The New Yorker Radio Hour - Rachel Goldberg-Polin on Losing a Son in Gaza

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

When Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s son, Hersh, was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023, she became a prominent spokesperson for the families of Israeli hostages. Throughout Hersh’s captivity, and then after his murder, Goldberg-Polin, who was born in Chicago and emigrated to Israel in 2008, argued that Israel’s priority should be to bring the hostages home, and that the killing of all innocents, Israeli and Palestinian, must stop. She advocated with Israeli politicians, Pope Francis, and other leaders, and she addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2024. She recently spoke with David Remnick about her new book, “When We See You Again,” and how she has continued her work as a public figure despite unending grief. “People are desperate for us to be angry . . . to feel things that I think that they assume they would feel if they were in the position that we are in. But the truth is, I’m open to feeling anything,” she reflects. “I put Hersh in the ground on September 2, 2024. After that, I’m in a completely different universe.”  Further reading:  “Gaza’s Broken Politics,” by Mohammed R. Mhawish “The End of Israel’s Hostage Ordeal,” by Ruth Margalit “Why Hamas Agreed to Release the Hostages,” by Isaac Chotiner “Hope and Grief in Israel After the Gaza Ceasefire Deal,” by Ruth Margalit   New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Ever since October 7, 2023, we've tried very hard on this show to reflect the politics, the cruelties, and the complexities of the endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And our guests have included a range of prominent Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans. They've been witnesses, politicians, journalists, and scientists, Our guest today, Rachel Goldberg, Poland, was born in Chicago.

She immigrated to Israel with her young family in 2008 and created a fulfilling life of observance, community, and above all, tight-knit family. Prominence was the last thing on her mind. I am the Jewish Jane Doe, she'll tell you. But when her eldest child, her son Hirsch, was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th, Rachel Goldberg-Pollin became the emblematic parent, the most effective spokesman of all the many Israeli relatives whose sons or daughters, parents or grandparents, disappeared into the tunnels of the Gaza Strip.

Hirsch, who was 23, had been at the Nova Music Festival, and in the initial assault, most of his left arm was blown off by a Hamas grenade. Throughout Hersh's long captivity, Rachel argued to anyone who would listen that Israel's priority should, be to bring the hostages home, first and foremost. She talked to politicians throughout Israel. She talked to Pope Francis. She addressed the Democratic National Convention, insisting that the killing of all innocence, Israeli and Palestinian, was a moral outrage and had to stop. But after nearly 11 months in captivity, after Rachel went to the gates of Gaza to shout her son's name in both agony and prayer, Hirsch was executed. Thousands in Jerusalem attended his funeral.

And then Rachel Goldberg-Poland continued advocating on behalf of all the other hostages until the rest were finally freed. She recently published a book called When We See You Again, A book of unrelenting, unapologetic, pain. Pain that is both particular, the pain that will be with one person to the end of her life, and at the same time, representative of the pain felt by so many parents, forced to endure loss in Israel and Palestine. Rachel, welcome me.

And I guess I should start by asking how you and your family are. I say all the time that that's a really innocuous, human, normal, standard, civil question. And I have this very visceral, tactile, inappropriate response, which is, I always think, how do you not see this dagger sticking out of my chest? How could someone possibly ask how we are? How can they miss it?

Right. And yet I realize that people don't see it. And I understand that a lot of what I'm trying to do in general is explain and describe that knife that's sticking out of my heart. So I don't know how to answer because I feel like either I'm, I have to tell the truth, which I don't think people want to hear, or I'm put in a position to lie and say, oh, you know, we're breathing, we're trying. We're bearing up. We're holding up.

You know, we're making our way. We're hopeful. Are you any of those things? I'm breathing, and I'm trying. But I also am very much suffering. And yet you've taken it on yourself. And I want to ask why to write this book, a remarkable book, to be a public figure for a very long time now,

which must seem like an eternity. On the one hand, it began because you thought it might save Hirsch, your son, and it's gone on longer. Tell me about this decision to be public. to write a book, to be on television, to come into a studio like this and talk through the worst possible thing? Well, I think it went through several permutations because the initial advocacy was simply what any parent alive would do for their child. and so from October 7th we had 251 families who were all doing that for their loved ones. There wasn't a plan and there wasn't a strategy.

