{"id":166780,"date":"2025-10-04T09:26:49","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T09:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/hamas-executed-her-son-faith-sustains-her-can-a-grieving-mother-help-others-heal-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T09:26:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T09:26:49","slug":"hamas-executed-her-son-faith-sustains-her-can-a-grieving-mother-help-others-heal-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/hamas-executed-her-son-faith-sustains-her-can-a-grieving-mother-help-others-heal-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamas executed her son. Faith sustains her. Can a grieving mother help others heal? – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM \u2014 Kravitz Office Supply store is a rainbow-colored world of paper, notebooks and pens. Winnie-the-Pooh backpacks. Felix the Cat water bottles.\u00a0Stacks of printers. \u00a0\u00a0The masking tape Rachel Goldberg-Polin<\/a> needs is here somewhere.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a specific type that works best. Only three shops in Jerusalem carry the generic beige rolls that bundle, hold and seal. The ones that don\u2019t peel off fabric that\u2019s not 100% cotton. And they need to be about an inch wide, enough for the numbers to pop.\u00a0\u00a0The numbers, which she writes in black sharpie, count the days of a brutal war that began Oct. 7, 202<\/a>3. They count the days since Goldberg-Polin\u2019s son, Hersh<\/a>, was kidnapped by Hamas. They didn\u2019t stop when he was executed on day 328.\u00a0\u00a0The store offers single rolls or packs of three. Goldberg-Polin is a one-roll-at-a-time person.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s no buying an extra roll at this local office supply shop in Talpiyot, near where she lives. Or spreading them around the house. Or putting one inside a carry-on just in case.\u00a0\u00a0That would be planning for the war to go on, and she\u2019s determined to do all she can to make it stop.\u00a0\u00a0For the first 330 days, Goldberg-Polin fought to save her son\u2019s life, not knowing he was executed on day 328. She took planes. She made speeches. She mixed with global elites in Davos, Switzerland, and took the stage at the Democratic National Convention.<\/a> She met with Congressional Republicans. Traveled to every continent short of Africa, Antarctica and South America. Had an audience with Pope Francis<\/a>. She met with world leaders, even some who scared her, in undisclosed and far-flung locations. (One time, she was so afraid, she wrote down part of Psalm 118 \u2013<\/strong>God is with me, I shall not fear…<\/em> \u2013<\/strong> on a piece of paper and stuffed it in her bra.)\u00a0
Some of the rolls of masking tape went faster than others, especially when Goldberg-Polin was running around the world trying to save Hersh. More meetings meant more people. And more people meant more masking tape, more numbers stuck to the chests of anyone who would allow it.\u00a0\u00a0The news of her 23-year-old son\u2019s execution shocked and despaired the world. But it broke his mother.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0On Sept. 2, 2024 \u2013 day 332 \u2013 she buried her son. Goldberg-Polin pleaded with him: \u201cI need you to help us stay strong. I need you to help us survive.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With her demure demeanor and lithe frame, Goldberg-Polin is walking a fraught path. At 55, she is perhaps the most recognizable face of all of Israel’s hostage families at a time when not all of those hostages are home. Her appeal has grown beyond the Jewish world. The families of all kinds of victims reach out to her for consolation: not just murders, but kids lost to suicide and overdoses from Idaho to Venezuela.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Two years after Goldberg-Polin was thrust into this grief-stricken spotlight, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 66,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.\u202f As it ticks ever higher, Goldberg-Polin is left to wonder: Where does she go from here?\u00a0\u00a0Israel’s political and cultural fractures are deepening. Antisemitism is on the rise worldwide. Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, the world’s only Jewish state is increasingly seen as an international pariah because of the scale of Palestinian deaths in Gaza.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A pending peace plan<\/a> announced by the White House in late September could end the war and see the 48 remaining hostages \u2013 20 presumed still alive \u2013 returned.\u00a0 But Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari says the number one problem in Israel today is not Hamas. It is inner division. \u201cAnd if you think, \u2018Who can heal this rift?\u2019\u201d he asks, \u201cThe last person is Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Could it be a grieving mother?\u00a0\u00a0Still, it is here, in a Kravitz middle aisle, on a low shelf, near the dust and dirt on the floor, where roll 7 came from.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She tears another piece of tape and places it over her heart.\u202f\u00a0
