Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 1: And who says?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
Speaker 1: to question everything. When we celebrate Mother's Day, so much
Speaker 1: of the focus is on what our mothers gave us,
Speaker 1: the lessons they taught us, the sacrifices they made, the
Speaker 1: ways they shaped who we became. But today's conversation explores
Speaker 1: a different side of motherhood, what love looks like when
Speaker 1: it's asked to survive the unbearable.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: A few months ago, I was asked to speak to
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty Jewish women in Atlanta about Jewish joy,
Speaker 1: and I really wrestled with it because, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: I didn't and I don't feel joyful yet. The wound
Speaker 1: of October seventh still feels raw. I scroll through my
Speaker 1: phone and I see anti Semitic rhetoric. I read about
Speaker 1: Jews gunned down in DC and Bondai Beach, and nearly
Speaker 1: every day I walk to get coffee in my La neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and I often think about Rachel Goldberg Poland and her
Speaker 1: son Hirsh, and all of the hostages and survivors, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I would just have a little cry to myself.
Speaker 1: So when I sat down to write that speech, Rachel
Speaker 1: was already in my head and in my heart, this
Speaker 1: woman I'd never met, whose pain I'd been carrying alongside
Speaker 1: her from thousands of miles away, and then somehow she
Speaker 1: was sitting across from me. I'm still a little stunned
Speaker 1: by it, Grateful beyond words for her time and her trust,
Speaker 1: and her willingness to let me ask questions that I'd
Speaker 1: been holding for the last several years. For those who
Speaker 1: don't know her story, Rachel Goldberg Poland became known to
Speaker 1: the world after her son Hirsh, was taken hostage during
Speaker 1: the October seventh attacks in Israel. For three hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty days, Rachel and her husband fought publicly and relentlessly
Speaker 1: to bring Hersh home alive. The world watched a mother
Speaker 1: refuse to surrender hope.
Speaker 3: In real time.
Speaker 1: Hirsh was eventually murdered in captivity, and yet even in
Speaker 1: the wake of unspeakable tragedy, Rachel emerged not consumed by hatred,
Speaker 1: but as a voice of extraordinary humanity, compassion, moral clarity,
Speaker 1: and love.
Speaker 2: I think Peter's out, I really do. I think that
Speaker 2: the strongest force that outlives time and outlives death is love.
Speaker 1: She's also become a voice for those who are in
Speaker 1: the depths of their grief, drowning with no life rafts.
Speaker 3: Rather than trying to.
Speaker 1: Push this feeling away, she's embraced it as a price that.
Speaker 3: She will pay for the cost of love.
Speaker 2: I read an article by the American Psychiatric Association a
Speaker 2: few weeks Segau that said, if you're still breathing after
Speaker 2: six months, then you have a disorder. And I was like,
Speaker 2: I have a disorder. And I'm actually very proud of
Speaker 2: this disorder. It's called I still love my son. The
Speaker 2: love is still here. Love is stronger than death. But
Speaker 2: I am disordered.
Speaker 1: She continues to shine a light on Hersh's life while
Speaker 1: navigating the enormity of his loss, something she writes about
Speaker 1: with devastating honesty in her new book When We See
Speaker 1: You Again, which is now a New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 1: What I came to understand in our conversation is that
Speaker 1: almost everything Rachel says orbits.
Speaker 3: This one idea.
Speaker 1: It's something she names explicitly tragic optimism. It's a Victor
Speaker 1: Frankel concept, and it's the idea that you can be
Speaker 1: wounded or disordered, still bleeding and simultaneously committed to love,
Speaker 1: to faith and meaning. Hersh's own mantra in captivity was
Speaker 1: borrowed from Frankel. He who has a why can bear
Speaker 1: anyhow So, the question we're circling today, the one at
Speaker 1: the center of today's face, is if love is what
Speaker 1: makes loss unbearable, is it also the thing that makes
Speaker 1: life worth enduring. Today's conversation is in honor of the
Speaker 1: limitless power of a mother's love, a force that reverberates
Speaker 1: for billions of people three hundred and sixty five days
Speaker 1: a year, often quietly, often without recognition, and without condition.
Speaker 3: It is endless.
Speaker 1: So to all the women who mother someone or something
Speaker 1: with their whole heart, who have a mother or mother
Speaker 1: figure they love, or who feel the absence of a mother.
Speaker 3: This episode is for you.
Speaker 1: It's time to question everything with Rachel Goldberg poland.
Speaker 3: Rachel.
Speaker 1: Before we get into your book, I really want to
Speaker 1: talk about you. You grew up in Chicago in a
Speaker 1: Jewish family, similar to me, and you grew up falling
Speaker 1: in love with your Jewish heritage. You had educational and
Speaker 1: professional experiences that helped you you build that part of
Speaker 1: your identity. And I was so heartened in the book
Speaker 1: to read that that's kind of how you met John.
Speaker 2: I mean, I switched into the same school that he
Speaker 2: was in when I was in eighth grade, he was
Speaker 2: in seventh grade. I'm a little bit of a cougar,
Speaker 2: but that was when we met. We were actually the
Speaker 2: same height when we met, and I'm still that height
Speaker 2: and he's now fourteen inches taller. He's so lucky he
Speaker 2: grew right me. Also because our kids had a fighting chance.
Speaker 3: Did you always want to become a mom?
Speaker 2: I think that when I was growing up in the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, I wouldn't have thought anything otherwise, So
Speaker 2: definitely it.
Speaker 3: Was something that you always had on your mind.
Speaker 2: I didn't have it on my mind. I just thought
Speaker 2: it was part of growing up. What would happen and.
Speaker 1: Then when you had hersh who was your first born,
Speaker 1: you decided to stay home with him for a little bit.
Speaker 2: We were living in Berkeley, California at the time, and
Speaker 2: I was teaching in the Jewish day school there and
Speaker 2: John was working as a brand manager at a big
Speaker 2: company out there, and we sort of had that conversation
Speaker 2: of it makes sense that one of us should stay
Speaker 2: home because paying for childcare would have been more than
Speaker 2: what I was making, and so we realized I should
Speaker 2: be the one who stays home. And I really didn't
Speaker 2: have any background with child care, and it was a
Speaker 2: learning curve, as it is for most first time parents.
