This grief belongs to all
Remembering Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
I don’t think I should be the one to write this.
I only ever spoke to Hersh a handful of times over text.
As the story goes, I happened to find his bar mitzvah bentscher at a Shabbos dinner, and fell in love with it; the Parashat Noach theme, the family pictures, the parody songs his grandmothers had written for him. For a long time, when I thought about Hersh, I thought of the warmth of being with my friends at Shabbat dinner, of the family recipes we tried to approximate in our expat apartments in Jerusalem. He reminded me of a time in my life when I was surrounded by Torah, friends, and little else.
When Hersh’s face popped up on my screen a few years later, this time as a hostage, I felt as though a friend had been taken from me. I received scores of messages, as people remembered me posting about Hersh all those years ago. I was one of the first people to write about Hersh, days after the conflict began, as we begged for people to follow the Instagram page @bring.hersh.home.
From the very beginning of this conflict, Hersh’s face was my epicentre of grief and pain. And through the tireless efforts of his parents, he became a symbol for thousands, of the endless torture that Israelis were enduring as they waited for their loved ones to return.
It didn’t take long for his parents to become symbols of the war, too. Rachel’s neverending poise and eloquence, Jon’s stoicism; an English-speaking bridge for the diaspora, many of whom do not understand Hebrew. As they stood beside presidents and world leaders, they were, above all else, just two parents who yearned to be reunited with their son.
There are others who knew him better than I do, whose grief overwhelms them, who will feel the Hersh-shaped hole left in their hearts for the rest of their lives.
I am just someone who posts on the Internet, who happened across Hersh by chance.
But this grief belongs to the collective just as it belongs to the individual. Grief for our siblings who are still hostages. Grief for the pain that thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have been subjected to in almost an entire year of meaningless war. Grief for a world before October 7th.
When I first wrote about Hersh, I wrote of hope. I wrote that although Noah could not imagine anything beyond the raging flood waters as he took refuge in his ark, we know that a rainbow was around the corner. That a dove was close by.
But as I sit on the morning after Hersh’s funeral, my hope gives way to anger. I, along with 500,000 Israelis, am angry at a prime minister who does not listen to his Defence Minister, the Shin Bet or Mossad, who puts his own ego above the lives of his people, who — like his Hamas counterparts — continually turns down ceasefire deals, even as his government and country begs him to take them.
I am angry that he has managed to spin lies that his decisions are about our security, even though his own experts disagree with him. I am angry at a world where we value the destruction of the other over saving our own lives. I am angry because Hersh’s death feels senseless and avoidable. And to preempt angry letters to the editor, yes, I am angry at Hamas, too, of course I am. But they do not purport to represent me. They do not pretend to have my best interests at heart, like Netanyahu does.
The loss of Hersh has been felt all across the world. I have seen monuments and rallies for the six murdered hostages all over my social media feeds.
We all had a collective vision: that Hersh would be reunited with his family, that we would see him in his mother’s arms once again.
But as that vision dissipates, a new one rises, as the deaths of Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Alexander, Almog and Ori spark mass protests and general strikes all across Israel: Please God, this war will end. Please God, no more innocent people will have to die.
Please God, Hersh’s dreams of peace will be achieved.
Shoshana Gottlieb is a member of the Sydney Jewish community.
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