It was just reflexive. And our goal from that very beginning was to get all of the hostages home. and we were really experiencing a slow motion terror attack on ourselves, on our psyche, on our mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, religiously, and physically. And all of the hostages were suffering that as well in their families. And we personally got the news that Hirsch and the five, young people with whom he was being held had been executed, we received that news on day 3.30 of this arduous journey upon which we find ourselves.

Now, during those 330 days, in order to try to free Hirsch alive and all of these other people, we were trying desperately to humanize him. And so talking about him and showing pictures of him and talking directly to him publicly was trying to get people to care, to care enough to galvanize them to actually take action and do something. And when Hirsch was murdered and our quest to get him home alive was over, we saw. we still had over a hundred hostages who were being held. And after the traditional Jewish mourning period, John and I said, well, we have still over 100 people who are there, and we have work to do, until more than 500 days later when the final hostage came home on day 843,

then there was this scaffolding, the emotional, loving scaffolding that so many millions of people around the world had given to all of us hostage families continued and is still needed, is. You know, when people make the mistake and say, you've, you went through so much, we think, no, no, we're still here. We live here in the after, in a place where we will always be. One of the most extraordinary things, things about the book is that, is that the portrait that you provide

of Hirsch is so vivid and you'll forgive me alive in you and on the page. So I'd like to just maybe begin right there. You and your husband are from

Chicago. You made Alia 18 years ago. So Hirsch was born in Berkeley, California. in the year 2000 in October, October 3rd, 2000. And we lived in Berkeley until he was almost four, and we moved to Richmond, Virginia. And he already had a sister at that point.

Lebey had been born in 2003. And in Richmond, we had another baby girl in 2005. And in the summer of 2008, when Hirsch was going to be going into second. second grade was when we moved to Israel. Why did you do that? So the truth is that it was very classic kind of Zionistic reasons that John, my husband, grew up feeling like, wow, the Jewish people never really had an opportunity to live

as a Jewish independent nation. and that exists now. How are we not getting on this ride? And I realized that we were living a very comfortable, easy, beautiful life in Richmond, Virginia. We had this lovely house and this nice community. And I realized we might accidentally wake up and be 85 years old, eating grapefruit, reading the newspaper, and say, wow, we never even tried. Now, as I hardly need to tell you, because you pay attention to what's happening all over the world,

not just in Israel, the word Zionism, the concept Zionism, is a very freighted word. Right. What does it mean to you, and how do you grapple with the debate about it now? Well, it's interesting because even when I was saying it, I thought, I think if I'm not mistaken, that it's not a word you're allowed to say anymore. And I think that that happens to me all the time. I think about how when I was in university and I was so proud to call myself a feminist, and I still am. And yet I think that's a word you're not supposed to use anymore.

I don't know why. I know the word Zionist, which we growing up just thought that it meant we believe in the idea. that the Jewish people can have a homeland. And I hope people will forgive me for being antiquated and not up with the latest non-culture. But you moved to Jerusalem, and was it what you expected or hoped for, this new life with young children, Hershey's the eldest. What was life like?

It was complicated in the best way. meaning it was filled with meaning. It was... In a way that life in Virginia was not. Well, it was filled with meaning in Richmond for me because I was teaching adult Jewish education and I felt a lot of purpose in what I was doing. And the kids were in very good schools

that were Jewish day schools that were really had their hearts in the right place. I felt that it was also a very meaningful experience. You paint a picture of Hirsch that does not romanticize, you know, down to the smell of his armpits, which is repeated more than once, and of a very deeply sweet, intelligent being who's becoming himself, that he's doing

with a lot of kids all over the world who were able to do it, particularly in Israel, where they go on these kind of von der Yars, and he did a warm-up trip for, I think, nine weeks or so in Europe. And that's the period where the book takes place.

