My Heart Shattered

A little over three months ago, my heart shattered as I listened to Rachel Goldberg Polin eulogize her beloved son, Hersh, after he had been taken hostage by Hamas terrorists and survived 330 days in hell on earth, only to be brutally murdered in the cold, dark tunnels of Gaza.

I only met Hersh, z’l, as many of us did, through Rachel and Jon—through the hundreds of interviews, protests, stories, and picture collages that made their way across the internet and into our broken hearts. He represented hope. His family represents love. This story was going to end with him back in the arms of his heroic parents. It had to. It didn’t. To this day, I still sometimes find myself fantasizing about his return, wishing it was a mistake, that it wasn’t really him.

I watched in pain and awe as Rachel stood in the unending nightmare of her life and opened her mouth to eulogize her son. What did she begin with? In all of her pain, agony, and disbelief—she began with gratitude. “I am honest. And I say, it is not that Hersh was perfect. But he was the perfect son for me. And I am so grateful to God, and I want to do hakarat hatov and thank God right now, for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh…. For 23 years I was privileged to have this most stunning treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.”

Gratitude. Gratitude for the gift of her son. Gratitude for the privilege of being his mother. Among the unimaginably negative feelings that I can only imagine pulsed and raged at every moment, there stood gratitude. Hakarat hatov—a recognition of the good. Her gratitude was not there to mask her suffering, nor was it replacing her negative feelings; it existed alongside them.

This past Monday, my heart was once again shattered as I listened to Orna Neutra eulogize her beloved son, Omer, who, after 423 days of believing he was taken alive as a hostage, was discovered to have been murdered on October 7—his dead body taken hostage to Gaza by Hamas terrorists. His body remains in Gaza along with 101 hostages—some still alive—as we saw in the harrowing propaganda video Hamas put out at the beginning of this week of another Israeli-American hostage, Edan Alexander.

Like Hersh, I never met Omer, and yet, I knew him well. He was me. He was my best friend from high school. He was my husband. Omer grew up on Long Island and attended the Solomon Schechter School of Long Island from kindergarten through 12th grade. He was the New York regional president of USY and spent summers working at Camp Ramah Nyack. His parents belong to the same synagogue as my in-laws. Omer represented hope. His family represents love. This story was going to end differently. It had to. But, as my father-in-law wrote from the memorial gathering on Tuesday morning, “I’ve imagined this gathering countless times. I imagined the tears but I anticipated tears of joy. I expected cheers and shouts of love and joy for when Omer walked in. But there is only silence and disbelief. And no body to bury…” I find my grief, once again, playing tricks with my mind—maybe it’s not true, maybe he really is alive, and they made a mistake.

I watched in pain and awe as Orna stood in the unending nightmare of her life and opened her mouth to eulogize her son. Amidst the shock and disbelief, the anger and suffering, there too lay gratitude. This time, a gratitude in which she began each day for 432 days while her son was in captivity. She said, “For a whole year, waking up from sleepless nights, I repeated the modeh ani twice every morning—once for myself, and once for you.” Gratitude. After the darkest of nights, as each new day came, she mustered the courage to start every grueling day exactly as the rabbis imagined, with the words modeh/modah ani—I am thankful. But she said it twice, once for herself and once for Omer. Like Rachel Goldberg Polin, who sat next to Jon and held Orna’s hand throughout Omer’s memorial service, Orna held gratitude alongside all of her complex feelings. She framed each day with a thankfulness, which now feels even more tragic knowing that Omer was not alive. And yet, she said, “For over a year, we have been breathing life into your being.” For over a year, they brought his light and his infectious smile into the world, sharing him with each of us, and for this, I am so deeply grateful.

Both Rachel and Orna demonstrate the extraordinary capacity to hold multiple, seemingly contradictory emotions simultaneously. They remind us that gratitude is not a denial of pain, but rather a parallel experience that coexists with grief.

I wish this was not the world we lived in. I wish more than anything that Rachel and Jon, Orna and Ronen, every relative with a hostage in Gaza, our people, and all of humanity did not have to experience this indescribable pain. As we head into Shabbat, with a cautious sense of renewed hope for a hostage ceasefire deal, may we see the quick release of all 101 hostages. And may we use this sacred pause, this weekly reminder of all that is and can be good, to help us search through the rubble and debris, the heartbreak and pain, of our withered souls, for a spark of gratitude for the gift of life itself, and the strength to continue to fight for a world that upholds the value of human life above all else.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Rebecca Weintraub