will it to be true. I really believed that we could force a deal - that we could force someone to be a human for just a minute.

I am so very sorry that Hersh is not in your arms.

I am so very sorry that you have had to endure this unimaginable suffering.

I cannot even ask how you did it.

Because as little as I know

What I know is that it was impossible.

But what I do know is that I have learned to be a mother while watching you.

How I raise my daughter has changed because of you.

How brave I now believe I can be has changed because of you.

How we will move forward has changed because of you.

With seeds of strength. Courage. So so many tears. Empathy. And Hope.