Speaker 2: But I was also very acutely aware that it was
Speaker 2: a magical time that was fleeting. I mean, we got
Speaker 2: into a rhythm and I really did enjoy it, but
Speaker 2: it was definitely hard. It was challenging, challenging because you
Speaker 2: have a mind that is always going and it was
Speaker 2: hard to be home or in what way, No, I
Speaker 2: think it was just challenging because it was something new
Speaker 2: and it required a tremendous amount of patience. And there
Speaker 2: was never any off time in my experience. You know,
Speaker 2: when I was teaching, I would show up at school
Speaker 2: at eight o'clock and by three o'clock I was done.
Speaker 2: But when you're staying home full time all the time,
Speaker 2: there's very little downtime and there's always something going on
Speaker 2: that you feel like you should be doing. So I
Speaker 2: think that that was sort of a challenge that I
Speaker 2: think is really common with people who are at home
Speaker 2: with children or people who work with children full time.
Speaker 2: I remember being at the park once and getting into
Speaker 2: a conversation with someone and they said, Wow, it's the
Speaker 2: hardest job, the job you have, And then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden he said, oh, that's your son. Oh so
Speaker 2: you don't work, And I was like, a second ago,
Speaker 2: that was the hardest job there is, you know, when
Speaker 2: he thought that I was the hairgiver for this child,
Speaker 2: but he didn't understand that I was this child's mother.
Speaker 2: So I think sometimes that's not as appreciated as much
Speaker 2: as it should be, the whole vocation of childcare.
Speaker 1: And then you eventually expanded your family. You had two
Speaker 1: more daughters, Leeby and Orley. Was your life what you
Speaker 1: had imagined at that point.
Speaker 2: I felt very much blessed and lucky. We had moved.
Speaker 2: At that point, we were living in Richmond, Virginia, and
Speaker 2: it was a really lovely, quiet, beautiful, easy life and
Speaker 2: I felt extremely kissed by the universe. I had a
Speaker 2: very lovely community that we were part of, and I
Speaker 2: was working in adult Jewish education in the community there,
Speaker 2: and John had a job that he liked. And our
Speaker 2: house was very comfortable because it was very affordable in Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and the kids were great. It was just a very easy,
Speaker 2: busy life. In the book, you call it beige. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's very average. I felt blessed and I
Speaker 2: felt normal.
Speaker 3: Did you want beige?
Speaker 2: I think I did. I also think you know. I
Speaker 2: grew up my parents are divorced. I was an only
Speaker 2: child from their marriage downtown in the city in Chicago,
Speaker 2: which I loved, but it was very different from that
Speaker 2: new construct of pretty much suburban lifestyle. I had never
Speaker 2: lived in a single family house until moving to Richmond,
Speaker 2: and having three kids to me felt like a huge family.
Speaker 2: Coming from being an only child and having this very
Speaker 2: I think healthy, normal relationship with John felt like a
Speaker 2: real blessing.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the way you speak about him. The
Speaker 1: word like real partner comes up for me a lot
Speaker 1: when you talk about him.
Speaker 3: So much of Hersh's.
Speaker 1: Story has been told through what happened to him, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to know about your son through your words.
Speaker 3: How do you describe him?
Speaker 2: Well, I try to be very careful when talking about
Speaker 2: Hirsh because I think that in general, especially when there's
Speaker 2: a tragic death of someone young, we tend to mythologize
Speaker 2: and lionize and heroicize them, which a dear friend of
Speaker 2: mine who's a writer, Manty Friedman, talks about the heroization
Speaker 2: of young people ends up actually flattening them. It hollows
Speaker 2: them because they're defined by sort of their final moments,
Speaker 2: and it negates everything that came before. So I try
Speaker 2: to be very careful within that framework.
Speaker 3: That's so thoughtful.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that I've seen it since October seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, with every single young person and old
Speaker 2: person by the way, who was lost since then. Somehow
Speaker 2: all of them are heroes, all of them. And I
Speaker 2: think that there's something that at a certain point, you know,
Speaker 2: when you start saying a word over and over again
Speaker 2: and then the word doesn't have a meaning anymore. And
Speaker 2: so I'm careful because I do think that every single
Speaker 2: person was a unique person, we have this saying in
Speaker 2: Judaism that every person is a world unto themselves, and
Speaker 2: so everyone was a whole, entire world. That doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that every single person was perfect. And obviously I adore
Speaker 2: hersh He was the person who turned me from a daughter,
Speaker 2: a friend, a wife into this new being of mother.
Speaker 2: I think it in many ways change the DNA of
Speaker 2: who I am in the world. Look, he was funny,
Speaker 2: with a dry sense of humor that was sarcastic without
Speaker 2: being mean, which is very hard because usually sarcasm comes
Speaker 2: with meanness. But there wasn't meanness. He was very curious, hungry,
Speaker 2: curious in a way that I try to sort of
Speaker 2: emulate because he wasn't threatened. He was curious by people
Speaker 2: who work different than he was. And I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm not like that. I would like to be more
Speaker 2: like that. I think we generally sort of corner ourselves
Speaker 2: into these echo chambers, especially now, and we hands select
Speaker 2: who we hear our news from, who is in our
Speaker 2: pocket on this screen, who we read, who we interact with.
Speaker 2: And he would say, I want to understand why he
Speaker 2: thinks like he thinks. And I remember even saying to John,
Speaker 2: why you know why do you want to hear why
Speaker 2: someone who's espousing opinions that are counter to your worldview?
Speaker 2: But that was really different. And I also think that
Speaker 2: he was a radical listener, which is so hard to
Speaker 2: come by. So that's something that I thought was special
Speaker 2: about him. And he had this quiet, gentle respect for
Speaker 2: John and me that I really appreciated. I always appreciated
Speaker 2: while he was alive, and I'm thankful that I recognized it,
Speaker 2: because sometimes I think we don't realize what we have
Speaker 2: until we don't have that treasure. And I was very
Speaker 2: aware and John was very aware, So we're thankful that
Speaker 2: we were cognizant of that.
