By Rachel Goldberg-Polin
Random House, 2025 ($30)
I approached the writing of this review with enormous trepidation because it is a book unlike any I have read, by a person who is a spiritual giant. Like the Hineni prayer said on Yom Kippur by the one leading the congregation, I fear I am unworthy to review this book; and I pray that I will not cause harm through misrepresentation.
This book is the story of the catastrophe that befell the Goldberg-Polin family, whose facts are well known to the Orthodox community. But it is so much more. It includes joy, humor, playfulness, referencing children’s stories such as Where’s Waldo. By shifting backward and forward in time and through a narrative that circles from poignant stories, to Torah, to agony, we see a mother in the unpredictable process of grief.
In reading When We See You Again I was struck by how much of the book is given over to describing and reflecting on the engagement of fellow Jews (excluding political leaders) with the family. I have chosen to highlight that aspect of the book. Goldberg-Polin ascribes nearly all of these engagements to intended ḥesed (lovingkindness), but many attempts increased her distress. In a brief teaching near the very center of the book, Goldberg-Polin gives us this quote from the Mussar master Reb Shlomo Volbe on ḥesed: “This most complicated of disciplines requires looking at the person in front of us and asking ourselves, ‘What does this person need?’ rather than, ‘What do I imagine I would need in this person’s situation?’”
What does intended ḥesed that harms look like? When they feared the worst on October 7th, it is the many who filled Rachel’s house who were “busy lying to make me feel better.” It is the many parents around the world who have also lost children flooding her with the message the moment news of Hersh’s murder broke that “You will never recover from this.” However, the most common experience of the author, who is now recognized by all, is being stopped by a stranger who expresses their heartbreak over Hersh and then shares the story of their personal losses. To these, Rachel wishes she could say, “Your pain is so real. But I am not strong enough to carry mine and yours too.”
Goldberg-Polin gives us many examples of true ḥesed. Ḥesed is truth-telling: She accepts it when she is told, “The grief of a parent who loses a child never decreases, but it changes.” Ḥesed is also shopping and cooking and doing what is needed for as long as is needed without being asked. Ḥesed is a released hostage, still in the hospital, asking Jon and Rachel to come to him so he can fill them in on the chapters in Hersh’s life that they were missing. It is also evidenced by Hersh who, after choosing to not keep Shabbat halakhically, nevertheless pulled himself out of bed every Shabbat morning to go to shul with Jon, so that Jon would not be alone when all the fathers have their sons with them. (Rachel holds up Hersh as a consummate model of kibbud av v’em (honoring one’s parents), and says that she will honor his memory by working to improve her own observance of this mitzvah.)
As a child, Rachel’s parents made her feel “lucky, special, funny, and deeply beloved.” In turn, Rachel loved everything about Hersh, her firstborn, and “perhaps more important—he knew I adored him.” She credits the protective armor of this love for Hersh’s and her own persistence during his long captivity. One gift her parents bestowed was the ability to accept the hand she was dealt. When the last hostages were released, she received “endless messages…. Each saying different versions of ‘It should have been you hugging Hersh.’” Her response: “They are mistaken. It was not supposed to be us…. I don’t like it. But I do feel it.”
By subjecting hostage families to “ambiguous trauma”— a continuous and present-tense experience that keeps the victim in a state of hypervigilance—Hamas perpetuated continual abuse to family members outside the tunnels. Goldberg-Polin has not recovered. Like a war veteran, she is living in a trance: “Most days, I feel like that is all I have. A faint, shallow pulse. It’s not enough. So what I am doing every day is trying to try to live. And one day, I want to not just be living or surviving, but actually thriving.”
Rachel is a self-described introvert who was forced onto the public stage to rescue her son. But sharing this sometimes raw narrative with us was a choice. May we merit her sharing and may Rachel and her family find comfort.