60 Minutes - Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s extended interview 

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Anderson Cooper spoke with Rachel Goldberg-Polin, an American Israeli mother whose son, Hersh, was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 and then executed. Editor's note: This podcast is an extended version of the interview that was broadcast on 60 Minutes on Sunday, April 19, 2026. This extended version was condensed for clarity. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

60 minutes overtime. Rachel Goldberg, Poland is an American Israeli living in Jerusalem, whose life was forever changed in October 7, 2023, when her only son Hirsch was taken hostage by Hamas. Rachel and her husband John worked tirelessly to bring Hirsch and the other hostages home, crossing the globe, meeting with world leaders. They did everything they could to get their son back. After 328 days in captivity, however, Hirsch was executed by Hamas in a tunnel in Gaza. I spoke with Rachel in February about Hirsch, the pain of losing her son and what she's learned from her grief. This is an extended version of that 60 Minutes conversation.

What was Hirsch like? Easy. Easy. The universe really knew what it was doing when it said, Rachel's going to have one son. So this is the one for her. I was really blessed. When we met Rachel in Jerusalem, she'd recently finish writing a book called When We See You Again, which comes out this week.

You write in the book that Hirsch was on the brink of budding, becoming, and blooming. He was on the cusp of adulthood. Yeah. I had found a note that he had written to us right before the Yom Kippur holiday came in in 2023. He wrote to John and M. That's the day of atonement. That's the one day a year when Jewish people kind of try to do real introspection and self-reflection and think about maybe I have not exactly hit the mark where I wanted to.

And he wrote us this really beautiful short message and he was saying, I'm about to become my own adult. And thank you for, you know, being with me on this ride, basically. He had a real drive, even as a young age of a young age of. of wanting to be independent. Yeah. You were all together the night before the attack? Yeah, thankfully.

October 6th. Yes. It was a Friday night and we walked to synagogue together, John Hirsch and my two daughters. Shabbat is the weekly day of rest in the Jewish faith. Right. And you all gathered together. You actually gave him a traditional blessing that night.

Yes. Every Friday night in many Jewish households, Parents bless their children. And since Hirsch had been born, every Friday night of his life, even when he wasn't home. If he was away for whatever reason, we would call and say, put the phone on your head, and we still do this to our girls. Put the phone on your head, and we would give him the blessing before Shabbat would start.

And in person, you put your hands on his head. Yes, put both hands on his head. So we both were able to bless him Friday night, and then we had this beautiful meal with good friends. and Hirsch was regaling everyone about these fun adventures. He had just come back from, he had been in Europe on his mini prep trip for nine weeks. He was going to be taking a year-long adventure around the world starting December 27. Right. In the summer of 2023, he thought, let me go and see what it's like for, you know, a chunk as a practice run.

And he had just come back. And so he was telling us all these fabulous stories. And then right around 11 o'clock, he leaned forward. He came up behind me and he kissed me right here. And he kissed John. And he hugged our hostess. And I thought, what a good boy. And he turned around in the doorway and he said,

I love you, I'll see you tomorrow. And that was 900-something days ago. And I never saw him again. That was the end of the before. It was, and I didn't know. And then we were on this odyssey for 330 days straight, 18 to 20 hours a day of trying desperately to save him and the other hostages.

And what's so complex for me about that time is that it was so torturous. and very difficult to describe what it feels like, to know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused is maimed. And that's an excruciating form of suffering. And then what's so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hirsch

had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part because he was alive. And now I'm in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here? Have you figured that out yet? I'm trying to re-understand what it means to be in this world. There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There's nothing unique about me, but it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.

Hirsch and his best friend, Aner Shapira, were at the Nova Music Festival near the Gaza border. On the morning of October 7th, when Hamas terrorists attacked, they slaughtered 378 people and wounded hundreds more. What do you remember about the morning, October 7th? The siren started, and I went and turned on my phone, and at 8.11, two messages had come in from Hirsch. The first one said, I love you, and the second one said, I'm sorry. And that was it. Everything that had ever happened in my life from the day I was born until that second was over.

Hirschsched from inside this bomb shelter crammed with more than two dozen people. that's Hirsch against the wall and Aner near the entrance. 29 of them were hiding in this five-foot-by-eight-foot shelter that Hamas came to the doorway and was throwing in hand grenades. Anner was picking them up and throwing them out. Picking them up and throwing them out. Heroically, and he said to them, if something happens to me, you keep doing this.