Speaker 1: There's something you shared in the book that I just
Speaker 1: loved reading about him. He had this thirst for travel,
Speaker 1: and so he was going to go on this two
Speaker 1: year trip around the world, and he had gotten to
Speaker 1: do sort of a mini trip to Europe, and he
Speaker 1: was going to these dance festivals and you said, are
Speaker 1: you sure you want to do this alone? And he said, Mama,
Speaker 1: if you go in a clump, you stay in a clump.
Speaker 1: It exemplified so much of what you're sharing. He was
Speaker 1: so open to the world.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting about that is. That's why the photos
Speaker 2: that we had to use after he was stolen on
Speaker 2: October seventh. We had this problem because we're actually not
Speaker 2: a big photography family. I'm really now impressed with families
Speaker 2: who do that, because we had this big problem needing
Speaker 2: to get his photograph out there, and we didn't have
Speaker 2: any recent photos of him, and so my daughters, who
Speaker 2: of course I know nothing about social media, but they
Speaker 2: started to write to all of these festivals that he
Speaker 2: had gone to the summer of twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 2: all of these people who had met him started to
Speaker 2: send us photos and those are the photos that were
Speaker 2: used during the struggle to get him home because people
Speaker 2: had met him from all over the world and that
Speaker 2: was really beautiful. And we're still in touch with a
Speaker 2: lot of these people who met him during that nine
Speaker 2: week trip that he took on his own with his
Speaker 2: teeny tiny backpack and two pair of underwear, and he said, Mama,
Speaker 2: don't worry, there are rivers, And I thought, how does
Speaker 2: that justify only taking two pair of underwear?
Speaker 3: And what rivers in Europe?
Speaker 2: I mean, he did see actual proof there were rivers,
Speaker 2: or maybe there were more streams or like a little Creek.
Speaker 1: I got to hear you speak in New York at
Speaker 1: Temple Bethel, and you were talking there about the importance
Speaker 1: of a name and that we sort of live into
Speaker 1: our names. And so when you say Hirsh's name, what
Speaker 1: do you want us to hear?
Speaker 2: First of all, the name Hirsh is actually a Yiddish
Speaker 2: name that means deer, the animal. And after Hirsch was killed,
Speaker 2: my daughter Liebi bought me a small little deer that
Speaker 2: I keep on my bedside table and I travel with it.
Speaker 2: I have it in my bag here, and I think
Speaker 2: about what qualities does a deer have? Because what you're
Speaker 2: referring to is that in the Jewish tradition, we actually
Speaker 2: believe that parents are divinely inspired once in their lives,
Speaker 2: and it's the moment they give their children their names.
Speaker 2: And that's why sometimes we know stories where people say
Speaker 2: I was going to name him Solomon, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden when the rabbi said, and his name is,
Speaker 2: and they said David. And we believe it's entwined with
Speaker 2: what your path will unfold to be. And so I
Speaker 2: think about how a deer is a gentle animal, that
Speaker 2: it's life and very sort of unassuming. It doesn't need
Speaker 2: all the bells and whistles. It's a modest animal. And
Speaker 2: I think that there are echoes of Hirsh in that,
Speaker 2: and I think of Deer as being very innocent.
Speaker 1: I had only gotten to know Hersh through the photos
Speaker 1: you shared and his room that you shared, and I
Speaker 1: loved reading about more of who he was in the book.
Speaker 1: He sounded like a really beautiful soul. Can you bring
Speaker 1: me back to the moment when your beige life ended,
Speaker 1: because you mark this striation in the book between the
Speaker 1: before and the after.
Speaker 3: So when did your beij life end?
Speaker 2: So it was very quick and it was on the
Speaker 2: morning of October seventh. It really sort of starts the
Speaker 2: night before because on the evening of Friday, October sixth,
Speaker 2: Hirsh and my daughters and John and I all walked
Speaker 2: to synagogue together or a family that goes to synagogue
Speaker 2: both Friday night and Shabbat Saturday morning. And Hirsh had
Speaker 2: said to us, after we go to synagogue and we
Speaker 2: were going to friends for Shabbat dinner, he said, on
Speaker 2: n aaire and I are going to go do something fun.
Speaker 2: Anare Shapira was Hirsh's best friend. They were actually a trio.
Speaker 2: There was Hersh and Yanni and an Air, and so
Speaker 2: Hirsh had brought his camping backpack with us to synagogue
Speaker 2: and to our friends for Shabbat dinner. He had been
Speaker 2: regaling us at dinner, all the friends sitting at the
Speaker 2: table with tales from being in Europe at these trance
Speaker 2: music festivals. And at eleven o'clock he kissed me right here.
Speaker 2: He leaned over my right side and he kissed John.
Speaker 2: And he turned around in the doorway and looked at
Speaker 2: me and said, love you, see you tomorrow. I was
Speaker 2: very casual, and he left. And the next morning, John
Speaker 2: left for synagogue at seven thirty, which is quite early,
Speaker 2: and so the girls were still asleep, and I was
Speaker 2: going to wake them in a little bit and we
Speaker 2: were going to meet him at synagogue. I was still
Speaker 2: having a cup of tea, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: around eight o'clock, there were bomb sirens that started to
Speaker 2: go off in Jerusalem, which tragically now is extremely normal,
Speaker 2: but then it was completely out of the ordinary. And
Speaker 2: so I ran to wake up my girls because I
Speaker 2: knew there must be bombs falling somewhere. And we got
Speaker 2: into our safe room Israel since the mid nineties, any
Speaker 2: construction requires that residences have a safe room, a bomb
Speaker 2: shelter in the house. And so the girls and I
Speaker 2: went into our safe room, which ironically is Hersh's bedroom,
Speaker 2: and I sealed the window. It has like a steal
Speaker 2: enforced door, and I sealed the door. And the protocol
Speaker 2: is that you wait ten minutes and if you don't
Speaker 2: hear anything suspicious, then you can come out. Now. I
Speaker 2: don't use technology on Shabbat, so it was Saturday morning.
Speaker 2: I didn't have a phone, TV, radio, computer, I didn't
Speaker 2: have anything open to know what was happening, why these
Speaker 2: sirens were going off. I waited ten minutes. I didn't
Speaker 2: hear anything suspicious, so I said, girls, we can come out.