“In modern Hebrew, the word for ‘crisis’ is the same as the biblical word for ‘birth pangs,'” Goldberg-Polin says.\u00a0\u202f\u201cMashber<\/em>,\u201d or \u05de\u05b7\u05e9\u05b0\u05c1\u05d1\u05b5\u05bc\u05e8.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Goldberg-Polin gave birth to her first child on a sunny blue day in 2000 in Berkeley, California.\u00a0\u00a0She and her husband, Jon, had agreed the baby\u2019s gender should be a surprise. After all, \u201cthere\u2019s so few surprises left in the world,\u201d he told her.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0The doctor\u2019s revelation shocked her: It\u2019s a boy.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAnd I thought, \u2018How is that possible? I\u2019m a girl,\u2019\u201d Goldberg-Polin says. \u201cAnd Doctor Wharton said, \u2018Rachel, all boys in the world come out of women.\u2019\u201d\u202f\u00a0
The Polins would come to have two other children, both girls. They lived in Richmond, Virginia, in a brick colonial house with a picket fence in the backyard and two cars in the driveway. She taught Judaic studies to adults in their small Jewish community. It was the kind of place where she\u2019d send her husband, Jon, to the grocery store, and the neighbors would carry the milk back to the car for him.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0The family picked up and moved to Israel in 2008. They wanted to see what it would be like to get \u201con the ride of being part of the Jewish people who have the opportunity to live in a Jewish homeland, which in Jewish history was not an option for thousands of years,\u201d Goldberg-Polin explains.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0Three years earlier, Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza. The year after that, Hamas had taken control of the enclave after violently wrestling it away from western-backed Fatah, the largest of the Palestinian political factions that grew out of\u202fYasser Arafat<\/a>\u2019s Palestine Liberation Movement in the 1950s.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The year Goldberg-Polin and her family arrived in Israel, the country launched Operation Cast Lead, a massive military operation aimed at halting intensifying Hamas mortar, missile and rocket fire terrorizing southern Israeli communities. Approximately 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died in the operation, which lasted 22 days, according to aid groups.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0Relocating to a war-torn country the size of New Jersey with three children\u00a0was a bold move. Yet it\u2019s one Jews around the world have made for a host of reasons since the creation of the state in 1948: Faith and family, a sense of connection to the promise of a Jewish state,\u00a0a refuge from antisemitism. Or as Goldberg-Polin puts it: \u201can experiment.\u201d
And boldness is nothing new for Goldberg-Polin. \u00a0
Even growing up in 1970s and ’80s Chicago, Goldberg-Polin decisions were always accompanied by fundamental questions. After her parents divorced, she took on orthodox Jewish observance. On the Sabbath, she stopped going to movies or shopping, and she didn\u2019t use the phone. \u00a0\u00a0The move into orthodoxy, Goldberg-Polin says, taught her the \u201cpreciousness of having meaning in my life as a 13-year-old.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Goldberg-Polin was enthralled with the ritual and the comfort she found in this new way of living: \u201cThere was an entire way of going about life infused with meaning. And a quest for holiness in the mundane.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Camille Kahn met Goldberg-Polin when they were both 18, on a gap year in Israel. Over the years, Kahn has seen her friend\u2019s spirituality and connection to others deepen.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cShe somehow transmits her emotion, and you feel it, and you become part of it,\u201d Kahn says.\u00a0
As a young mother, Goldberg-Polin was back in her biblical homeland, with her family, on an adventure. Her daughters adjusted quickly. But the move was hard on Hersh, a 7-year-old who\u00a0had loved his first-grade teacher in Virginia.\u00a0\u00a0For a whole year, Hersh didn\u2019t utter a single word in his new class, where the teacher recited lessons in modern Hebrew. Instead, he sat silently for hours, reading books in English.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Then one day, the teacher asked if anyone knew about the Holocaust. Hersh raised his hand, and in Hebrew told the story of a survivor he\u2019d known back in Richmond.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hersh would grow up to be very much Goldberg-Polin\u2019s son. He\u2019d advocate at 14 for the release of an Ethiopian-Israeli hostage held in Gaza<\/a>, and for coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. He even had a\u00a0colorful poster of\u00a0the Old City skyline on his desk, emblazoned with the words, \u201cJerusalem belongs to everyone.\u201d\u00a0
