← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Rachel Goldberg-Polin - Unholy Conversations
00:44:12
Rachel Goldberg-Polin has stood before the UN, met with presidents, and worn a number on her chest every single day until there were no more hostages in Hamas captivity. Now, months after Hersh was murderd, she sat down and wrote a book. When We See You Again is not a hostage story and not a political reckoning. It is, as Rachel describes it, a painful love story — a grief memoir written "with one finger from underneath a truck," with no distance, no perspective, and no pretense that any of that is coming soon. In this conversation with Yonit and Jonathan, Rachel talks about the moment a released hostage told her Hersh had heard her voice in captivity, why she refused to name the officials who promised and delivered nothing, the 87 pages she cut and called "the suitcase," and how Hersh's memory will become a "revolution for go.”
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- [00:00]
A
Unit.
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B
It's unholy. I'm Yunit Levi in Tel Aviv.
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C
And I'm Jonathan Friedland in London. Unholy. Two Jews on the news. And we bring you a very special conversation. Somebody who's been with us on the podcast before. But the particular moment that Israel is in the Jewish world is in the timing felt just right for this conversation, just this particular point of the week.
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B
Yoni yes, we are in that week in which Israelis move from Yom Hazikaron Memorial Day for fallen soldiers to independence today. It was actually Israel's founding father, Ben Gurion, who thought that it would be the right thing to do to go from that solemn day of remembrance, of remembering all of the fallen soldiers who fought for this country and protected and defended this country, and then to know the price of that into while walking into Independence Day. So it is a very holy week on the Israeli secular calendar. And in that, as you said, we wanted to bring our listeners conversation with someone who has been on this podcast and has become very special to us. Rachel Goldberg, Poland is a name known to everyone in the Jewish world and far beyond. Mother of Hirsch Goldberg, Poland, tireless advocate for hostage release, Jewish educator, and now also author. Her book When We See youe Again is published this week and we are honored to have her on Anaholi again. Rachel, thank you.
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A
Thank you for having me.
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B
This book is. It's beautiful and it's heartbreaking and it's full of love. I'm reading one line from it, although everything is so beautiful you write. What I realize now, since my heart is shattered into tiny pieces, is that it is easier to share than when it was one mighty, solid and strong heart. So please take a shard. Be careful, they are sharp. I wonder what you would want the world to take from this, from this book.
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A
I really was looking to give pieces of my pain to anyone who's willing to hold the tiniest amount so that I will feel somehow that I'm caring less. It's so jagged and herculean and colossal, this brand of suffering. And it was suffocating me to where I just felt I had to, you know, do anything to come up for just like a gasp of air and then go back down into this. This sea of darkness. And I sat down and I started to write. And I'm not a writer, but it just came. It came flooding and it continues to flood. I can sit down now. I can. It's always there. It's just this surplus of heavy. And that's why I said that's you're reading from the author's note before the book starts, I wanted to really. It's almost a warning. I don't know what people. The preconceptions of what is this book? And I wanted people to know, like, be careful, because this can actually hurt you. It's. I'm giving pain, and you might receive it as pain. And I felt like it was sort of, you know, like on the box, a box of something that will say, be careful, you know, when using this. And that was. That was me. The whole book is me really trying to be very honest in the morning. And grief and loss and pain and shatteredness that I wear. It is cloaked around me every minute of my life.
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C
Yeah, you just one thing. You said you sat down and you began to write. At what point in this terrible story was that point? When was it that you sat down to write? Because sometimes it's so immediate, the pain on the page, that I did wonder if you were writing it as it were during. Or was this recollected later? So that moment you're describing, when was that?