Speaker 2: But I know that Hersh and on Air are somewhere
Speaker 2: outside sleeping. It's an emergency. I'm turning on my phone
Speaker 2: to make sure the boys are okay. I turned on
Speaker 2: my phone. I want to say maybe it was eight
Speaker 2: twenty three. I have it written down, and eleven minutes earlier,
Speaker 2: two consecutive WhatsApp messages had come into the group that Hirsh,
Speaker 2: John and I have just the three of us from hirsh.
Speaker 2: The first one said I love you, and the second
Speaker 2: one said I'm sorry, and I immediately tried to call
Speaker 2: him and it rang and rang, and then I wrote,
Speaker 2: are you okay? Let me know you're okay. I'm leaving
Speaker 2: my phone on let me know you're okay. Those still
Speaker 2: to this day don't have the two blue checks that
Speaker 2: showed that they were read, obviously, and I knew immediately
Speaker 2: that we were in trouble. John came running in because
Speaker 2: they had closed the synagogue because of all these bomb
Speaker 2: sirens that kept going off. I handed him my phone.
Speaker 2: I said, we're in trouble, and that was it. We
Speaker 2: sort of stepped through this very large wooden frame of
Speaker 2: the lives that we had lived up until that point.
Speaker 2: I say, you know, I was born in October of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, and everything from that date until October seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three was now over, completely over, and I
Speaker 2: was now in a different place. And I've been in
Speaker 2: varying hues of different places since then, but that life
Speaker 2: of the before is completely over. You and your husband John,
Speaker 2: and specifically you became very vocal. How did you choose
Speaker 2: to bring into action and be vocal? Versus wanting to
Speaker 2: wait and see how things go. What was your decision
Speaker 2: making process? Well, initially, the families of the two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty one hostages who were stolen on October seventh,
Speaker 2: everyone went into primal reflexive action, meaning whatever felt authentic
Speaker 2: in that moment to do is what people were doing.
Speaker 2: There was not a lot of thought. There wasn't sort
Speaker 2: of let's sit and brainstorm and make a collective plan.
Speaker 2: We were all instantly traumatized. Everybody had footage of their
Speaker 2: people being tortured, their people being killed. People had footage
Speaker 2: of their children being killed and their dead bodies being
Speaker 2: dragged away. We had footage of Hirsh being loaded onto
Speaker 2: a pickup truck with his dominant left arm blown off.
Speaker 2: We could see his jagged bone sticking out below his elbow.
Speaker 2: He had tied sort of a tourniquet with a T
Speaker 2: shirt or something around the upper part of his arm.
Speaker 2: These are things that you are never prepared to see.
Speaker 2: No parent or loved one wants to see anything like that,
Speaker 2: and you're not rational, and instantly we were all in
Speaker 2: action mode. But everybody responds differently. I have a very
Speaker 2: good friend who's a nurse, and she said, you know
Speaker 2: when people are in pain in the hospital, she said,
Speaker 2: there are the people who are clenchers. There are people
Speaker 2: who are screamers, the people who hit her when she
Speaker 2: tries to help them, they're people who are stoic. I
Speaker 2: saw that in the hostage family cohort that everyone responded differently.
Speaker 2: And once we knew he was alive, because a girl
Speaker 2: who was in the bomb shelter with him, who he
Speaker 2: didn't know before that the Nova festival, she was rightfully
Speaker 2: having a complete panic attack and he was trying to
Speaker 2: calm her down, and he put her head in his lap,
Speaker 2: and he put his head on top of her, sort
Speaker 2: of protecting himself, and her head was in his lap.
Speaker 2: And she is the one who ended up telling us,
Speaker 2: I watched him walk out. He's alive. She said, I
Speaker 2: watched him walk out with or Levy, Elia Cohen and
Speaker 2: Alon Ohel, those four boys walked out. As soon as
Speaker 2: we knew that, we wanted the world to know that,
Speaker 2: and we wanted the people who took him to know
Speaker 2: we know you have him, we know he's alive. And
Speaker 2: we had been told by everyone it's important that they
Speaker 2: know that he's American, he's a civilian and that the
Speaker 2: world is watching. I would love to say, oh, it
Speaker 2: was this very grand plan. I felt like I had
Speaker 2: a branding iron on my back. I was doing everything
Speaker 2: under severe intense mental, psychological, spiritual, religious, emotional torture.
Speaker 1: You talk in the book about what the torture did
Speaker 1: to your body. You said you never got your period again.
Speaker 1: How were you surviving? Every day at this point.
Speaker 2: While he was still alive, John and I were working
Speaker 2: eighteen to twenty hours a day, running all over the world,
Speaker 2: talking to whoever we could talk to, meeting with whoever
Speaker 2: we could meet with, and trying desperately to move the
Speaker 2: needle on this horrific situation that so many people were
Speaker 2: suffering from. And definitely every morning when I would open
Speaker 2: my eyes, there would be a moment where I would
Speaker 2: feel overwhelmed with angst and misery. And I was used
Speaker 2: to saying the line that many Jewish people say upon waking,
Speaker 2: which I always say since I was a girl and
Speaker 2: learned it, and it's a line that says, I am
Speaker 2: grateful to creator of the universe for giving me back
Speaker 2: my soul. You have tremendous faith in me, which I
Speaker 2: love because normally I think the dynamic that we learn
Speaker 2: is that we're supposed to have faith in God, and
Speaker 2: yet the very first thing we're supposed to say is, wow,
Speaker 2: I'm back today. You have faith in me. I'm not done.
Speaker 2: My soul's back. So I would say that line, and
Speaker 2: then I would say, hope is mandatory. It's not a suggestion,
Speaker 2: it's not advice, it's mandatory. Go, and I would fling
Speaker 2: the covers off, and I would say, pretend to be
Speaker 2: a human. Just pretend you don't have to really be human.
Speaker 2: You have to pretend to be a human. Because I
Speaker 2: wanted to lie on the floor in the fetal position weeping,
Speaker 2: but I knew that he was in agony somewhere and
Speaker 2: that wasn't going to help, and so we really pushed ourselves.
Speaker 2: You know, we were exhausted and miserable and truly tormented.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've aged so much in the last two
Speaker 2: and a half years, as has John. As you mentioned.