A scene that I'll never forget is October 6th. It's Shabbat. It's Friday evening. Tell me about that. The family is all together. So we're one of those families that goes to synagogue, both Friday night and Saturday morning,

a couple of years before October 7th, Hirsch had come to John and me and said, listen, I'm not going to be keeping Shabbat the way that our family keeps Shabbat. We are Sabbath observant Jews, which means that from sundown on Friday night until an hour after sundown Saturday night, we abstain from certain things such as using elective, watching TV, using a phone, driving in a car, all these things that are very much part of our week,

we don't do that for those 25 hours. This happens a lot with us with our children, right? Something that's very meaningful and valuable to us. We are trying desperately to get our children to appreciate it the way we do, and it just doesn't happen. Or someone says, for now. And that was what Hirsch was saying, to us, for now I'm not going to be doing this. Like the Amish on their room spring go. Whatever it is. You know, this is not a unique to us experience. And then he said in the next breath, but I will always be respectful.

And so what it did look like is he continued to come with us to synagogue, both Friday nights and Saturday morning. He continued to have Shabbat dinner with us. And I asked him, actually, in the summer of 2003, why are you still coming to synagogue? with us, because, you know, it's not easy, especially Shabbat morning. And I asked him, and he said, I don't want Dada to sit alone. Because in our synagogue, because it's an Orthodox synagogue, the men and women actually sit separately.

So if Hirsch didn't go, John would be by himself. Hirsch had said he was coming with us to synagogue. He was coming with us to Shabbat dinner after synagogue. We were walking to friends next to our synagogue to eat dinner. He said, but I'm bringing my camping backpack because Anair, his best friend and I are going to go do something fun afterwards. And I said, great, because I was happy that he was coming with us. Exactly. I was happy he was coming with us. We went to Shabbat dinner after synagogue, and at 11 o'clock, from behind, he came, and he kissed me right here, and he kissed John.

and he turned around in the doorway and very casually he glanced at me and said love you see you tomorrow and that was a thousand days ago the following morning john had already said goodbye and left for shul left for synagogue i was still having a cup of tea when suddenly sirens started to wail in jerusalem i mean what's tragic now is it doesn't i'm completely non-pulsed and it makes that absolutely, it doesn't elicit any sort of anxiety whatsoever. But then it was so unusual. And I went running to my girls' rooms to wake them, and I said, we have to get in our safe room.

And the protocol is you wait 10 minutes. If you don't hear anything suspicious, you can come out. Now, the problem is, it was Shabbat morning. I didn't have my phone with me. It was in the kitchen, in a drawer off. So it was a problem because I'm standing in our sealed room. and I don't know why. So after 10 minutes, I went out and I said to the girls,

this is a life or death situation. Somewhere, the bombs are falling, and I know that Hirsh and Nair are sleeping outside somewhere. And I turned on my phone at 823. And 12 minutes before that, two simultaneous back-to-back messages had come into the group that John Hirsch and I have together. And the first message said,

love you, and the second message immediately at, both were at 8-11, said, I'm sorry. And my throat fell out of my body onto the floor. And I tried to call him, and it rang and rang. I wrote, are you okay? Tell me you're okay. I'm leaving my phone on. Let me know you're okay. And those messages, obviously have never been read. And I handed my phone to my daughter, who at the time was 20. And I said, find him. And she started to look through social media

that she had to try to figure out where is Hirsch. And she right away said, oh my gosh, I bet you they're here. And she shows me a picture of people at the Nova Music Festival screaming and running. The Nova Music Festival took place quite close to Gaza and the Kibbutzim that are around it.

And there were many thousands of people. Correct. And the attack came at about 6.30 in the morning. Right. And you got more information eventually about what had happened horrifically through Anderson Cooper of CNN. Yes.