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A
Yes. And yes, there were certainly pieces that I was writing even while Hirsch was still alive. There are pieces that are in the book from when Hirsch was still alive and pieces from the funeral and pieces from the shloshim 30 days after the funeral. And then at a certain point, there was such deep darkness and agony. And it was John who said. Because I was saying, I feel only comfortable really sharing it with him. And he was suffering so much, you know, how much can you give to your partner of knowing he was in the same car crash he sustained? Also massive injuries. They're different, but they were shattering as well. It's really a jigsaw puzzle put together of different times in this arduous journey. And then at a certain point, it became obvious that, oh, this actually is 50, 60, 70 pages, 80, 90, 100 pages of pain. And I don't know what order to put it in, but maybe this would be something that would help when people keep asking, how are you? This very innocuous, kind, sincere, innocent question that people ask. And I own that I have a problem. It is me with the problem when people ask how I am, and I get, you know, so, so pained. And it's because to me, it is so present and feelable and clear and obvious. Do you not see this knife sticking out of my chest and my heart? How can you ask someone who has this dagger sticking out of them how they are? And I can't believe that they can't see it, but they can't. You cannot see it. And I think to myself, someone who was born without sight does not really know what the color blue is. How does someone with sight explain blue to the blind? And this book, these words are me explaining to you my blue. It's explaining my pain. And that then really opened the floodgates, because it was just a chance to really tell the truth. Because a lot of times when you're talking face to face with someone, you're worried about hurting them, which is kind and normal. And I allowed myself in the writing to say, this is actually how I feel. And that's why I think that it's a hard book. I think it's a hard book.
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B
You do wonder. I mean, one wonders when reading it, when it ends with an afterword with John saying, may your memory be a revolution for good. And you write, and he writes as well, about the people who come up to you and say the story, even if they didn't know Hirsch, his story makes me want to be better. Can all of this grief of so many families in this country, can it be channeled into making this country better, into making some sort of change here?
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A
I would say it can, it must, and it will. I just don't think we have any other choice. I think we're at an inflection point. It's very clear. And sometimes you do things because you want to do them, and sometimes you do things because you have no choice. And I think in many ways, this country has no choice but to face the music. I don't know what that will look like. I often think about how I'm relatively old, meaning, you know, I'm 56 years old. I'm. I used to say that when. When we moved to Israel, that we were kind of like the generation that left Egypt that wandered for 40 years because they still had this. This mentality of otherness, and they. They really weren't going to be the right founders and builders of the next generation. And so that generation really wandered, both physically and spiritually, mentally, emotionally, psychologically. I mean, this is all of, you know, Shemote and, you know, Vayikra and the whole middle of, you know, like Exodus and Leviticus and numbers and Deuteronomy is really about this wandering. And then the next generation went into the promised land and had their own struggles. It wasn't perfect in roses and candy canes and rainbows, but it was different. And I have often said, you know, I made aliyah. I was almost 40 years old. I got Here late. And I feel like I am sort of wandering with my peers now in a place in this country where we now need that next generation to decide where are we going? And it will be curious and interesting to see. But I think part of the bonus, when you have a tsunami, you know, when you have a horrific disaster happen, on the one hand you can say, oh my gosh, this is terrible and will never be the same, which may be true, but you can hold multiple truths. And the other truth is now we have a blank canvas and we can't deny it. And now let's figure it out. And it is daunting and overwhelming. And that's where, of course, you know, we love. John and I are in love with Rabbi Tarphon from Pirkei Avot from the Ethics of Our Fathers, who, of course, all of us know the song, and we could sing it together as a trio of Lo Ale Chaham la chalig more of Aloh Ta Ben Horin Lehiva. Tell me right, so the job is enormous. The task is outrageous to imagine, and yet you must do your molecule. So do it. And I feel that the next generation, the younger, because we speak all over the place all the time, and when we speak to the younger people, I see that they want better, different, and they want light.
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C
You're reminding us there that you are professionally a Jewish educator, and the book reminds us of that, too. I'd be fascinated to hear more of what you think should be written on that blank canvas. But I want to go back to something you said about the pain and about describing blue to someone who's never seen blue, because absolutely, the feeling of any reader coming to this, I think, is that they are strangers to the kind of pain you have described, which is so the experience you and your family have gone through is so singular, and yet I was surprised to read you writing in the book. Since this collision, I have discovered suffering is all the same, same, same. By the way, a reminder that the book is written absolutely as you speak. It's absolutely your voice, this book, the set design of how things unfold for each of us varies, but loss is loss. So your suffering is like mine. And when I read that, I thought, that's a very human gesture to say that to the reader. But surely it can't be true that your experience is so unlike that of people, even those people who have experienced tremendous grief and loss in their life, surely they can't see blue the way you saw blue.