Keep your eyes open. Honor kind of took control in the bomb shelter and announced himself, said this is what I'm going to do. if I die, you do this as well. Yes. Hamas came to the doorway when it was just spraying the room with machine gun fire and had thrown in additional hand grenades. What we heard is there was screaming, there was blood, there was dying. There were some survivors who were luckily able to hide underneath the dead bodies and pretend to be dead because they were covered with gore and blood and horrific things.

Was Hershey's hand blown off by a grenade? Yes. He picked up a grenade, and we know from survivors that the grenade went off in his hand and blew off his hand. There were four young men who were not able to hide under bodies. They were all wounded, and they were taken outside and put on a pickup truck and driven into Gaza.

And that footage we saw for the first time when we talked with you. We spoke on October 16th, Van Sina and you and John. Our son, by all accounts, of the witnesses, had his left arm blown off. When John said that, I realized I'd seen their son being kidnapped. Four days earlier at the Nova Festival site, Israeli soldiers showed me this gruesome video recovered from a terrorist cell phone. That's Hirsch, with the bone sticking out of his left forearm,

being forced into a pickup truck. As soon as we got off, I said, I need to call you. But I still, to this day, I am sorry that that is how you found out that I was the one to tell you that there's this video. But we were so thankful. And it made us know that he was taken alive, that he walked on his own two feet. And we also were really grateful that you did it in such a human way. In this sideways world, when we were. When we had the proof that he was kidnapped, that was actually good.

There was a thought which ran through your mind, you write, that you would repeat over and over and over throughout the days, a kind of a message to Hirsch. I was always saying, I love you, stay strong, survive, I love you, stay strong, survive, I love you, stay strong, survive. Was it a command to you as well? Yes, because there were times when I would just get seized with emotional and psychological and physical pain and I would keel over onto John and I would

just say how much longer how much longer how much longer you would say a prayer every morning for a long time when you woke up and you had a kind of a mantra that you would say what was it well the prayer that I have said for many many years and I still say, I'm grateful to you, creator of the universe, for returning my soul to me, you have tremendous faith in me, which I've always loved because I like the idea that God has faith in us instead of us having faith in God.

So I would say that when I woke up, and then I would say, when Hirsch was still alive, then I would say, hope is mandatory. Hope is mandatory. Hope is mandatory for you in order to be able to get through the day. and do what you had to do? Because otherwise, I would probably lie on the floor in a ball. You know, it was so traumatic.

It was the most confusing, violent torture that I understand why so many of the families who had loved ones kidnapped couldn't get out of bed, couldn't leave their room, couldn't leave their house. There were plenty in the street. There were plenty doing advocacy, but there were plenty who couldn't function because everyone responds to pain differently.

And this kind of cosmic mental, psychological, spiritual pain was so enormous. And so I just said, hope is mandatory. And then I would fling the blanket back and propel my mind. myself into the day. You likened it to being hit with a semi-truck, an 18-wheeler, but one that not only crushes you and flattens you and breaks all your bones, but also then parks on top of you.

Right, right. So you're rendered paralyzed. There's no movement. And that's how you felt all that. Yes. The idea that someone would steal my child, blow off his arm, and keep him in a... deep dark tunnels, starving him and torturing him. There's no way to try to digest that because you shouldn't digest that.

And that was so much of our advocacy was this is not acceptable. I never want to accept that this is happening. How did you know how to navigate this? How did you know where to go, who to speak to, how to speak at the UN? None of us knew anything. We were all running like crazed maniacs. All of us. Every single parent, spouse, child, grandchild, grandparent, best friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend, everyone was just we were running like mad in whatever way felt that we should be doing in that moment. I mean, we were just trying to speak to anyone at. at all who had power or influence who could help us. And it was obvious that there were people who could do stuff and for whatever reason they were not doing it.

I mean, you had not been in many of these rooms before. You had not been meeting with the president of here and there and the ambassador to here and there and this secretary of whatever. Do you feel they let you down? I do, but I also think that we, regular people, let ourselves down. I think I let Hirsch down. You feel you did? I didn't get him home outside of that bag.

