Limping Toward the Light: A Letter from Rachel Goldberg-Polin

I have been asked questions about Hersh, about the plight to free the remaining hostages and about hopes for the future of our people. From within a place of loss and confusion, I share with you a piece of myself:

My name is Rachel and I am the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the six beautiful hostages murdered in Gaza at the end of August. We buried his battered and bruised body on September 2nd, 2024, in Jerusalem.

I am also a wife, daughter, friend, student, teacher, Jew, Israeli, American, human and mother to two dynamic and vivacious daughters. And now, I am trying to become a navigator.

Like Magellan, Columbus and Sir Frances Drake, I am embarking on an odyssey into the unknown. My journey, I’m being told, can take the rest of my life to walk through. I am hoping to have a long life. And so I am starting my trek now.

‘Now’ can mean today, or this morning, or this hour. ‘Now’ is whatever I have the mental, psychological and spiritual strength to bite into at the moment.

I am asked what it is like to go through such a deep and profound blow while being watched by many people. I find it incredibly difficult and curiously fascinating. I have always been a happily anonymous person. I am a high-functioning introvert – I can be comfortable in a crowd, but I always prefer to be home or alone. Maybe that was from being an only child growing up in Chicago. I never had a problem with it, ever. I had a lot of friends and could be with them when I wanted, or be alone at home filling my time in creative ways. I performed epic puppet shows for my stuffed animals, who I would line up as my eager audience, just one of a myriad of examples.

I am deeply grateful that so many took Hersh to be theirs and have been with us during this dark chapter since October 7th, 2023, the date our world turned upside-down.

After sharing Hersh with so many for 330 days in order to help save him, he and my family have become recognizable to some. I am deeply grateful that so many took Hersh to be theirs and have been with us during this dark chapter since October 7th, 2023, the date our world turned upside-down. With that, now comes a lot of pressure, which I am trying to learn how to hold.

People reach out or stop me to share their pain. They describe how broken they are by the loss of Hersh and so many others. They go on to share personal losses they have had in their lives. They see my family as a vessel for the throbbing that they feel, for hits they have endured. It teaches me that there is an excess and surplus of suffering most people carry in their pockets. It changes over time, but it is always there, being transported around, just waiting for someone to show it to when the opportunity arises. And my presence often is that opportunity.

There is no measuring stick for aches of agony. Mine is no longer than his or hers. It’s different, and maybe newer, but pain is pain. Jon and I discovered this since Hersh’s death when thousands have come to us and shared their grief and their sorrow. And each day, when someone stops us to tell of their anguish it shows how unaddressed and still packed their satchels are, filled with tears, lumps and scars.

How do I allow them that room, that space, that air? How do we restrain ourselves from projecting what we need onto the person in front of us?

I feel like I have third-degree burns on my skin, so when people grab me or try to hug me, it is not helpful for me at this time. I think this is confusing for the person offering themselves to me. I know it is coming from a benevolent place in their heart. Years ago, a gifted teacher, Elana Friedman, taught me a piece, by the famous Reb Shlomo Volbe, about true chesed (kindness). This most complicated of disciplines requires looking at the person in front of us and saying to ourselves, “What does this person need?” not “What do I imagine I would need in this person’s situation?” It is the hardest of challenges, not to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes, but to stay in our own shoes and look at this person who is not me. How do I allow them that room, that space, that air? How do we restrain ourselves from projecting what we need onto the person in front of us?

Ouch. It is so very complicated to do successfully. We all fail at times. I know I certainly do.

When my girls and I are having a moment walking, breathing and smiling, and someone stops us and starts crying, they are robbing us of a moment of respite from the horror we are digesting. When I am walking alone, with a hat, glasses and my head down, it is me saying, “Please, oh please, let me breathe for a moment without having to also carry your pain. Your pain is as real as mine, but I have no strength at the moment to carry yours too. I love you and am endlessly grateful for you loving Hersh. I love you for loving the hostage families. I love you for trying to help. But please, if you want to help me, let me go on walking. When you see me and our eyes cross paths, please, oh please, just smile and wave. My knees are buckling from all the wounds people are sharing. I am just not formidable and powerful enough. Not yet. I am working on it. I wish to get there. Because I want us all to help lift each other, like the Amish do when they hoist up the frame for a new home they are all collectively building together. Let’s do that. But I am not robust enough…not yet.”

The Jewish people are at a juncture where we have so very much to figure out. The nugget of wisdom my mother taught me when I was young keeps nudging at my hip, with its hands raised, wanting to be picked up, asking for attention. Her friend Danny shared the idea that if we always treat the person next to us as if they are the Messiah, in disguise as a regular person, we will be careful with how we speak and what we do in their presence. And if they choose not to reveal themselves in our lifetime, it will not matter, because we will have behaved respectfully and carefully to that regular person next to us. This is the most decent thing we can do in this complex and loud world piled with confusion and brokenness. Let us work on the lost art of respectfulness.

There is so much internal disagreement and strife in our Jewish world, and it has not served us well.

Hersh and I spoke about this idea often. We talked about how wearing a kippah is a way to show we believe there is something above us, watching us. I asked him just a couple of years ago what person he would imagine was watching him, from a window above, who would cause him to behave in an improved way. Even after all these long years, he said, Mrs. Carlton, his beloved first-grade teacher from Virginia. We talked about that feeling of having someone or something we respect above us, how we behave differently. We behave better.

We seem to have lost this ability as a people. There is so much internal disagreement and strife in our Jewish world, and it has not served us well. I think our challenge as we limp forward toward the light, as we rise from the ashes that are still smoldering (and our cherished 101 hostages in Gaza, still languishing there as of this writing) is relearning how to listen. We have to master how to give space and oxygen, allow the person with whom we disagree to share their ideas, and try to understand them. And then they too should allow me to do that.

Is it possible? Yes. Will it happen? As I have said since October 7, 2023, hope is still mandatory. And so of course I hope and pray we use all of our creative and godly resources to succeed. We must.

May we all know better days, and may we find true and restorative comfort. Imminently.

This essay emerged in response to questions posed by Voice of the People, an initiative of President Isaac Herzog for a shared Jewish future and originally appeared in the Times of Israel.