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A
I think that what led to the day that we had the Angels of death come to our door to tell us that Hirsch had been executed. Is same, same. I think what was different for us was the 330 days before. And we were on this very circuitous rabbit hole of journeying along with 250 other families specifically for us. You know, we became, you know, we call them the beautiful six. Oree, Alex, Almog, Eddin, and Carmel and Hirsch. Um, the truth is they're the only five entities on this planet who have any idea of what we actually felt and feel. But loss is actually loss. I really have understood that. And I don't think it's a competition of tears or misery. Especially since Hirsch was killed. We've had thousands and thousands and thousands of people reach out to us from all over the world, from all different backgrounds, from all different religions, from all different brands and textures. And they want to say, can you hold some of my pain? And I know that sensation of feeling this utter intense yearning to give someone part of your suffering. And what we had, which actually I think was a real blessing because I'm always looking for, where's the blessing? Where's the blessing we had those 330 days of hope. You know, I have said to Moshe and Shira Shapira, Oner's parents, I have said to them multiple times, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Because Aner saved whoever is alive today from that migunit, and he also saved Hirsch. Hirsch is the only person who was taken from that migunit alive and returned in a body bag. But he was alive for 330 days. And that was a gift to John and to me because it also gave us the opportunity to run to the end of the earth to try to save him. We. Which oftentimes we say, I would do anything for you. I love you so much. But you don't really get the chance to prove it. We know that we did that, but also we had that gift of hope. And we had the opportunity to tell everyone on earth who Hirsch is and why you should care and why you should help us save him so that when he was killed, we did not have what normal. Normally, people who have lost someone that is very core and intrinsic to who they are, they feel this complete passion in having to tell you about their person who they lost. And we didn't have to do that because everybody already knew who this boy was. And what it also taught me is that you can love people you've never met. And once you love someone, you can grieve true grief, even if you Never met them. And so the grief that we have felt and that has been expressed to us from people who truly grieve Hirsch still, it's because they truly grew to love Hirsch. And so we are not alone. You know, often people say to us, you're not alone. You're not alone. And I always think, I know I don't feel alone. I feel sadness, and I feel this thirst, this ever parched need for water in the desert, because Hirsch is my water and this world is my desert, which is talked about. That analogy is given over by Dr. Mary Frances O', Connor, who is an expert in grief. And I mentioned that in the book as well, because I thought that was a brilliant way of trying. Trying to express to other people what it is that we feel. Because we often hear about someone will say, well, are you better? Are you feeling a little bit better? And I think there's no better because he's still away where I have good friends who. Their child went after their army service, their national service, on a trip to Central America. And they really missed him because he was away for a month. And then he said, actually, I'm going to be here for two more months. So then they missed him more. And then he said, it's going to be. Actually, I'm having the best time. I'm going down to Chile. And it was going to be longer and longer. And they. You know what? Guess what? They missed him more. They did not miss him less. Okay. Why? Anyone would think that a bereaved family would say, well, you know what? It's been seven months. I actually don't miss my son anymore. I don't miss my daughter anymore, my sister, whatever. It's more. And now that I understand that, and I wear it as a badge of love. Grief is a badge of love. And that was an epiphany to me. I didn't know. I used to be afraid of grief and sort of like, Katie barred the door, like, please don't come in. And now I realize, come on in. It means that this love is growing like cuckoo. And that is something to be proud of as a person, as a mother, as a friend, as a sister, as a daughter, as a grandpa, as a brother. It is something to be proud of that you are sad that you miss the person you continue to love because they're not here.