And I think that John and I talk a lot about how we kept on trying to stress the urgency. This is urgent, and we could not convince the right people that it was urgent. Every day she wore a piece of tape. On it, she'd written the number of days since Hirsch and the other 250 hostages were taken. You decided to start putting the numbers on you. Why? Well, we were doing a lot of media. We were doing between, I think it was like 15 to 20 interviews a day because we happened to have spoken English.

So we were able to do a lot of international media. and the interviews or conversations would always start with them saying, how long has it been since you've seen your son or since you've spoken to your son? It started to feel actually aggressive. They weren't being aggressive, but I was so raw and tender and in so much pain that I found it insulting that they were asking me that. So I thought, this is going to become my identity. I'm going to change my name every day.

And I also felt that for me, it was holding people accountable. And it made an impression because I remember going to see many different people all over the world. And they would say, oh, wow, it's day 113. I saw you last on day 66. There were times along the way where you would get proof of life. You would get a word that it had been confirmed that Hirsch had been alive at a certain point. Right. When did you actually see him in a video?

So Passover in April of 2024, we had, that was excruciating going to a Passover, Seder. Passover is the holiday that celebrates the freedom from slavery, the freedom from being, you know, held in Egypt. And it was impossible. How are we going to have this celebration of freedom when all of them? all of these people are still being held. And I got a call from someone at the CIA saying, someone is gonna be sending you a video now. And we thought, what are they even talking about?

And then someone who we had been in touch with from a country that was sort of involved with all of these negotiations sent us this video. And it was Hirsch. And I fell back on the couch. I hadn't seen him in six months. His head was shaved. He looked terrible.

And he was speaking in English directly to John Leby, Orley, and me. And he was clearly suffering. And we didn't share that video with anyone. That's never been seen. And then 36 hours later, we were notified by the Israeli intelligence units. that there was going to be a video released by Hamas. It was a different video where Hirsch is screaming and moving his arm. On the 2001st day, Hamas posted this video of Hirsch.

And we see the stump of his arm. It was a propaganda video. Yes. And that gave us another bolt of adrenaline. Keep going. Keep going. This child needs you. 11 months after Hirsch was taking, you and other families went to the border with Gaza to scream messages to your loved ones. Do you remember that day?

So that was day 328. They had erected this platform and this very loud sound system right on the border with Gaza. And they were inviting families of hostages being held to shout to our loved ones. So we drove down there and they handed me the microphone and I screamed Hirsh's name. It's Mama. It's day 328. We are all here.

All the families of the remaining 107 hostages. Hirsch, we are working day and and night and we will never stop. You know I think I gave him the blessing. I think I gave him a blessing that day. May God bless you and keep you. May God shine his face upon you. We ended up finding out he killed him that day and so I wonder did he hear me? Do you think he did? I think there are other ways that you can hear your parents screaming for you. You

even if you don't hear them. When did you find out that he was dead? Saturday morning of day 3.30, I woke up, and I thought, oh my gosh, I just had this horrible dream. And I debated if I should tell John about the dream, because it was bad. And I told him, I just dreamt I was in a cemetery, and there were these planks,

like a deck on the ground, and through two of the planks was a little tiny olive tree growing, and there was a plaque on it, like a death plaque. And I walked over and the plaque had Hershey's name on it, in Hebrew and in English. There were rumors online that six bodies had been found in a tunnel in Rafa, and that Hirsch was one of them. John handed me my book of Psalms,

which I keep next to my bed, And he said, now it's time to pray. And we started to just say psalms repetitively, repetitively, repetitively. We stayed up saying psalms from 9.15 in the evening until four o'clock in the morning when John's phone rang. And I could hear, sitting next to him,

the woman who had been assigned to our family on October 7th from military. intelligence, Israel intelligence, she said we're downstairs. And I knew no one comes at 4 in the morning to your house to tell you great news. In the book you refer to them as messengers of death. Yeah, and the messengers of death came in and it was so confusing because when you've been running on adrenaline for so long I was completely broken, meaning I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I was broken. I had been running and fighting for so long that I didn't understand how to compute this horrific end. What do you

recall about the funeral? I have flashes. I remember driving there and being very confused. I I remember. There were thousands of people in the streets. Yeah, there were thousands of people. And I said to the girls, what's happening? You didn't know that they were there for you. Right. And Lebe said, read the signs.

