Issue 75: We Don't Need Heroes

Reflections on Hersh Goldberg-Polin

Usually you meet heroes after they’ve performed an incredible feat. When fame and notoriety has created a real or imaginary aura around them.

I have two memories of Hersh Goldberg-Polin before he became a hero. Before he became one of the 251 hostages inhumanly kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Before he was murdered in a Gaza tunnel.

My first memory of Hersh took place shortly after his family moved to Jerusalem. We share mutual friends with Hersh’s parents, Jon and Rachel, and at some point we shared a Shabbat meal. Hersh couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9, but I remember his big glasses and his shyness around strangers.

Because of these mutual friends, Jon and I regularly played basketball together. I will add that he would also send me low-ball trade offers in our fantasy basketball league. My wife Sarah worked with Rachel, Hersh’s mom, for several years at Ramah Israel. Sarah looked up to Rachel as a mentor. In other words, the Goldberg-Polin’s were a part of our English-speaking community in southern Jerusalem. I fondly remember bumping into Jon one Shabbat morning in Skokie, Illinois; I was attending a close friend’s wedding weekend, he was visiting his father (who passed away several months later). Seeing a familiar face in a difference place was a treat for us both.

It was the same mutual friends’ daughter’s wedding who drew our families once again into the same orbit one humid night in August 2023. It has been a long time since I had seen Hersh and his sisters. Gone were the glasses…and the shyness. Hersh had a huge, beaming smile. He carried himself with the kind of confidence you find in those young people who have their entire lives to look forward to. I remember that confidence. I was the same age when I moved to Israel. And if Hersh wasn’t the first person on the dance floor he was the second. That was my last interaction with Hersh - and I’ll never forget it.

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Hersh became a central part of our family’s wartime experience. My earliest recorded correspondence with Sarah about Hersh’s confirmed kidnapping was October 10 though I’m fairly confident we spoke about him earlier. From a distance, in my tank, I could offer little support for Jon and Rachel. Still, Sarah was able to do her part. On October 13 she stood with our neighborhood to show respect to Hersh’s childhood friend, Aner Shapiro, who together with Hersh repelled Hamas grenades thrown into their shelter until falling from his wounds (Hersh lost part of his arm in the same exchange). Alongside so many of those who know Hersh’s parents, Sarah regularly attended rallies for the hostage families, prepared and delivered vegan & gluten free meals to the Goldberg-Polin residence, and used her social media platform to share their story, their grief, their resolve. Emulating Rachel, Sarah taped on her clothing the number of days that Hersh - and the other hostages - were in captivity. We hung a giant red poster with Hersh’s face on our balcony. His picture was, and still is, taped to our balcony window. Our middle daughter, who never met Hersh, would fondly call him “Hershey” and pray for his return.

Sarah’s commitment was inspiring. I would come home every few weeks from my unit and couldn’t find it in me to attend the hostage rallies. In particular, I couldn’t imagine facing Jon. One time, when I was home, we delivered food to their home. Overwhelmed by the attention - most of which I assume was well-meaning - their door had a sign that asked people not to knock. That suited me, I wasn’t ready.

On February 18, with days remaining to my reserve duty, Sarah finally convinced me to visit the hostage family tent near on Aza Street. Jon was there, along with one of his oldest and closest friends. We sat and spoke. He was remarkably upbeat despite the awful circumstances. He spoke about the strength he drew from being around the crowds of people who regularly attended rallies. The support from their community and friendship circles both near and far. We discussed the high profile meetings they attended in the months since Hersh’s kidnapping, and how despite the respective financial, spiritual, and political bonafides each and every world leader struggled to identify concrete ways to save their son. This didn’t stop them. If anything, it galvanized Jon and Rachel - like so many other families - to continue fighting for the life of their loved one in the hopes they could create the circumstances that would enable his release.

That day never came.

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Hersh was a hero. He was a hero for his actions on October 7, his decision to put himself in harm’s way in order to rescue others. He was a hero for enduring some 330 days of captivity, staving off death under the worst conditions.

But no parent wants their child to be a hero. They just want them to come home.