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t perfect,\u201d Goldberg-Polin says. \u201cBut I always say he was the perfect son for me.\u201d\u202f\u00a0\u00a0That confluence and flurry of memories are part of the before. Five decades that can be summed up in an instant. Because everything changed that morning in 2023, when Hamas launched the deadliest assault<\/a> on Jews since the Holocaust. More than 3,000 Hamas<\/a> fighters gunned down civilians, torturing and mutilating some of them in their own homes, still in their pajamas.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0That Saturday, Hersh was at an open-air concert for what was billed as a celebration of \u201cunity and love.\u201d\u00a0She expected him home soon afterward. Instead, he was taken from her.\u202f\u00a0
As Goldberg-Polin readied for the fight of her life, she remembered the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, when 52 people were held in the U.S. embassy in Tehran for 444 days. She recalled being transfixed as a kid when ABC News opened the newscast every night with a tally of how many days they had been there.\u00a0\u00a0She needed to count, too. She decided this would be her new identity: \u201cEvery day, my name would change to a new number.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Goldberg-Polin wanted to use the stickers that say, \u2018HELLO MY NAME IS,\u2019 but they were nowhere to be found in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0So she settled for masking tape. She needed masking tape.\u00a0\u00a0She pulled roll number one from the kitchen drawer and tore the very first piece.\u00a0
In the Torah<\/a>, God didn\u2019t forsake Rachel when she realized she was barren. He listened to her and opened her womb.\u202f<\/em>\u00a0
That\u2019s how Goldberg-Polin, who shares a first name with the Biblical matriarch, knows there\u2019s a \u201cwhy.\u201d\u202f
Why her first child was a son. Why Hersh wasn\u2019t among those to escape from the Nova music festival, but instead had his left arm blown off and was taken hostage. Why he was swallowed up by Gazan tunnels, where he faced starvation, torture and darkness.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0Why he was executed on day 328, point blank, at the hands of Hamas, hours before approaching Israel Defense Forces would have set him free.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI hate to break it to everybody, nobody gets out of here alive,\u201d she says, the tape on her chest marked with 642. \u201cThis is the way that this world works.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0As she called out to God for help, Goldberg-Polin didn\u2019t dwell on the why. She has a more urgent question: \u201cI know that there\u2019s a reason for all of this. I might never be privy to the why, but I know there\u2019s a why. My question is, what? What do you want me to do? Because I\u2019ll do it.\u201d\u00a0
She\u2019s not the first to ponder this. It\u2019s a conundrum contemplated by everyone from 12-step alcoholics to\u00a0sages throughout time.\u00a0
The Catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas addressed it this way: \u201cThe things we love tell us who we are.\u201d \u00a0
Buddha\u2019s teaching in the Pali Canon reads: \u201cDeath has 1,000 parts\u2026Only one part is your life.\u201d \u00a0
But for Goldberg-Polin, the words of Jewish sage Maimonides resonate the most: \u201cWhat is the purpose thereof?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Hersh thought about it, too. People who had been in captivity with him later shared with\u00a0his mother that he often talked about \u201cMan\u2019s Search for Meaning,\u201d Victor Frankl\u2019s account of being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. \u201cIf you have a why, you will find your how,\u201d Hersh told the others.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0It is a phrase that continues to echo in Goldberg-Polin\u2019s mind, as she makes masking tape labels for her family at their home in Jerusalem each morning.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0The house sits on the edge of the Baka neighborhood, known for its leafy streets, upscale residences and lush, private gardens. Its quiet, tree-lined avenues are interrupted by coffee shops and bohemian boutiques.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hersh\u2019s image is everywhere in the neighborhood now. On lampposts. In shop windows. As a cherubic, smiling, cartoon character. Hersh\u2019s face fills banner after banner. His name graces snippets of poems and songs graffitied in alleyways. \u201cWe love you Hersh,\u201d says one. \u201cWe miss Hersh,\u201d says another. The Goldberg-Polin\u2019<\/s>s\u2019 own apartment balcony is draped in an enormous red banner that bears his image.