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B
You talk about blessings and trying to find blessings. And you mentioned Anil Shapiro, who is Hirsch's best friend and was killed in that roadside shelter in Raym trying to save many others. In fact, he did save many others. One of those blessings in the book. And it's very clear, there's that moment where you, John, and you meet or Levi, who was released from captivity, and he is your link to Hirsch. He tells you, I think, for the first time, that Hirsch heard you and that he knew. And there's this conversation that he tells you that Hirsch heard you tell the story of meeting the Secretary of State. And so in that grief, there are those moments where you can see a little bit of light. That is one of those moments. I mean, obviously for English speakers, we should also say, and you say this in the book, that oh actually means light. So that is in his name, really.
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A
We're told actually that we used to have moments of divine inspiration and that. That Ruach Hakodesh, this divine inspiration we used to have after the second temple was destroyed, that ability left. But it visits us once and it's the moment we name our children. We have Rach Hakodesh, we have divine inspiration. And that's why sometimes you hear of people who say, we were going to name him Avraham. And I got up in the bima and suddenly I said, he's got to be Shlomo. I don't know where that came from. And it's divine inspiration. And, you know, it was so obvious to me after we met, or Levi, I said, well, hello. I know exactly why this young man was named Light. Because I was absolutely in complete and utter darkness in every single way imaginable. Mentally, spiritually, psychologically, philosophically, religiously, physically, emotionally, mentally. And then I met Light. And he had such a generosity of spirit and a kindness of soul. And he met with us when he was 50 kilo. He looked like a character out of a black and white movie. I'd never seen anyone in real life with that pallor. And he actually said, before we began speaking, he turned and said, when would you like for me to speak in English? And I said, oh, in Hebrew, my terrible Hebrew. I said, oh, no, no, no, it's okay. It's good for me to practice. Because I thought, this poor man, he's just been held for 491 days in captivity. He just found out his wife was killed. He's just been reunited with his son. Let him speak in his mother tongue. And he said to me, I actually have really good English. So we said, alrighty. And so, you know, we spoke to him for several hours and. And he shed light. We knew nothing. We knew nothing about Hersh in captivity. We had seen two videos of him while he was in captivity that Hamas had released, and that was it. We didn't know anything. None of the hostages who came home had seen him or heard of him. And then we get all of this information from or. And he was so gentle and kind and descriptive, and he told, you know, the raw truth. And, yes, Yonit, he said, you should know that he heard your voice. And I didn't understand. I couldn't digest what he was saying. I could not imagine what I said. What do you mean? He heard that I had spoken to someone, like on the news, like, he heard that and he said, no, no, he heard an interview. And he said to me, my mother said, I spoke with the Secretary of State in the US and I met with so and so and so and so, and he. Hersh was telling or this. And all of the sudden, something in me that had been dead since Hirsch was dead wiggled. There was like a flutter because I knew he knew. And just knowing he knew, even though he's not here anymore, was this huge feeling of validation that Hirsch knew that John and I were trying so very hard. You know, we failed him. We did, but we really tried. And he knew.
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C
I can't bear to hear you say you failed him. It's not for me to say anything, to question you, but it's unbearable. It's heartbreaking to hear you say we all did.
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A
We've all failed him. We all failed him.
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C
That is, yeah, yeah, we will all tell the blame.
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B
But you're not. You have not failed.
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C
Yes, maybe everyone, but I mean, especially because of the efforts that you and John went to, which you've just mentioned talking to the Secretary of State and how wonderful, in a way, that Hirsch knew that you had been going to those lengths. But there's something about those meetings you describe so brilliantly in the book, the kind of blur, the surreal blur of these meetings going from the UN and governments and around the world. The Pope, as if it's some kind of surreal fever dream. The days get jumbled up. It's just this world you're in suddenly. And the book is written as you've just, I think, demonstrated with extraordinary candour, as if a layer of skin is being peeled off and we're absolutely there in the raw you. But some things you hold back, including you refer to, and you often call them, very important man, really important man with capital letters, very important official, you know, including several who promise to help and then do nothing. And I found myself thinking, why protect them? Why continue to protect them by not Naming them these people who did something, to my mind, appalling, which is to promise you action and then to do nothing. So candid everywhere, and yet you hold back their names, which I, you know, I wondered why.