And every sign had his name or a picture of him or just one word, sorry. Signs just saying sorry, sorry for six miles from our house until the cemetery. Do you remember what you said? I don't remember everything I said. I do remember saying, finally, finally, finally, you're free. And when I said that, everyone, there was like this role of pain. And I could feel it. Hirsch was wrapped in a prayer shawl,

and I could see the contour of his face through the shawl. And I remember putting it. my face up and screaming, I'm sorry. And now I'm living in the world of the after where Hirsch is gone, and every day I wake up and he's still gone. And I had so many parents say to me during Shiva, during the week where we sit in a morning tent

and people come to pay their condolences. I had so many parents, parents coming saying, you're never going to be okay. And I thought, what the heck? Like, kick a girl when she's down. I mean, you know, I didn't understand, and now I understand that they were trying to warn me. But that is the truth. That is the truth. They were right. They were right. Do you think it ever will be? I don't know. Well, that's, I want to be fair and open to the possibility that, you know, know, it's been a little less than a year and a half since her she was killed. Maybe there will be progress.

My goal for a long time is, okay, I'm carrying this tremendous ball of weight, of struggle. What if I get stronger? Like, the ball of weight is always going to be that. It's not changing. But can I get stronger? And so I am trying to figure out what does this look like. A huge pivot for us was on day 496 when we met Orr Levy. In February 2025, a hostage named Orr Levy was released by Hamas along with two others.

Orr had spent three days with Hirsch in a tunnel. What did Orr give you? Well, first, Orr's name in Hebrew, the name or means light. And we actually have this belief that your name, what name you're given, is very much helping describe what your purpose in life is.

And I think he was so properly named because we were in horrible darkness. You had had no actual information about Hirsch's time in captivity. Who he was with, what happened, and we went on day 496 to meet or. And he shine this bright light of ore into our lives. And I was speaking to a group of students last week

and they said, when did your life change forever? I said, I actually think my life changed forever on October 7th, on August 31st, and on day 4.96 when we met Oar. Or had been in the bomb shelter. Orr was in the truck. Yes. And we went and we met with Oar and he's just a really special person. First of all, the fact that he got released and said to his brother, let them know I want to meet them, he had just been released. He had just been told his wife had been killed.

His wife was killed in the bomb shelter. In the bomb shelter. He hadn't seen his son in 491 days. His son was two years old. His parents, his brothers. Who are we? We're no one to him. And yet he said, these people need to hear about their child.

I mean, every time retelling is very emotionally challenging and psychologically challenging and mentally challenging. And so that told me everything about him already that I knew that, like, this is a, a problem. of great generosity of kindness, spirit, and heart, or was in the tunnels, and Hirsch and Ori Dinino are brought into the tunnel that he's in. And they spent two and a half days together, but when you're doing nothing and you're basically in a teeny tiny closet, that's a very long time. And he and Hirsch started to talk and Hirsch suddenly said, you're the guy from

the bomb shelter. You have a son. Because at some point, Orr had said to the terrorists, please, I have a son at home, don't kill me, please. And suddenly, Orr realized, oh my gosh, you're alive? Because he saw that this boy he was speaking to in the tunnel had an arm missing. What did Orr tell you about Hirsch getting medical attention? So Hirsch was bleeding to death. And for the first three days, he was not treated. And on day three was now unconscious.

and O'Reidonino was screaming at the captors, you need to get him treated. He's going to die. He's worth much more to you alive than dead. He's American. Treat him, treat him. And they did come in with a burqa, and they dressed Hirsch as a woman,

and they took him to the hospital, and they had the jagged bone amputated. They took him to Al-Shifa Hospital. Yes. We found out all of the... this information that had been a black hole and that was when he also said that Hirsch was saying to everyone this quote from Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, that when you have a why, you can bear anyhow.

Victor Frankl's book is said in a concentration camp and it's all about his own experiences and about how people survive. Right. And so Orr told us he was saying it constantly and it was Hershey's mantra and he was saying it to the other men who were in the tunnel. What was Hirsch's why? I asked Or that and he said, he went like this. You.