Speaker 2: I say it in the book like I'm very honest
Speaker 2: about it. I mean, my body died, I never got
Speaker 2: my period again. I've never colored my hair, so I
Speaker 2: had gray in my hair before, but I have a
Speaker 2: ton of gray in my hair and you know, I've
Speaker 2: never worn makeup again. I've never worn jewelry again. Like
Speaker 2: I'm very much a wounded, damaged person, I'm very much
Speaker 2: a disordered person. But I think that it makes sense
Speaker 2: given what we went through and then and you know,
Speaker 2: that was three hundred and thirty days of immense, exhausting beseeching, begging, scraping, pleading, running, burning,
Speaker 2: and then the angels of death came to our door
Speaker 2: to tell us that hersh had been murdered. So you
Speaker 2: know that was going through yet another big frame into
Speaker 2: this other very unknown place.
Speaker 1: When you saw him and you saw that video of
Speaker 1: him being loaded onto the back of a truck and
Speaker 1: his arm had been blown off by a grenade. I
Speaker 1: know you were so happy that he was alive and
Speaker 1: to know that, But what was it like to see
Speaker 1: your son that you had cooked in your belly with
Speaker 1: no arm?
Speaker 2: It was shocking and confusing. And I only watched it once.
Speaker 2: John actually watched it many times because he derived a
Speaker 2: lot of strength from it. He said, he's walking on
Speaker 2: his own two feet, no one was dragging him. He
Speaker 2: uses his non dominant arm to get himself up into
Speaker 2: the pickup truck. The other young men were lying down.
Speaker 2: They were very badly wounded. He was obviously very badly wounded.
Speaker 2: He was also burned, and yet he was sitting up.
Speaker 2: He chose to sit up, and he puts his head
Speaker 2: down in a crook of what's left of his arm.
Speaker 2: John derived a lot of strength from that. And interestingly,
Speaker 2: there is a continuation of that video that I only
Speaker 2: saw once, and it was after he was killed. On
Speaker 2: the ride to Gaza. One of the gunmen who had
Speaker 2: stolen him grabs him by the head. He is his
Speaker 2: head down, He's lost a lot of blood, so he
Speaker 2: was probably very lightheaded. Grabs him by the hair and
Speaker 2: pulls him up and says into the camera, take a
Speaker 2: selfie with me. And what I love about that moment,
Speaker 2: and I've only seen it once, is Hirsh looks right
Speaker 2: into the camera defiant. Yeah, I love it. Even though
Speaker 2: I was horrific. He was obviously in complete shock and
Speaker 2: horror and trot. He had just witnessed eighteen young people
Speaker 2: get murdered in a five foot by eight foot tiny shelter.
Speaker 2: I mean, picture your bathroom with twenty six people smashed in,
Speaker 2: including an air who had been standing in the door
Speaker 2: trying so hard to save these people, throwing out grenade
Speaker 2: after grenade as they were coming in, and finally they
Speaker 2: killed him, and Herst saw that. And we also know
Speaker 2: that those two hecks that we got from him were
Speaker 2: after his hand was blown off, and so he thought
Speaker 2: he was dying. And I think about that was how
Speaker 2: he chose to say goodbye. That a lot of parents
Speaker 2: tragically had recordings of their children screaming. I mean, imagine
Speaker 2: how the structure of your being in this world changes
Speaker 2: when you hear your children screaming as they're dying, and
Speaker 2: that's the last thing you hear. He chose not to
Speaker 2: record to us. He just said I love you, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: because he knew we were going to be in terrible pain.
Speaker 2: I was just going to ask you, what do you
Speaker 2: think that I'm sorry? Was he knew we would suffer
Speaker 2: terribly and he's right. And interestingly, I know this jumping ahead,
Speaker 2: but someone pointed out to me and I didn't realize
Speaker 2: I had done this, but they played it for me
Speaker 2: that at Hirsh's funeral when they were putting him into
Speaker 2: the ground. And you know in Israel, when they bury people,
Speaker 2: we don't use coffins, so he was just wrapped in
Speaker 2: a shroud which is like a sheet, and you could
Speaker 2: really see the contour of him, and as they were
Speaker 2: putting him into the ground, his body, I went like
Speaker 2: this and I screamed, I'm sorry. I don't remember doing that.
Speaker 2: But someone said, there's a symbiosis. That was the last
Speaker 2: thing he said to you, And that's the last thing
Speaker 2: you said to him. So amazed by you.
Speaker 3: You never cry and interviews it's so rare.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's actually really sad because it just
Speaker 2: shows how broken I am. Like it's a very human,
Speaker 2: healthy response, but I also think that I've cried so much.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not all here. Part of me is
Speaker 2: already in the world to come with her, and so
Speaker 2: I'm not normal. And I referred to it earlier that
Speaker 2: I read an article by the American Psychiatric Association a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago that said, if you're still grieving after
Speaker 2: six months, then you have a disorder. And I was like,
Speaker 2: I have a disorder, and I'm actually very proud of
Speaker 2: this disorder. It's called I still love my son. The
Speaker 2: love is still here. Love is stronger than death. But
Speaker 2: I am disordered. I mean, I think of in Chicago,
Speaker 2: growing up they were always those parking meters. I don't
Speaker 2: know if they have them here in LA, but they
Speaker 2: were always broken, and so my mom would always leave
Speaker 2: a note on the parking meter saying the meter is broken,
Speaker 2: don't give me a ticket. And I feel like the
Speaker 2: meter was disordered, like it was out of order. And
Speaker 2: I feel like that, like I am broken, don't give
Speaker 2: me a ticket. And dis in Latin means the opposite
Speaker 2: of So I'm the opposite of order. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not that I'm unique, because there are millions of people
Speaker 2: who have buried their children, but that us feel the
Speaker 2: opposite of the order that I would have preferred.
Speaker 1: I've watched, i think, almost every interview you've done, and
Speaker 1: no matter how long a journalist has been doing their job,
Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper, Beyonna, no one can get through an interview
Speaker 1: without crying. And I'm really wondering how you feel watching
Speaker 1: other people in pain over pain that only you can
Speaker 1: really understand.