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was near his home, under a covered courtyard next to the family\u2019s synagogue, where Hersh\u2019s loved ones last saw him alive on Oct. 6, 2023.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI remember standing here with Rachel and seeing Hersh dancing,\u201d family friend Ayelet Haas recalls while showing a reporter around on day 704. \u201cHow sad this now seems.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Goldberg-Polin rarely leaves the house these days. It\u2019s impossible for her to go almost anywhere \u2013<\/strong> in her neighborhood, in Israel, in much of the U.S. \u2013<\/strong> without being recognized. Without being approached. Without strangers lunging at her and grabbing her forearm.\u00a0\u00a0This is the cost of having been tortured in public. Her pain and her grief can\u2019t be hers alone.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMy father is from Gary, Indiana. My mom\u2019s from Detroit, we\u2019re Midwesterners through and through. And my dad always taught me that when you walk down the street, you hold your head up,\u201d she says.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0But grief has made Goldberg-Polin keep her head down, because when people see her, they cry. She has become a symbol of the most excruciating nightmare people can think of.\u00a0\u00a0Zev Alexander, one of Golberg-Polin\u2019s oldest friends, says that while there was always a meaningfulness to her, he\u2019s detected new determination and focus since Hersh\u2019s death.\u00a0\u00a0She lets no light in for frivolity \u2013 instead he senses in her an urgency to inspire others to leave this place better than they found it and to discover the point of this world and our place in it.\u00a0
\u201cThis seems to be a mission and charge,\u201d Alexander says. \u201cIt\u2019s like she\u2019s the whole world\u2019s mom now.\u201d\u202f\u00a0
On day 594, in May 2025, Goldberg-Polin takes the stage at Yeshiva University in New York to receive an honorary doctorate before 5,000 people.\u00a0\u00a0She speaks with the graduates about her loss, but she also instructs them to heed Judaism\u2019s moral calling to repair the world.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe in Israel are at a crossroads,\u201d she tells them. \u201cWe are bruised and battle-weary. Not just from the outside in but from our inside rifts. That is beyond dangerous, and it cannot be an option.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Most families in Israel \u2013 a country of just under 10 million people \u2013 know someone who was caught up in the events of Oct. 7, or who has been maimed or killed as part of the military response.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0In the two years since then, Israelis have been confronted with an endless parade of stories detailing how the hostages were taken, how they were treated and how they died. And they\u2019re not listening quietly.\u00a0\u00a0Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in major cities to urge, badger and beg Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire, bring the remaining hostages home and restore a version of what they see as the Israel they cherish: humanistic and democratic\u202f \u2014 though admittedly flawed.\u00a0\u00a0Netanyahu, meanwhile, stands accused of having repeatedly turned down earlier deals with Hamas to appease extreme elements within his fragile coalition government. Outside of Israel, he and other senior Israeli officials face allegations of war crimes in Gaza.\u00a0
Goldberg-Polin has been critical of Netanyahu\u2019s handling of the hostage crisis and the violence it has wreaked on Palestinians in Gaza. On the stage at Yeshiva, she\u2019s a favorite teacher speaking in folksy anecdotes. Her words project a mix of quiet determination and strength in a way that\u2019s unusual for Israel, where public figures rarely show vulnerability.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cOne of the most critical things to do when anyone is lost is stop and own that we have made a mistake, and that we are lost,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNow I know that is particularly hard for some men, especially while driving. This has been eased, thank God, with the invention of Waze and Google Maps.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Laughter from the crowd breaks the tension of what could have been understood as metaphor for Netanyahu\u2019s actions.\u00a0\u00a0But Goldberg-Polin\u2019s mission is to inspire. To end the war and reunite the remaining hostages with their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe are not what we say, we are not what we think, and we are not even what we believe,\u201d she tells the audience.\u00a0\u00a0She pauses: \u201cIn this life, we are: What. We. DO.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Applause.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cSo go do, you shining lights of wonder. Go be our north stars. Go be our beacons. Go. Be. Our Hope. There is a whole world out there, awaiting your arrival.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0She raises both arms, punching toward the air. Her voice crescendos and her face colors as she refuses to let a sob overtake her battle cry.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cSo go, you beautiful people! Go! And do!\u201d\u00a0