It was this shocking, life-affirming CPR from beyond to have Hirsch through or telling us, what's your why going to be? Because you can bear this, even this, even losing me, you could do it. And so part of what I'm trying so hard to do now is to figure out what is my why. How do you figure out a why? Talking about pain that I think is part of the human enterprise and that for whatever reason we generally feel very uncomfortable doing can be part of the why. And I already know that because I've had thousands of people have reached out who want

to have a voice and description for the suffering that they're experiencing. Describing it for me is part of what gets me through. After you buried hers, you could have stopped advocating, but you and John decided to keep advocating for the others who were still being held. I think a lot of it was when you've gone through something, so brutally painful, you don't want anyone else to go through it. And we still had 101 hostages at that time that we wanted to get home. And we also knew that that was something that we could do for Hirsch,

is try to save these other people. How did Hirsch die? What we know is that They were all executed at close range in a tunnel under Rafa. We know that the army was close by the Israeli army, and I think that the captors got scared. I don't know. And Hirsch had six bullet wounds.

A bullet went through his right hand. his left shoulder, neck, out the right side of his head. It was also shut at the base of his head upward, and the bullet wound came, the bullet exited the top of his head. His hair was filled with gunpowder. He had fallen forward and on his left side was Oridenino, who we had heard from ore that they were. were inseparable and that Ori Denino always sat on Hersh's left to make up for Hirsch not having

a left hand and he was found next to him that way. The other thing that Orr gave you was a prize of great value which was that Hirsch knew what you had been doing. Yeah. He said, it's important that you know that he told me that my mother spoke to the Secretary of State in the U.S. Hershey told him that. Yeah, and I said, he heard on the news I had spoken to the Secretary of State,

and he said, no, he heard you on the news. And it was like all the sudden, thank God. First of all, that he heard my voice and that he knew. We are nobody's. We are absolute nobody's. I even say the equivalent of John Doe in the Jewish world is Rachel Goldberg. But we tried so. And he knew.

And that was really comforting. You wrote in the book, people want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They went thriving and rising from the ashes like the phoenix from the days of yore. The pain is chronic, ever-present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear. That's how it feels. That's how it feels. Now I'm open to it feeling different.

Have you noticed a change? I think my understanding of grief has changed. I was dreading and uncomfortable with grief. And recently I had this whole different thought of maybe grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing. to grow. And not everybody gets that. And also what really shocked me is the knowledge that you can love someone who you've never even met. Therefore, the grief can come for someone you've never met and that the love keeps growing. That's what's been so eye-opening and it's such an epiphany to me because... The love for Hersh keeps growing. Yes. It's like bamboo.

And it just keeps growing and thriving and changing. It's interesting that the idea that you can still have a relationship with somebody who has died was kind of revolutionary to me. And I didn't believe it. But I realize now I know my dad better than I knew him before because I'm a dad and I see what he saw through his eyes when he looked at me when I look at my children. and I've read letters that he wrote about things that were happening behind the scenes in my childhood that I didn't know about. You've learned things about Hirsch that you didn't know previously, and you've read things about him in journals, and so your relationship with Hirsch continues.

Did you know that that was possible? I did not know, but I'll tell you something really beautiful that we just heard. A friend of Hershey's, who's gay, who's Hershey's age now, 25, was telling his parents recently. He never told anyone that he was gay growing up. His father said, you never told anyone like that whole time. He said, I told Hirsch when we were, I think he said, 14.

And his dad said, why did you tell Hirsch? And he said, because I knew he wouldn't care. I knew he wouldn't care, and I knew he wouldn't tell anyone. Now I never knew that story, and it's nothing, but it's everything, because it's a new way of meeting Hirsch. You talk in the book about, at the funeral, looking into the grave that Hirsch is put in and you feel like part of you is in there. For sure.

For sure. And you still feel that? For sure. It doesn't come out. Are you fully here? No. No. No.

Right now? No. Mm-mm. Definitely not. Where are you? In the world to come with Hirsch. Part of you is already in the world to come. Yeah, I think so.

I only know how to speak about what it feels like to bury a child. And it was very clear to me that I was bearing part of myself. And yet, you know, I'm the one who for so long was saying you can hold two truths. Well, you can hold many more than two truths. We are, humans are jugglers, and we can juggle. And so while I'm having this very real experience of outrageously painful confusion and loss, I'm also filled with pride and feel blessed. I have two gorgeous, vivacious, dynamic girls, daughters.

I have this unbelievable partner. I mean, I don't know how I could walk through this without John. I have people who love me. I have people who care about me. And so I can hold that also. This book is about four things. Love and pain and pain and love. And that's life.

