Overview of Rachel Goldberg-Polin on Losing a Son in Gaza
In this deeply emotional interview, Rachel Goldberg-Polin speaks with David Remnick about the kidnapping and killing of her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. The conversation centers on grief, public advocacy, faith, and the impossible task of continuing life after profound loss. Goldberg-Polin describes how she and her family became public advocates for the hostages, why she chose to keep speaking publicly, and how she now understands purpose, trauma, and survival in the “after” of catastrophe. The interview also touches on her memoir, When We See You Again, and her belief that even in the midst of war, humanity and moral complexity must be held together.
Key Themes and Topics
Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s abduction and death
- Hersh was taken hostage from the Nova Music Festival on October 7.
- He suffered a devastating injury during the attack, including the loss of part of his arm.
- Rachel recounts the frantic hours after the attack, the early evidence that he had been taken alive, and the long months of uncertainty.
- She later learned he had been executed after nearly 11 months in captivity.
The hostage families’ public campaign
- Rachel explains that her advocacy began as a parent’s reflex: trying to do anything possible to bring her child home.
- She emphasizes that the broader hostage family movement was diverse: different people protested, spoke, negotiated, or raised awareness in different ways.
- Her approach focused on humanizing Hersh and keeping attention on all hostages, not only on politics.
Living with grief and trauma
- Rachel describes grief as ongoing, not a past event.
- She rejects the idea that she “went through” the tragedy; instead, she says she and her family still live in it.
- Her language is vivid and physical, describing grief as a “knife” in her heart.
- She says she is open to whatever feelings come, but has no interest in performative anger.
Holding multiple truths
- One of the interview’s central ideas is her insistence that concern for Israeli hostages and concern for Palestinian civilians are not mutually exclusive.
- She argues that innocence is innocence, and suffering should not be ranked or politicized.
- This outlook shaped her speech at the Democratic National Convention, where she and her husband were initially prepared for hostility but instead were met with support.
Faith, meaning, and “the world to come”
- Goldberg-Polin draws on Jewish concepts of olam hazeh (this world) and olam haba (the world to come).
- She says part of her feels as though it is already in the world to come, because part of her went into the grave with Hersh.
- She reflects on Viktor Frankl’s idea that “when you have a why, you can bear any how,” which Hersh reportedly repeated in captivity.
Notable Moments and Insights
“How can you not see this dagger?”
- When asked how she and her family are doing, Rachel responds with raw frustration at how ordinary the question feels compared with the reality of her loss.
- It captures the disconnect between public politeness and private devastation.
“We are what we do”
- She argues that people are defined by action, not just beliefs or statements.
- This is one of the interview’s clearest moral claims: ethical life requires doing, not merely feeling or saying.
The DNC appearance
- Rachel expected backlash because of the war and the Gaza death toll.
- Instead, the audience responded with chants of “Bring them home.”
- She says she was prepared for hate, but not for humanity.
Hersh as a deeply human, imperfect, beloved son
- The portrait of Hersh is intimate and unsentimental.
- Rachel includes the small, ordinary details that make him feel real: family Shabbat meals, humor, affection, awkward adolescence, and his evolving relationship to religious life.
Main Takeaways
- Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s story is not only about loss, but about the transformation of private grief into public witness.
- She frames her advocacy as an extension of motherhood, not politics.
- The interview emphasizes moral complexity: Israeli suffering and Palestinian suffering can both be true at once.
- Her faith does not offer easy comfort; instead, it provides a vocabulary for living with absence and contradiction.
- Even after Hersh’s death, she continues to seek purpose—both in honoring her son and in trying to help repair the region around her.
About the Book
- Rachel Goldberg-Polin discusses her first book, When We See You Again.
- The book is described as a direct, unflinching account of grief, memory, and the aftermath of October 7.
- It serves both as a personal memorial to Hersh and as testimony to the broader human cost of war.