Anderson had gone down to the Nova site to do a documentary for CNN. and the IDF soldiers had found a camera, and he watched the footage of some young men and boys being dragged from a bomb shelter onto a pickup truck. And you hear Anderson say, Jesus Christ, he has no hand. And that's Hirsch, who gets onto the truck. And Anderson suddenly realizes, as he's speaking, to us live, holy cow, I have footage of their son being kidnapped. And he didn't want to

frighten us and he didn't want to use this. Did you watch that footage? I did once, we could see that Hershey's left dominant forearm had been blown off. He had managed to make sort of a makeshift tourniquet, but you could very vividly see this jagged bone, sticking out from below the tourniquet, and he stays sitting. The other hostages who were taken were sort of, they were wounded so badly. They were lying down.

You should say what they had survived. Prior to that, they had been trapped in a bomb shelter, and grenades were being tossed in one after the other, and his friend was tossing them back out until not. The room was actually smaller than this room. in this little studio that you and I are sitting in. The room was five feet by eight feet

and there were 28 young, crunchy granola music lovers shoved in there. And yes, Hamas was tossing in hand grenades which Aeneer Shapira was so heroically

throwing out and I don't use that word in a small way. Anair Shapira was absolutely a hero and anyone who is alive today from that bombshell is alive for one reason and one word, and that is on air. And then Anair was killed, and Hamas came to the doorway and was just sprang in machine gun fire.

And so 18 of those young people were killed instantly. And there were a few very lucky ones, I call them lucky, because they were trapped under the dead bodies. And so they could pretend to be dead because there were so much innards in blood and gold. all over them, that they appeared dead. Have you ever met any of those kids who survived? Yes. Yes. And they, right away, there were three of them who we spoke to in the coming days,

who were the eyewitnesses telling us that these young men, these four young men, could not hide. Hirsch was one of them. They were all injured, and they were taken out of the bomb shelter, and they were put on this pickup truck, and they saw the pickup truck driving away in the direction of Gaza. And so we knew Hirsch was taken alive,

so we immediately were told it will help him if you start talking about the fact that you know he's alive. And yet, while I know you are not primarily or even secondarily a political person, there were among the parents, of the hostages, people who were furious with the government,

who would shout at cars taking government people to and from various sites around the country. I don't need to get into the details. You know it better than I do. You decided not to be among those, and you carried yourself in a very different way. Why is that? I think everyone was doing exactly what felt natural. and what felt would be helpful for them and for their loved one. And what I really appreciated during that time is that you had 251 families

that were in the most excretiating, agonizing pain. Everyone was doing different things. And I never felt any judgment, and I never felt any judgment toward anyone else. I think maybe I was so traumatized. that I felt like speaking would be a better path than screaming. Was anybody particularly embracing? Most people were embracing. In a genuine way.

Well, that is the bigger question. Most people were very embracing, but, you know, in this world, we are not what we say, and we're not what we think, and we're not even what we believe. Tell me what you mean. We are what we do.

So people can say whatever they want and think whatever they want and believe whatever they want, but if they don't do anything, that is what defines people. I have to say, Rachel, behind what you're saying seems to be a fair measure of anger

that you don't want to betray. It's just the reality. It's not even that. It's funny because people are desperate for us to be angry, fury to feel things that I think that they assume they would feel if they were in the position that we were in and that we are in. But the truth is, I'm open to feeling anything. Like, the chips have flown out the window, right? That ship has sailed. I put Hirsch in the ground

on September 2nd, 2004. So all of this after that I'm in is a completely different universe, and I am completely open to whatever feelings come my way. I'm speaking today with Rachel Goldberg-Pollin. Her book is called When We See You Again and will continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. And I've been speaking today with Rachel Goldberg-Poland. In a book called When We See You Again, she recounts the pain of losing her son, Hirsch Goldberg-Poland, who was abducted by Hamas from Israel on October 7th and later executed. It's her first book, and it's extraordinary and deeply moving. I'll continue my conversation now with Rachel Goldberg, Poland. I will never forget, among other things, sitting at home, watching the Democratic Party nominating convention, which nominated Kamala Harris to run for president after the drama of Joe Biden's stepping away, stepping down. And you got up to speak with John. And it was, first of all, I wonder if you anticipated one kind of reaction or another. Definitely. We actually had been told we were.

we were kind of embargoed. We were hiding for the couple of days before. Why? Because we had been told that there were threats and that people hated us and that we were a symbol of something that people were filled with fury over and that we were not going to be...