I really think when you boil it down, life is about love and pain. And around it goes. Yeah. And it's part of what we sign up for when we arrive, which is not there because we really don't have a lot of say when we arrive in this world. One of the things you write, you say, I need Hirsch in my life like I need water, even if he's dead. So I'm obliged to find him here in new and transcendent ways. Have you found him in new and transcendent ways? I think I have, and I'm always in the process.

of really trying hard. If you go out in the desert and you have no water, it's a problem. And I now have to live in this desert for the rest of my life without water. So if I don't want it to be a problem, I have to come up with really crafty, innovative ways of making it through.

And there's a lot of talking during the day that goes on. Talking to Hirsch. Yeah, and then talking back as Hirsch. You have conversations, you asking to Hirsch and you talking to yourself as Hirsch. Yeah. How does that work? They'll probably come with like a straight jacket shortly to take me away. But I find it very helpful if I'm having like a panic moment because I'm feeling just this overwhelming, are you here?

So I'll say, Hirsch, and then I say, mama. And I'll say, are you here? And I say, I'm always here, mama. Also, something that he used to love to do, which was very funny, is he would do something, and he would just walk by me and go, favorite child. And I, every so often, if I'm having, like, a rough day or something, I'll go, favorite child. And because he just thought, he just knew that that would, you know, get a chuckle. You know, I felt very close to him last week because I read the book out loud.

And I thought it would be horrific. And it was. But I also felt really close to him. I felt like he was right here. I kept going like that. Like I felt like he was right there. And that's a good feeling. Oh, always her.

She's a good feeling. I say sometimes before I go to sleep at night, right before I turn out my light, I always say, come to me in my dreams, come haunt me. You know, I would love that. I'm not at all afraid of Hirsch. Has he come to you? No. Not yet.

Not yet. Tonight's another night. I know, it could happen at any time. You wrote, I hope I can teach myself how to miss someone forever and love someone forever in a way that doesn't run me over each day anew. have you gotten any closer to that? I hope so. It takes time.

It's not easy. I remember when John's dad died, he kept saying to me for a few months afterwards. And he said, it's so interesting because it's really final death. So that's, you know, I haven't had really, really final before. And also it's confusing having someone stuck in the same age, being forever 23. 23, I used to think, was kind of old because I felt like he was kind of old. And now I have my girls getting closer to 23. And I think, well, but they're really young.

Or I look at his friends, he has all these delightful, wonderful friends. And I'm looking at them and they're 25 or 26 and I think, well, that's weird. And one day, you know, they'll be hopefully old and bald and heavy and have grandchildren and all these things. And Hirsch will still be 23. I'm forever missing who he was the last time I saw him. John has a different experience with the grief in that way because he says that he pictures him at all different times of his life. I actually don't have that.

You picture him at 23? Yeah. When the body of the last hostage was returned this past January, it had been 843 days since the October 7th attack. Rachel and John finally took down the pieces of tape their family had worn and stuck on a wall in their apartment. What was that like? It was really hard.

I mean, on the one hand, we were putting those pieces of tape up, hoping that we were going to get all of these people back. And we worked harder than I've ever worked doing anything in my life in all different ways, talking with all different types of people, going to all sorts of scary places. And finally we had everybody home, but it wasn't how we wanted everybody home. And so many lives, so many innocent lives on both sides, lost. The price was tremendous and it was extremely painful and there was something about peeling the tape off and the paint was coming off in our bedroom.

And I thought that's appropriate. It's like tearing the skin off our house. Here we had this huge ball of more than 3,000 pieces of tape because between our girls and us over 800 days, we had 3,000 pieces of tape. It was interesting for days, probably weeks afterwards, and I still, from time to say, I go like this, and I go, because I think, oh no, I forgot to put my tape on. And then I remember, I don't need that now. You've spoken before about the pain on both sides of that border.

What happens now? It's a good question. I don't know. I want to believe that there's still a desire for people who just want to live. And we have to figure out how to live near each other. We don't have to all be best friends. There don't have to be any unicorns and rainbows, but we either figure out how to live near each other

or we will all die here together. Did you ever feel your faith tested in this? I didn't, and it is very confusing for people to digest this, but the second that they came to tell us that Hirsch was killed is the closest I've ever felt to God in my life. It felt extremely obvious to me. How so? It just was, this is so horrible,

and I know it's not a punishment and I know it's not that I he did anything wrong or I did anything wrong and therefore I know that this is directly from God I just know it it's not even faith or belief because it's more than that it's knowing

and the way I know Hirsch isn't supposed to be here now is because he's not here and for whatever reason this is where I'm supposed to be I am a mother who's trying to figure out how to be here without part of myself here. And that tunnel is where Hirsch was supposed to be? I don't know why, and I ask that in the book, right? Why? Why didn't he just die next to On Air, his best friend?