Speaker 2: I actually really think it's a beautiful human response. I
Speaker 2: think people really grew to love Hirsh and love a
Speaker 2: lot of people. We love a lot of people that
Speaker 2: we've never met. And during the really shocking, sticky, tricky days,
Speaker 2: that we were trying so desperately to save Hirsh and
Speaker 2: these other hostages. The world grew to love a lot
Speaker 2: of those hostages without ever having known them. And forty
Speaker 2: six of those hostages who were taken alive were killed
Speaker 2: in captivity, and there are people all over the world
Speaker 2: who grieved for them and continue to grieve for them
Speaker 2: because they grew to love them. And I think that
Speaker 2: there's something really powerful and uniting about that that you
Speaker 2: can love people that you never met, and you can
Speaker 2: grieve people you never met. So when I've had these
Speaker 2: experiences speaking to people and they have the right human, empathetic, kind, merciful, compassionate,
Speaker 2: graceful response, I think it's the most beautiful personification of
Speaker 2: the human experience.
Speaker 1: You started wearing a piece of tape every day that
Speaker 1: Hirsh was gone. It was three hundred and thirty days,
Speaker 1: and what began as a marker became something that the
Speaker 1: world really came to recognize.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the first day that you put it on.
Speaker 2: I put it on the first day on day twenty six,
Speaker 2: and it was because it was driving me to insanity
Speaker 2: that we were doing ten to fifteen media clips a
Speaker 2: day because we speak English, so we became very much
Speaker 2: sort of an easy go to. There were plenty of
Speaker 2: families that were speaking many different languages, because you know,
Speaker 2: the original cohort was from more than thirty different nationalities.
Speaker 2: There were Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, so there
Speaker 2: were people speaking all over the world in all different languages.
Speaker 2: But because we were English speakers, we were speaking a
Speaker 2: lot to the international English speaking media. And the first
Speaker 2: question was always how many days has it been since
Speaker 2: you've spoken to your son? And I just thought, I
Speaker 2: can't take this anymore. I remembered being a little girl
Speaker 2: in Chicago one night wandering out of bed. I couldn't sleep,
Speaker 2: and I wandered into our living room and my dad
Speaker 2: was watching the news and it was ABC News and
Speaker 2: there was a show called Nightline and there was a man,
Speaker 2: an anchor named Ted kopp Both who had this big
Speaker 2: head of gingy red hair, and he had behind him numbers.
Speaker 2: And I said to my dad, what is that number?
Speaker 2: And he said, that's the amount of days that hostages
Speaker 2: have been held in Iran. And he explained to me,
Speaker 2: and I was nine years old as a little girl,
Speaker 2: and he explained me because I didn't know what a
Speaker 2: hostage was, and I didn't understand what had happened. And
Speaker 2: I thought back to that, and I thought, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be the human nightline Ted Copple counter and I
Speaker 2: went and got tape. And I also thought there was
Speaker 2: something very accountable. Everyone had to do what felt good
Speaker 2: to them. You know, some people wore a necklace, some
Speaker 2: people wore a bracelet, some people wore a ribbon. Everybody
Speaker 2: did what spoke to them. To me, it was very
Speaker 2: important to show the failure of another day. That the
Speaker 2: number changed every day, that my prison number changed every
Speaker 2: day I was in prison. And I remember on day
Speaker 2: eighty eight, which I talked about in the book, that
Speaker 2: I was speaking to a group of college students and
Speaker 2: a young man raised his hand and it was the
Speaker 2: most gorgeous question, but it broke me. He said, what
Speaker 2: can we do to ease your pain? And no one
Speaker 2: had asked me that in eighty eight days? And I
Speaker 2: started crying, and I put my hand on the number,
Speaker 2: and I said, it sounds so naive now thinking back,
Speaker 2: I said, if God forbid we get to day one hundred,
Speaker 2: please don't make me be the only person on earth
Speaker 2: wearing this tape. And by the afternoon, the woman who
Speaker 2: had organized that trip sent me a picture on WhatsApp
Speaker 2: of the one hundred students on that trip after lunch.
Speaker 2: They were all wearing eighty eight. They had started on
Speaker 2: that day, and we had on day one hundred over
Speaker 2: a million people sending us pictures selfies of them, and
Speaker 2: they had started wearing the tape and starting on day
Speaker 2: one hundred around the world. And you know, this crossed
Speaker 2: all barriers. It was people of all different backgrounds, all
Speaker 2: different belief systems, all different brands and textures and colors
Speaker 2: and faith and philosophies, and everyone was just trying to
Speaker 2: come together in this painful, out of the ordinary situation
Speaker 2: by doing something symbolic of saying we are with you,
Speaker 2: and the days are moving. We were trying so desperately hard,
Speaker 2: and we continued wearing that tape. We buried hersh on
Speaker 2: day three thirty two, and you can see pictures of us,
Speaker 2: you know, standing there bearing him and we're wearing the number.
Speaker 2: And we kept wearing the number until day eight forty three,
Speaker 2: when the final hostage was returned back so his family
Speaker 2: could bury him. You say, on.
Speaker 1: Day eighty eight that student asked you how they could
Speaker 1: ease your pain, and I can imagine that the outpouring
Speaker 1: of support from people near and far must have been
Speaker 1: helpful and overwhelming in just a mix of feelings. Did
Speaker 1: you feel supported by people? Were you frustrated by what
Speaker 1: people were saying to you? Could you even deal with
Speaker 1: somebody else's feelings?
Speaker 2: I was very grateful. I think all of us, all
Speaker 2: of the families, were tremendously grateful at the outpouring of
Speaker 2: really kind, manevolent people saying what in the world can
Speaker 2: we do? We really want to help. I personally had
Speaker 2: a problem which I still do to this day, and
Speaker 2: I admit that it's my problem. I actually remember when
Speaker 2: I was in high school and my mom said, now,
Speaker 2: if you ever break up with someone, you always have
Speaker 2: to say it's not you, it's me. She said, it
Speaker 2: will be them, but you can't say that because it
Speaker 2: will hurt them. But I am telling you this problem,
Speaker 2: it really is me, which is people would say to me,
Speaker 2: how are you? And to this day it's the most excruciating,
Speaker 2: confusing question that I get. Because when Hirsh was being held,
Speaker 2: I felt like my leg was in one of those
Speaker 2: old fashioned like bear traps, like these teeth were chopping
Speaker 2: into my skin and tearing my tendons. And for someone
Speaker 2: to say how are you, I felt was like cruel
Speaker 2: and perverse, but really they meant it in a very innocuous,
Speaker 2: even kind hearted way. I didn't know how to answer,
Speaker 2: and I still don't know how to answer. I say,
Speaker 2: do you not see that there's a knife sticking out
Speaker 2: of my heart right now? I mean, how can you
Speaker 2: ask me how I am? It's like walking by someone
Speaker 2: in the middle of being raped and saying how are you?