Day 703 without Hersh.\u00a0\u00a0As Goldberg-Polin walks through New York\u2019s Central Park, onlookers recognize her when they catch a glimpse of the masking tape.\u00a0\u00a0Some wave. Others give her a thumbs up.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0As a breeze begins to hint at the beginning of fall, she feels on another planet.\u00a0
There is a constant separation between Goldberg-Polin\u2019s petite body and how she experiences the world. A brokenness that radiates at a cellular and even cosmic level.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A close friend tells her that\u2019s because Hersh isn\u2019t here anymore. As his mother, a piece of her, flesh of her flesh \u2013 her son \u2013 is in olam ha\u2019abah,<\/em> the world to come.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt gave me permission to understand why I don’t feel complete here,\u201d she says. \u201cPart of me is already in the next world with my son. One day the rest of me will be there with him. But for now, a lot of me is in this world.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It bothers her that there isn\u2019t a word for someone who has lost a child. It\u2019s as if, even in language, we somehow understand that burying a son or daughter goes against the natural world order.\u00a0
Back in a hotel room on Fifth Avenue, Goldberg-Polin removes her jacket and sits down on a couch to speak with a reporter.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s something about kidnapping that scares the fear out of you, Goldberg-Polin says. Throws out hunger and with it, her period, which never returned.\u00a0\u00a0Three hundred and thirty days after Hersh was taken, her son’s body was returned to her \u2013 114 pounds on a frame that once stood six feet tall, and now, had six wounds.\u00a0\u00a0Underneath the shroud was proof of what she had always known as his mother: her boy starved. As she was jumping on planes, lobbying world leaders, hoping for his return, everyone had insisted she eat. But how could she?\u00a0\u00a0The Israeli Defense Forces<\/a> found Hersh\u2019s body and those of five other hostages in a tunnel<\/a> that was five feet high and two feet wide. Water bottles left behind were filled with black urine \u2013 a sign of failing kidneys and dehydration.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI especially have a problem when I’m drinking clean water,\u201d she says, a bottle of Poland Spring on a desk nearby. \u00a0
Every returned hostage she\u2019s ever spoken to has said they were only ever given dirty water or salt water.\u202f\u00a0
Goldberg-Polin is in New York after having visited Detroit and Chicago. Soon, she\u2019ll head back to Israel before returning to Washington the following week.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a lot to do. She\u2019s speaking to anyone who will listen.\u202fBut would she ever run for political office?\u00a0\u00a0One person who would welcome her candidacy is Shelly Tal Meron, an Israeli lawmaker for Yesh Atid, a centrist opposition party in Israel’s Parliament.\u00a0\u00a0Israel needs more women, and Goldberg-Polin would also represent religious people that are more liberal, which the country also needs, Meron says.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cShe has all the qualities that are suitable for this job. But it’s not an easy job to be a politician,\u201d Meron says. \u201cThere is a high price to pay. She’s paid a very high price already.”\u00a0\u00a0
It\u2019s not a completely unreasonable idea. An Israeli pollster recently conducted a \u201cviability\u201d study to test how Goldberg-Polin would fare as a political candidate in Israel.\u202f It revealed high approval ratings among the public there.\u00a0\u00a0The research, conducted without her knowledge, was commissioned by a potential political rival, according to the person who carried out the opposition research, who asked for anonymity because the poll was a private survey.\u202f\u00a0\u00a0Many who took the survey saw Goldberg-Polin as too moral to get involved in the rough and tumble world of Israel\u2019s fractious political scene. She has a hard time seeing herself in that world, too, she says during a two-hour interview in that New York hotel room.