Or why didn't he die on Dave 502, or 431, or 698? And why with those five? Why with O'Rey and Alex and El Mogue and Edin and Carmel? Why? I don't know why. And it's the knowing that we're not going to always know why. And of course part of our hubris, as we think we're such evolved, knowledgeable human beings, is that we're going to figure it out.

And I think the first step in really being wise is knowing you're probably never going to figure most things out. And the older you get, the less you should know. I've for a long time questioned why on things like my brother's death. And I realized looking back that a lot of like my early travels going to war zones and talking to people was trying to figure out a way to live in a world where there is in a why. And be comfortable that some things don't have answers.

Right. Right. Rachel has kept Hershey's room as he left it. And that's the tape that we took down. Oh, gosh. It's extraordinary to see all the pain and everything that is in that ball. You know, it's like these symbols of failure. What we were fighting for did happen.

We got all of these people home. Not as we wanted. We wanted them home alive, but they had come home. You said it's these are all symbols of failure. Do you think you fail? Yeah. You did more than anybody could possibly do. It's true.

And sometimes 100% is not enough. Do you come in this room still? I do, but not with super regularity. I don't need to come in this room to find Hirsch. You don't have to be in this room to hear her. Correct. No, I feel Hirsch everywhere all the time. Will you always keep it like this?

Well, it's interesting. I don't know what to do with it either way. How does it help to pack it up? Like what to make it into a exercise room, a TV room, a guest room? I mean, how does that help? And on the other hand, there is something very sad in a way of, oh, why is this room still like this? It's such the room of a young person about to embark on their life.

Totally. I mean, there's a sweetness, and he does have friends who ask to come over, and if they can just come in here. I can't believe that we are standing here in this room. I know. I was so sure when I met you that you would meet him, and I'm telling you, I'm not saying it as a mother, because I try very hard not to mythologize or lionize him,

but I'm telling you, you would have loved him. You found something that Hirsch wrote back in 2015 in a journal that he had thrown out. These are journal entries. They're in Hebrew. It's a page and a half of a journal. So that's not a lot. It was written on October 26th of 2015. He had just started ninth grade, freshman. And the thing that I saw as Orly was reading it is her face went completely white. she said it's prophecy and she started to read it to me and what's interesting is there's a word

that continues to be said again and again he wrote life is like the world in order to exist you have to move and work hard every so often you arrive at a tunnel and you enter the unknown and you don't know when you will get out to walk in the dark in the beginning you are upset

and you are not ready and you feel that you have arrived at the edge. But it is not the exit or the end. It is just a change in the situation. It is possible there will be improvement, but for the time being, there is none. But also the one who is in the tunnel knows that there will be an end to it, and that this is not the final tunnel. To every person there is a tunnel that belongs to them.

Some have small tunnels, and some have a tunnel. and some have long tunnels, but what is certain is there is an end. How much time it will take to get to the end of the tunnel depends on the person. If it is with despair, it will take a longer time. Or if you enter it with all of your might, it will pass quicker. My tunnel was when I was the new one, but like everything in life I passed through the tunnel. Who knows how many more tunnels I will encounter, but in contrast to the previous tunnel, I entered, I will enter this one with all of my might and hope to pass through it more easily.

But whatever comes my way, it won't stop me. It will only slow me down. But I am not afraid to slow down or even to make a U-turn. What I am sure is that I am walking to the end of the tunnel. What did you think when you heard that? I mean, it really shook us because in Hebrew, also in English. I mean, I just don't think that people really wax nostalgic about tunnels. Your daughter called it a prophecy. Right. And... He says tunnel like...

I think it's 12 times. Why is tunnel written so many times? And it was interesting for us because it was nine years before he was trapped in these tunnels. And we know he was moved from tunnel to tunnel to tunnel. And then killed in a tunnel. You believe you will see him again. I don't know what it will look like, but I like to think I'll see him again.

He'd be grand. When beloved family patriarch, Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is blood as thicker, the Ferris wheel.

I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Binge the full series. Blood is Thicker, The Ferris Wheel, on the free Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.