Speaker 2: Like it just seems so perverse, and yet people don't
Speaker 2: see it. It's not their fault. And I said, someone asked,
Speaker 2: what does this book do? And I said, I think
Speaker 2: I'm trying really hard to show you this knife. Like
Speaker 2: how do you explain to someone who's been blind their
Speaker 2: whole life what blue is? It's very difficult, but I'm
Speaker 2: trying to show you blue. I'm trying to show you
Speaker 2: this pain. And I do have to figure out how
Speaker 2: do I answer that question. Recently, I was talking to
Speaker 2: a journalist who said how are you? And so I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll tell the truth. I said, I'm suffering, and he
Speaker 2: went huhuh, no, really, how are you? And I said,
Speaker 2: I'm really suffering. So then we hated each other and
Speaker 2: we had to start, you know, this conversation. But I thought,
Speaker 2: when you're asking someone in grief, mourning loss and suffering
Speaker 2: how they are, you're putting them in a situation where
Speaker 2: either they tell you the truth and then you feel terrible,
Speaker 2: or you're making them lie and they have to say, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm getting there. I'm you know, one day at a time,
Speaker 2: or you know, trying to breathe or whatever. Again, this
Speaker 2: is part of my problem because I know another mother
Speaker 2: who lost her daughter since October seventh, and she told
Speaker 2: me that when she goes to the grocery store, if
Speaker 2: people don't ask her how she is, it hurts her. So,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a really tough tightrope for kind, caring,
Speaker 2: sensitive people to try to walk.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about how you wrote the book,
Speaker 1: because you mentioned that you were writing it in the pain,
Speaker 1: and the way you wrote it showcase that to me,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of moments of these staccato sentences
Speaker 1: and space. I almost felt your breath sometimes in that space.
Speaker 1: Why write the book in such dire pain?
Speaker 2: I think it was very much honestly self serving. I
Speaker 2: was choking. I was drowning, in suffering, in severe thorny molasses,
Speaker 2: thic suffering, and I was choking like I felt like
Speaker 2: I was barely alive. And John said to me, you
Speaker 2: mean to get this out. I mean I was literally
Speaker 2: like my throat felt closed. And so I think in
Speaker 2: a way it was giving the Heimlich to myself. And
Speaker 2: I'm very honest about it in the book. You know,
Speaker 2: I said in the beginning, I am still underneath this truck,
Speaker 2: like I've managed to get one arm out, and I'm
Speaker 2: typing with one finger hunt and peck. I have no perspective,
Speaker 2: I have no panoramic distance from this trauma, from this
Speaker 2: I know there are people who wait and then they're
Speaker 2: able to sort of collect their thoughts and really give
Speaker 2: a real sort of comprehensive and smooth explanation of what
Speaker 2: they're grappling with. I didn't have the time or the
Speaker 2: privilege of the time of that, because I was drowning.
Speaker 2: And so that's why I'm also careful. You know, this
Speaker 2: is not a memoir, this is not a tell all,
Speaker 2: this is not he did this. And she said that
Speaker 2: this is not. I was down here and beaten down
Speaker 2: and now I'm up here. You know, this is the
Speaker 2: road to recovery and resilience, none of that. I wish
Speaker 2: it's not what it is. I think it's what a
Speaker 2: lot of people want it to be, because people want
Speaker 2: all of us who are broken to be better. And
Speaker 2: that idea, I think is so complicated because again it
Speaker 2: comes from such a good nugget of a place. And
Speaker 2: yet I was speaking to this young woman who was
Speaker 2: explaining to me, Oh, that kind of rhetoric of you know,
Speaker 2: you'll get there and you're going to be better, This
Speaker 2: forced betterness, this forced language of resilience is actually toxic positivity.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, my gosh, you're a genius, and
Speaker 2: she said, no, no, it's an actual term. I didn't
Speaker 2: come up with it, but I had never heard it before.
Speaker 2: So I put it on to her and think she's
Speaker 2: a genius. And then I walked home obsessed with this idea,
Speaker 2: which I think we do a lot because we're so
Speaker 2: scared of pain in Western civilization, in our culture, so
Speaker 2: afraid of pain that you know, it's blocked out. This
Speaker 2: is probably part of the opioid crisis, is like we
Speaker 2: don't want to feel anything bad, and I think it's
Speaker 2: actually emotionally barbaric. It's emotionally gaslighting to people who are
Speaker 2: really in pain. And I'm not just talking about people
Speaker 2: who've buried people core to their identity and existence. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about people who all of us are carrying something
Speaker 2: that's very painful. That's part of the human enterprise, that's
Speaker 2: what happens to us. So I went home and I
Speaker 2: googled what is the antidote? What is the opposite of
Speaker 2: toxic positivity? And I find this term that's called tragic optimism,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh my gosh, beauty, I love it.
Speaker 2: That's me because I am an optimist, but I am
Speaker 2: enrobed in tragedy and I'm okay with that. And then,
Speaker 2: of course you may have heard me talk about this,
Speaker 2: but I said, who came up with that, right, because like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's my new identity. Who coined that term? And it
Speaker 2: was Victor Frankel, who you know, I love well hersh
Speaker 2: loved Victor Frankel too. While he was in captivity, he
Speaker 2: would say he who has a y can bear anyhow,
Speaker 2: which is a line from Victor Frankel's book Man search
Speaker 2: for meaning. You learned from another hostage, or who had
Speaker 2: three days with hersh in captivity, what his spirits were like,
Speaker 2: and or said that he was laughing at some points
Speaker 2: and really emboldening people with Victor Frankel's line.
Speaker 3: Did you feel a sense of pride?
Speaker 2: I did, and I also felt a sense of comfort
Speaker 2: and consolation, knowing first of all that he wasn't broken.