Because of the accumulating death toll in Gaza. Right. And that we were not going to be received well and which was... How do you? As somebody who is very familiar with Americanness, how did you feel about that? Well, I believed it, and yet I was confused because we were so much saying from day one, you know, this adversarial paradigm of choosing a team and that's it.

It's all or nothing is so demeaning to us as human beings. we were bestowed with all of this insight and intellect and wisdom and that we are capable of holding multiple truths. And so we were saying from the get-go, we are extremely concerned and worried for the innocent civilians in Gaza and, not but, and we are extremely worried and concerned for the innocent civilians in Gaza who were dragged there on October 7th. And I know we're, one very well, he has my DNA. I will tell you, Rachel, I mean, even as it's a minuscule thing compared to you, but even as somebody who wrote as much to try to do, to hold more than one thought

and one's headed at the same time, it doesn't invite admiration all the time. Right. And so that was, so we just kept thinking, we're all much bigger than this. We can do, like, come on. I mean, I just thought to listen to this. someone who is telling me, my son is being tortured and dying in these tunnels, and at the same time, I feel for innocence of all kinds who are dying by the dozens every single day, was an extraordinary gesture that I don't know that everybody picked up on.

What did you sense in the room? Well, so that was what was interesting. So to us, it just seemed so obvious. innocent is innocent, you know, and there's no competition of whose tears are the saltiest. You know, we're all suffering. When we have these conflicts and we don't use any sort of profound creativity, all we do is cause more suffering to everybody. And it seems so obvious to us, but we were stalled walking out onto that stage with 25,000 people in the arena that even at the DNC. They were so sure that the response was going to be so viscerally horrible that they didn't want us out until the last possible minute. And then Cory Booker introduced us. And we walked

out and we were holding hands. And I remember, you know, like my nails were, you know, shoving themselves into John's palm. And I started to hear something. And it sounded like galloping. And I realized, No, no, they're saying something. What are they saying? What are they saying? Oh, my gosh, are we in trouble? And they were saying, bring them home. Bring them home. There was 24,000 people screaming, bring them home.

And I remember, I don't know how this happened, but I looked and maybe 30 rows back. I saw a woman in a kaffia, and she was saying, bring them home, bring them. home, and she had tears coming down her face. And all of a sudden, I was overcome, and there's clips from it, I put my head down on the podium, and I started to cry, because I was so prepared for the hate, but I was not prepared for humanity. There was humanity standing with us, and we started to speak, and they cheered and they clapped. And I mean, a lot of our, what we were, what, we were, we said. We spoke for just, I think we spoke 10 minutes, but we were still advocating for everyone. There were still Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists being held.

There was, if I remember right, there was objection that the party, there had been a movement to have Palestinian spokesman on the stage, not with you, but elsewhere, and that was blocked, and that was also part of the drama, if I recall correctly. I don't even know because part of what saved me in these last couple of years, and I always feel bad saying this to anyone who's a journalist or in the media, is that I didn't read the news and I didn't watch anything because it helped me. Is that the case now? Yes. This book is a lot about the before times and the after times. And there's a concerted effort that you describe in the book of trying to live in the before times as much as is even possible.

In remembering life in the before times, you refer to a book called All But My Life by Gerard of Weissman Klein about her time as a teenager during the Shoah during the Holocaust. and she, like you, misses the boredom of ordinary life. You also describe what Passover, what Passover was like, the Seder, was like in the aftermath of all this. How much of ordinary life is possible in the aftermath of things? I have a dear friend who explained to me because I kept saying, I feel like I'm living in another planet. I feel like I'm living in another galaxy.

