At Hersh Goldberg-Polin's funeral: 'May his memory be a revolution'

After his kidnapping by Hamas on Oct. 7, she dared to hope that one day he might return home. At times, she had become certain he would return.

But over the weekend, that hope was dashed when the Israeli military released photos of six young hostages recovered from a tunnel system in Gaza. The hostages had died, and Goldberg’s son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was among them.

On Monday, Rachel and her husband, Jon Polin, said farewell to their 23-year old son at a funeral livestreamed from Israel. The two shared heartbreaking memories of an empathic boy enchanted by the world. And they prayed his death might finally move the needle toward a cease-fire and the return of more than 100 remaining hostages in Hamas’ captivity.

The Goldberg-Polin family lived in Richmond for four years when Jon Polin worked for Capital One. Rachel Goldberg recalled the family’s time living in a home off Patterson Avenue in Richmond’s West End. They attended synagogue at Keneseth Beth Israel.

Rachel previously described the time as “great years” for the family, who later transplanted to Israel.

It was there that the family held his funeral, which was attended by thousands of Israelis and livestreamed across the world by multiple news stations.

“The 23 years of life that we had with you were a blessing,” said Jon Polin. “We now will work to make your legacy a similar blessing.”

Polin said he was moved by a note from a well-wisher, who wrote: “May his memory be a revolution.”

Rachel Goldberg described the months of agony endured as the family tried by any means to bring Hersh home. At times, she even believed his return was inevitable.

“We became absolutely certain that you were coming home to us alive,” Goldberg said. “How do we live the rest of our life without you?”

Hersh was one of more than 360 hostages taken prisoner by Hamas while they were attending the Tribe of Nova trance music festival.

On Oct. 7, Rachel Goldberg woke up to bomb sirens. She broke Sabbath norms to turn on her phone, where she saw WhatsApp messages from her son. They read “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”

“I knew immediately something was horribly wrong,” Goldberg said.

Details later emerged about Goldberg-Polin’s kidnapping. He and 28 other attendees were hiding in a bomb shelter that was being peppered with Hamas grenades. His best friend, Aner Shapira, would pick up and throw the grenades out of the shelter.

A medical examiner would later find Shapira died with a grenade in his hand, Rachel Goldberg told CNN, suggesting that one of his final acts was to protect the many refugees — and Hersh.

A video of Goldberg-Polin being thrown into a truck with four other hostages was released in April via CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who realized after interviewing his parents that an Israeli soldier had shown him a video of Hersh that the family had never seen before.

Goldberg-Polin’s parents said the video gave them “a dose of strength” despite seeing that their son was missing most of his left arm.

“He’s handling a horrible situation and he’s doing it with composure,” Jon Polin said during an interview with CNN.

While their son was a hostage, Rachel would send him blessings from the family’s porch. At his funeral, she described him as irreverent, energetic, kind and pensive.

“Hersh, for all these months, I have been in such torment, for every single millisecond of every single day,” she said during Monday’s service. “It closed my throat and made my soul throb with third-degree burns.”

Orly Lewis, CEO of the Weinstein JCC in Henrico County, said the family “was incredibly important to the community here in Richmond.”

Lewis, who kept in touch with Rachel Goldberg, said she fought relentlessly to bring Hersh home.

“He was such a beautiful soul,” Lewis said. “His obituary said that he was a child of love, peace and light. And that is really who Hersh was.”

The news of Hersh’s death sent shockwaves through Israel. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets on Sunday and Monday to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intractability in negotiating for a cease-fire. And the country’s president attended Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s funeral in Jerusalem to apologize to his family.

“Maybe, just maybe, your death is the stone, the fuel, that will bring home the remaining 101 hostages,” his father said.