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe would sit with so many people who really, I think, genuinely cared while we were speaking to them,\u201d she says. Within hours of leaving, \u201cwe would hear these same people touting rhetoric that was so counterproductive. What we saw was … really dark, unappealing, unholy\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something I didn\u2019t want to be a part of.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0But even as she says no to politics, she flashes that folksy charm.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAnd I also actually have no qualifications except that I have a pulse.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A reporter reminds Goldberg-Polin she wouldn\u2019t be the first woman from the Midwest with an American accent to serve as prime minister of Israel. Golda Meir<\/a>, who was raised in Milwaukee, held the job from 1969 to 1974.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s funny,\u201d Goldberg-Polin responds. \u201cBut she was very knowledgeable, and we did have the same accent. Although I’ve worked very hard to lose (mine).\u201d\u00a0\u00a0What does a Chicago accent sound like in Hebrew?\u00a0\u00a0Deadpan, she answers: \u201cIt\u2019s not pretty.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Two hours later, Goldberg-Polin is ready to go. She overlays a blush scarf on her shoulders and exits the room.\u00a0\u00a0She leaves the bottle of water behind, just one sip gone.\u00a0
The cantor stands to lead the congregation in prayer,<\/em> which will be followed by a ritualistic chanting of Acheinu.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0
Jews have been reciting this prayer \u2013 for the release of captives \u2013 for almost a thousand years. But for many, this is the first time they are saying it in the presence of Goldberg-Polin and her husband.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cAcheinu,\u201d<\/em> they say, beginning the call and response. \u201cJust as our ancestors were redeemed from Egypt, may they journey from darkness to light, right now.\u201d\u00a0
Goldberg-Polin\u2019s eyes are closed. Her lips are moving, but they make no sound.\u00a0\u00a0
Tears well in the eyes of those who dare to look at her as the cantor\u2019s acapella vibrato fills the sanctuary.
Not everyone in the crowd is equally observant.\u00a0They have come not only to pray, but to hear Goldberg-Polin speak. They\u2019ve come from all corners of the city, and they pack a room and a balcony, blocking the emergency exists as they stand along the back wall.\u00a0
They want her to teach them about grief, about loss, about hope. They, too, yearn for answers.\u00a0
Goldberg-Polin sits in the holiest place of the synagogue sanctuary: underneath the ark, the bronze cabinet that stores Torah scrolls at the head of the temple. And she tells them God answered her prayer, but the answer was no.\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cHe just didn’t answer me (with) the answer that I think that I wanted.\u201d she says. \u201cBut he answered.\u201d\u00a0
Their shocked reaction doesn\u2019t stop Hersh\u2019s mother. She tells them about her son and how he survived for 328 days because he knew his why and found his how.\u00a0
She talks about\u00a0her favorite prayers and her morning ritual, the way she calls out to God. She calls to Hashem, or \u201cthe name\u201d in Hebrew, because Orthodox Jews do not invoke God\u2019s name directly.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI say, \u2018Hashem, I am close to you, be close to me\u201d Goldberg-Polin says.
As she utters the words, she\u00a0puts a fist over her heart, over the masking tape marked with number 703.\u00a0\u00a0The gesture evokes a line from the Old Testament often read at funerals: Place me like a seal on your heart.<\/em> … For love is as strong as death<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0The next morning, and every morning, even after the war ends\u00a0and she peels the final shred of tape from her chest \u2013 from now until she sees her only son again in the world to come \u2013 she will close her eyes and speak to him: \u201cSweet boy, let me feel your love and your light today.\u201d \u00a0
Romina Ruiz-Goiriena<\/em><\/a> is USA TODAY’s Executive Editor of Investigations and Storytelling and a former international correspondent.<\/em> She reported from New York. Follow her on X, @RominaAdi.<\/em>\u00a0
Kim Hjelmgaard<\/a> is USA TODAY\u2019s World Correspondent and reported this dispatch from Jerusalem. He can be reached at<\/em> on Signal at kimusat12.01<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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JERUSALEM \u2014 Kravitz Office Supply store is a rainbow-colored world of paper, notebooks and pens. Winnie-the-Pooh backpacks. Felix the Cat water bottles.\u00a0Stacks of printers. \u00a0\u00a0The masking tape Rachel Goldberg-Polin needs is here somewhere.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a specific type that works best. Only three shops in Jerusalem carry the generic beige rolls that bundle, hold and seal. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}