- [24:54]
A
So the first reason is. Well, actually, I'll start with the second reason, which is I don't think that this was a memoir or a tell all. I know that there is room for that. I know that there are a lot of people doing that at this time. Again, I should mention, you know, this is not a hostage story. I was never a hostage. I never got back my hostage. This is a hostage adjacent story. Or maybe it's, you know, the setting over there is hostagey, but mine is not a how to survive or how I survived captivity. And it wasn't a tell all. I felt very much that this is a book that is a painful love story or a love story filled with pain. And I felt that everyone who would be named in the book would be people who I love and people who I feel are worthy of being mentioned in a holy book. And I felt that naming anyone in positions of power would have been profane and actually something you both would love. I actually truly felt it would be unholy. I felt that I was writing my Torah and that it would be writing a word that is not permissible to write in a Torah, and that it wasn't what the book was about. The book is not about pointing fingers and anger. That's below what I was aspiring to give over. This is just love and pain and pain and love. And it's in that order that arc, I think, and I didn't think there was a place for names because even people in power who I thought were kind and empathetic and truly grew to care enough about us or enough about Hirsch, it still was not, you know, he was not an interesting to them. And it was obvious. It was obvious during. And I just didn't think it was the right place. And I'm not the right person to tell that story. It's not of interest to me, honestly.
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B
This book does not gloss over pain in any way. It's very, very honest about it, and it's very direct. And I remember reading it and thinking, was there an editor somewhere saying to you, you know, this is very hard to digest?
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A
After writing all of this stuff we had, there were many people who had come to us to say, you should write a book, you should write a book, you should write a book throughout. And it never spoke to us. We were blessed that we ended up in, you know, through a matchmaking of sorts with Jennifer Joel, who is this amazing agent at caa. She's the one who said to us, here's Random House and here's Ben Greenberg, who she had worked with before. And they were really this yin and yang perfection for me because I think it was very hard to work with me because I was emotionally bleeding. And they wanted to be very sensitive. You know, I'm not writing fiction. This wasn't, oh, this is my wonderful novel here. And then. And even if it had been a novel, people get very sensitive when there's criticism on something. And what they were very gentle with is they realized, this is just who I am. And as Jonathan said, you know, I'm not a writer by nature. So I was just giving over how I would speak. I was writing how I speak. And they understood very early on, then understood very early on that I said, you can take things out, but you can't put anything in. And so I was not fun to work with, I don't think. But they were good about saying, at a certain point, it's too painful. And there are 87 pages that we cut out of the book because it was too hard. And so that, you know, I named that document the Suitcase. So we have this suitcase of very painful material that still exists that is not in the book. And it's okay because it did what I needed. It's out in the suitcase. It's not in me now. But they were. They went above and beyond. They did things that I don't think editors and agents normally do in terms of trying to just be as psychologically, mentally, and emotionally supportive of someone who. I own it. You know, I say in the very beginning of the book, I am still under this truck. I have no business writing right now. I'm writing with one finger tapping from underneath this truck. I have no perspective. I'm telling you right now, this book has no perspective. I'm in it, enmeshed in this. This sticky molasses of gummy, twisted agony. And I'm typing with, like, two fingers. And I said, there's no panorama. There's no landscape that I can sort of describe. And that's messy. And then to say, and don't mess with my stuff, you know, is messy. It's messy.
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C
I mean, just to clarify, I think you're a complete, completely natural writer, because the thing I was. What I was trying to say was to praise the fact that it is absolutely your voice. And a lot of writers resort to artifice and so on. But with you, it's absolutely channeling the real you. And that's, to me, the mark of a very natural writer, which I think you are. I want to ask you, I don't know if this is in the suitcase. I just want to ask about something that's, as it were, not there. What brought you to take world attention outside Israel and outside the Jewish world, I think, was a speech you gave at the UN in Geneva in December of 2023, and the poem that you had written, One Tiny Seed, which was billed as a hostage mother's poem for a woman in Gaza, that was one of the headlines of the coverage. And in there you wrote, I know that way over there, there's another woman who looks just like me because we are also very similar. And she has also been crying. And you have talked to us on the podcast before about that. I think I've asked you about it before because, as I say, it's what captured, I think, the imagination of people all around the world. I don't think it's mentioned in the book. You'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's there. And I don't feel as if I've heard you speak often about it since. I mean, you did tell us in a conversation that you believe now that that woman also has a dead child or dead children. But I wondered if it's not talked about in the book or if you haven't gone back to it, as it were, because on some level, the sentiment that you express so affectingly in that poem has become harder or became harder to hold onto in the months, years since you first said it there in Geneva.
