“Bring Hersh home.”
Since Oct. 7, this heart-rending message – usually with the 23-year-old’s black-and-white visage against a red background – has been plastered on every centimeter of Jerusalem.
Posters on walls, banners in windows and on balconies, stickers on benches, scrawled in graffiti, Hersh Goldberg-Polin has not left our thoughts since he was taken hostage at the Supernova festival, after heroically saving others by fending off grenades.
While we mourn the irreplaceable loss of five other hostages we just learned about – each a world unto themselves – Jerusalemites in the Anglo neighborhoods of Baka, Arnona, Old Katamon, and the German Colony particularly related to the story of Hersh. His parents, Jon and Rachel, had brought him on aliyah – from Berkeley, California, then Richmond, Virginia – at the tender age of seven. Many in the community know, respect, and love the family – which includes his two younger sisters, Leebie and Orly – and rallied around them immediately.
But we all, Israelis and Jews around the world, felt the pain keenly, given the family’s stop-at-nothing efforts – particularly those of Rachel, an apt name for the lioness who came to epitomize a mother’s love.
Given their tireless media campaign – Rachel herself whittling down, but the piece of tape bearing the number of days Hersh had been in captivity always prominent on her blouse – is it any wonder that we somehow believed Hersh would make it back to where he belonged, in life?
We heaved a huge sigh of relief and took heart in the video released at the end of April by Hamas, yemach shemam v’zichram, where Hersh appeared alive, his arm half-gone from the grenades but having blessedly survived the initial massacre. We bolstered ourselves with the knowledge that Hersh was a dual American-Israeli citizen and that he was valuable to the terror movement, given how prominent he had become in the global press.
We shed admiring tears as the family dedicated a Torah scroll in honor of all the hostages still held in Gaza, to inspire acts of kindness.
Receiving tragic news: Hersh Goldberg-Polin's murder in Gaza
However, we all got the terrible, still-hard-to-internalize news last Sunday morning – and time stopped. We were thrust back to the horror and blackness of last Simchat Torah, with the new twist that Hersh had been alive mere days before but was then heartlessly murdered by his monster captors as the IDF approached.
I tried to comfort a close friend on Sunday, who did not seem to know how to go on, having attended Hersh’s bar mitzvah and seen him grow up into the shining young man he had become. “Tomorrow will be a better day,” I assured her. “Tomorrow is his funeral,” she reminded me.
Hersh was everyone’s son, brother, schoolmate, friend, fellow music festival-goer, deep thinker, beloved jokester. Hersh will forever be an enduring symbol of what we have all lost – and can never get back – since this cruel era in Jewish history began.
Hersh, as your mother noted so beautifully and heartbreakingly at your surreal funeral, you are free – to join your friends and Himmelfarb high school classmates Aner Shapira and Ben Zussman in the great battalion in the sky.
And we residents of Jerusalem now hope to continue embracing your family and be worthy of your legacy.■
The writer is editor of ‘In Jerusalem’ and a resident of Jerusalem’s Old Katamon neighborhood.