I feel like I'm living in another universe. And he said, you need to stop saying that. The issue is that part of you is in the world to come. Because in traditional Judaism, we believe, you know, there's this world, Olam haze. And there's the world to come, Olam Habah. And that the point of this world is to do the good and do the kindness and do the corrections that we need to do in order to get to the world to come.

and when you bury someone who is so core and intrinsic and part of your identity in this world, so part of you is no longer here. And I think when we... Part of you is in that grave and part of you is in the world. Absolutely. Absolutely. When we were lowering his body into that grave, and I said to my girls, don't look, don't look,

because, you know, in Jerusalem we don't use coffins. So Hirsch was just wrapped in a prayer shawl and he was about 110 pounds, six feet tall, and you could see the contours of his body. And I remember at the moment thinking, part of me is going with him right now. And I still feel that. What does the world to come in your view

before this happened and then after? I know that some people just say, people die and that's it, and it's over. And I very much don't believe that, but I'm not sure what that looks like the world to come, but to me... Do you want that sooner than later? I would be fine with it,

but I feel bad when I say that. Because I have a lot of blessing and goodness and beauty and joy in this world still with obviously my partner, John, who is a gift, and my two gorgeous, dynamic, vivacious, talented, hilarious daughters. But there is part of me that is in the world to come. Now, I don't think that I will ever know in this lifetime

why this had to happen to any of us. Honestly, when people say, why me, why me? John says something I think is amazing, which he says, why not us? I've been to Israel a number of times since October, many, many times in my life, but a number of times since October 7th. And the mantra, the thing you hear the most, and it doesn't get any less with time, is that the word trauma and traumatized, and you hear that in Jerusalem, You hear it in Tel Aviv, you hear it in Ramallah, and you see it in Gaza, which is a ruin, a ruin.

And tens and tens of thousands of people dead and wounded, and you elected to go live in Israel. The prospect for peace and calm and the life that you would, I think, hoped for there is, that's difficult to imagine in the near future. Why do you remain where you are? What's the nature of your commitment to living where you are? Hirsch was very committed to being part of the fix. And he was a radical listener, and he was starving with curiosity.

He would constantly go to hear people speak with whom he didn't agree. He was an advocate for refugees and actually previous hostages. Hirsch was young enough that he was still naive and a believer in a good way. One of the things that we learned about Hirsch in captivity was from the released hostage or levy. They were held for a few days together and suffered together. or shared with us that Hirsch had a mantra that he kept repeating and sharing with those other hostages in that tunnel, Elie Chirabi or Levy were two of them,

that he was quoting Victor Frankel in his epic work, Man's Search for Meaning. He was saying, When you have a why, you can bear anyhow. When you have a why, you can bear anyhow. When you have a meaning, a purpose, a name, a goal, you can bear anyhow. And Hirsch shared that with these young men, or and Ellie both said he was murmuring it to himself the whole time. And I had never read the book.

I didn't know Hirsch had read the book. The book's in my bag here. I mean, I carry it everywhere I go. And because since then, I have read it. and what I do know is my how, meaning the how is how do I get through the rest of this world without Hirsh in it in the way that I'm used to him being here. And the why, the meaning, the purpose, the goal, the aim is what John and I are honing in on now. Where we live in our region, there is so much room for us to do things that change for the good.

When a tsunami hits, you know, on the one hand, it's complete destruction. And on the other hand, now you have this blank canvas. And so what John and I are really working on now is figuring out how do we use this unique excruciating situation that we've been put in to do something. And it's a real question. And if I had a real answer in beautiful gift wrapping with a gorgeous bow on it, I would give it to you. But I'll keep you in suspense. Rachel Goldberg, Pelham, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Rachel Goldberg, Poland. Her book about the loss of her son, Hersh, is called When We See You Again. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the

Trina Endowment Fund.