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A
Well, Jonathan, I should give you Jennifer Joel's phone number because she was desperate that we should get that poem into the book. And we really tried to find a home for it. She kept moving it around, and Ben kept moving it around. And then Ben said, should we put it in the end? Papers like that, you know, is that what it's called? Whatever the beginning, like, look, I have visual aid. Like here. Should it have been here? And we really had trouble because they. They did want it in the book. And we just sometimes, you know, you can't figure out where to put something. And we did try a couple of times, and it felt really clunky, and we just couldn't find a home for it. But I think that what I feel good about is that I still feel that sentiment. Meaning I was thinking how in the very beginning of the war, there was a journalist who had written a piece saying, if you only cry when one side's babies die, it means that your moral compass is broken, and therefore your humanity is broken. And I was thinking about that a couple of weeks ago because I was. I don't read the news. I don't look at, you know, I'm sorry. I only watch Yonit when we were at the doctor and she was on the. On the news, on the wall. But I saw a picture on a newspaper a few weeks ago of a boy crying, and I started crying. And it wasn't a boy who shares similar background to me in any way. And I also had this, like, deep feeling of, thank God, even though I'm broken, I'm still calibrated as a human. And it made me feel really thankful that even within this enormous challenge, that I still can recognize parts of myself from the before. And that's one of them. And so it's, you know, I'm glad you're mentioning the poem, and I'm sad that it didn't make it into the book. It wasn't an intentional, don't put it in. It was, shoot, we would love to put it in. And we don't know where to put it in. So maybe in the next, if it sells more than 12 copies, maybe if we do a new edition, we can put it in the beginning of the book dedicated to you.
- [35:26]
B
I was going to. I know we're not naming names, but there was a big debate here in Israel. There is, as we speak now, on the week of Memorial Day and Independence Day, and the man who was the national coordinator for the hostage issue in the PM's office, Gal Hirsch, was asked to light a torch in the Independence Day ceremony together with Ran Gvili's mother, who was deceased hostage. And many of the families were very critical of him. They said that he had asked them not to criticize the government, to tone it down. And many have said they played on the name. They said, you know, it shouldn't be Gal Hirsch who was lighting a torch. It should be Hirsch's parents. I wonder what you thought about that whole issue, that whole debate.
- [36:08]
A
Well, I don't, again, because thankfully, I don't really watch the news. So I hear through the grapevine about things. And I kind of am very aware that there's such a game in choreography and production that goes on in this whole entire world that we really feel comfortable in, even if we feel comfortable in the discomfort of how that world works. And so when I heard he was lighting a torch, I said, okay. It didn't really do anything for me either way. I also have to say, although Yoma Zikaron is such a profound day in this country, and I'm talking pre October 7th, all the more so obviously for all of these young and older people who were killed since October 7th. But regarding Hirsch, I actually don't feel a connection to Yom Hazikaron. What I really felt a connection to was yesterday when we were marking Yom Hashoah Holocaust Memorial Day, because right after Hirsch was killed, there was this ultra Orthodox rabbi in New York who's very. I mean, very well known, well respected, wise rabbi who actually was in touch with me, and I was very moved. He spoke to me for a long time, and one of the things he said in that conversation was, you should know that you're the mother of a Holocaust survivor. And I thought it was so kind that he said that, because it kind of. It finally gave description to what I was feeling, and I couldn't put words to. He said he and those other five and the other 40 who were taken alive and killed in captivity were Holocaust survivors. They survived absolutely the Shoah, and then they were killed. And that left such a deep impression on me. And that's sort of the. The day that will speak to me, and that does speak to me regarding Hirsch, more than Yom Hansi Karate.
- [38:23]
C
You describe in the book a comment, a remark a friend says to you at the funeral of Hirsch when he says, part of you is now in the world to come, and you agree with your friend. And the book is almost a dispatch from that place to those of us who are not there. Tell us what it feels like to be partly in the world to come.
- [38:48]
A
Rachel, it's fascinating. It's really fascinating. And I loved when he said that to me. He said, stop saying you're in another planet. Stop saying you're in another galaxy. Part of you is in Omaha. Part of you is in the world to come. Part of. You know, I'm not unique. There are millions of people who have buried children. There are thousands of people listening to you who have buried children. It's not unique, but when you put part of yourself into the ground, and all the more so, I think, you know, here in Israel, in Jerusalem, we don't bury with a coffin. Hirsch was just wrapped in a tallit. He was so thin, I could see the contours of his body. He was swaddled in this tallit, and when they were putting him in. Were putting him into the ground, and I turned to my Girls, I said, don't look. Don't look. Because I didn't want them to remember that the rest of their lives, because it changes your DNA. It's like. It's like being at Chernobyl. You know, there's a disaster so deep and embedded that I'm no longer myself. Or maybe I am myself revealed, because the ease is gone. The ease of pre October 7th is gone. Maybe this is really who I am. And I'm so grateful for the blessing of having had hers and still having Hirsch. You know, when I start my davening every morning, when I start my daily prayers every morning, there's a prayer that not everyone says, but it says, thank you for my soul. You formed it. You breathed it into me. You created it, and you guard it while it's within me. And one day you'll take it. And I then say it. I say it in the Hebrew, and then I say it in the English. For Hirsch, I say, my God, thank you for the soul that you gave to Hirst that you formed and created and breathed into him one day. You took it from him, but that soul still exists. Thank you. Thank you for that gorgeous soul. And that is the perspective that this type of magnitude of loss gives you. And, you know, I am very comforted, and I mention it in the writing. I think it all boils down to four words that Job says in the book of Job when he gets word that all of his children were killed, all of them, and he says four simple words. God gives and God takes, and that's it. And I was given. I was given a glorious, gorgeous gift, and then that gift was taken. And it's still a gift. And that's what I grapple with. And it's a privilege to grapple with it, because it could have been that I just had my two vivacious, dynamic, beautiful, talented daughters, but instead, I got this delicious cookie. 23 years and 334 days, Rachel.
- [42:16]
B
It is always a, I want to say, transcending experience to talk to. Thank you so much for talking to us again. The book is When We See youe Again is published this week, and we really urge our listeners to read it. Thank you so much for talking to us, Rachel.
- [42:32]
A
Thank you both. It's always good to be with people that I. That I respect and that I've grown to love. Thank you.
- [42:44]
C
You know, each time we speak with Rachel Goldberg Polin, I always think, you know, that was the. The most extraordinary conversation, and somehow each one, they stand alone. But I feel as if we reached sort of a kind of real depth with that one with her. And that's because of how exceptionally, rarely, unusually honest she is. I don't mean that other people are dishonest, but she. She minds so deeply her own feelings, she's able to speak about them so eloquently. And just the intensity of. Of everything she has gone through and how she's able to speak about it and put it in a context of the larger Jewish people, it sort of blows me away every time I have
- [43:27]
B
to say, yes, she is almost, I think, on a spiritual level. She is unique among us. And every time we talk to her, I think that feeling of this really is the best that humanity has to offer. And listening to her, I could go on listening to her for hours. Her book is like her, as you said, she wrote it in the same manner.
- [43:54]
A
Right.
- [43:54]
B
The way that she speaks, it's beautifully done. Creation of pain and of love. That was our conversation. And I think that we will return with our regular episode on Friday. We will say our big thank you to Michal Poat and I will see you soon, Jonathan.
- [44:12]
C
See you then.