Speaker 2: My assumption was that he was broken. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: his mother. I see this horrible video. I know from
Speaker 2: intelligence sources they were telling us that they were starving,
Speaker 2: they were being tortured, any little bits of information that
Speaker 2: we were getting, which was not very much, and it
Speaker 2: was months apart. So my assumption was that he was broken.
Speaker 2: I knew he had this horrible injury. And then to
Speaker 2: hear from or Levy, whose name means light, to hear
Speaker 2: that Kirsch made him laugh. Herst shared his mantra from
Speaker 2: Victor Frankel, which is actually a riff on something Frederick
Speaker 2: Mietsche originally said, and then having Eli Shaarabi also talk
Speaker 2: about her sharing that mantra as well with him. It
Speaker 2: gave me back a little piece of another piece of
Speaker 2: being here in this.
Speaker 1: World, something that stood out to me and so many
Speaker 1: people watching you as you went through the three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty days, is that you were able to carry
Speaker 1: multiple truths at one time. You would cry out for
Speaker 1: the pain that you were feeling, your pain for wanting
Speaker 1: to get Hirsh home, and you would also cry out
Speaker 1: for the pain that the mothers in Gaza were feeling.
Speaker 3: And it was particularly striking, not.
Speaker 1: Just because I think that was so hard for anybody
Speaker 1: to do in that moment, but you had a son
Speaker 1: in Gaza being held captive. Why was it important for
Speaker 1: you to speak that way consistently.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that we are endowed with intelligence and
Speaker 2: insight and wisdom, and we actually have the ability to
Speaker 2: hold multiple truths. And this adversarial paradigm that we have
Speaker 2: constructed that it's them versus us or Team A or
Speaker 2: Team B has not served us well. And I wanted
Speaker 2: people to try to really not allow that line to
Speaker 2: be demarketed. I from the beginning was saying, it's not
Speaker 2: like such a crazy statement. It's just that I think
Speaker 2: maybe it was a voice that was not so commonly heard,
Speaker 2: but I was saying, I am extremely worried and concerned
Speaker 2: about the innocent civilians in Gaza and not but and
Speaker 2: I'm extremely worried and concerned about the innocent civilians in
Speaker 2: Gaza who were dragged there on October seventh. You can
Speaker 2: hold both of those ideas. And I actually had read
Speaker 2: a piece by a journalist early on before I went
Speaker 2: to speak at the UN the first time on day eighteen,
Speaker 2: and he said, if you only cry when one sides
Speaker 2: babies die, it means that your moral compass is broken,
Speaker 2: and therefore your humanity is broken. And I remember thinking,
Speaker 2: I really pray that. I don't know how long this
Speaker 2: is going to take, but I don't want my humanity broken.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking recently because I was reading an
Speaker 2: article and there was a picture and it was of
Speaker 2: someone who did not look like me, and he was
Speaker 2: not from my neck of the woods. And I started
Speaker 2: crying because it was a picture of someone who had
Speaker 2: lost his family, and I was so relieved. I thought, well,
Speaker 2: thank God that my moral compass is still calibrated. It
Speaker 2: doesn't mean like I'm this awesome person. I'm a normal person.
Speaker 2: It's just calibrated, like when you start with weighing something,
Speaker 2: that the scale should start in a fair and balanced way.
Speaker 2: And it was for some reason, something that people were
Speaker 2: very surprised to hear.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you something, and if you don't
Speaker 1: want to answer, I understand when people ask you why
Speaker 1: this happened to your son? What do you say?
Speaker 2: You know? I'm a religious person, a person who really
Speaker 2: feels a closeness to this idea of God. I think
Speaker 2: that's a really loaded term God. We all have different
Speaker 2: ideas of what that means. But I feel very much
Speaker 2: that we are all one little stitch in a massive
Speaker 2: tapestry that we are generally not privy to understand and
Speaker 2: see the whole entire work. We can't see everything, and
Speaker 2: so we see our little circle that we have our
Speaker 2: vision honed in on, and we don't have perspective. And
Speaker 2: I think a lot about how growing up in Chicago,
Speaker 2: my mother took me to the art Institute often. She
Speaker 2: really wanted me to be cultured. And her favorite painting
Speaker 2: was by George Sarrah and it's a pointless painting. So
Speaker 2: she would put me, now they have ropes, you're not
Speaker 2: allowed to go as close as we used to go.
Speaker 2: I actually think they put those ropes up because of us.
Speaker 2: They were like that lady keeps putting her daughter right
Speaker 2: next to the painting, and she would say, what do
Speaker 2: you see? And I would say, oh, it's blurry, It's
Speaker 2: just it's picks. I wouldn't say it's pixelated, but I'm
Speaker 2: telling you it was just pixelated. It was just dots
Speaker 2: of gray and red and blue and green, and I
Speaker 2: couldn't make sense of it. And then she'd say, close
Speaker 2: your eyes and take fifteen steps back. I don't know
Speaker 2: why fifteen, but that was her number, and open your eyes,
Speaker 2: and then I would see this magnificent masterpiece in front
Speaker 2: of me. When you're very close to something, you just
Speaker 2: see the confusion and the chaos. I feel very blessed
Speaker 2: that I had hersh only blessing. What happened for those
Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty days before he was killed was
Speaker 2: obviously twisted and torturous, and so much anxiety and misery
Speaker 2: and very difficult to describe in words. And yet I
Speaker 2: also realized it was a privilege to try to save him.
Speaker 2: I realize that now because usually in life, you know,
Speaker 2: when we really love people, we say like, I would
Speaker 2: do anything for you, but we very rarely have to.
Speaker 2: And we really tried to do every single thing we
Speaker 2: possibly could, things I still can't talk about that we did,
Speaker 2: and then he was killed and not everyone has had
Speaker 2: that opportunity before they lose someone they love to share
Speaker 2: them with the world, to try so hard to save them.
Speaker 2: Many people have done that. I have friends who have
Speaker 2: lost their children to cancer. They tried so hard to
Speaker 2: save them. And I am able to see, even with
Speaker 2: this excruciation of suffering and mourning and loss and grief,
Speaker 2: that there's a how to the why that I have
Speaker 2: to carry and figure out. And I know that I
Speaker 2: could have just been a mother to two vivacious, dynamic,
Speaker 2: delicious daughters, which is what I have now. I have
Speaker 2: very good friends that also just have two daughters. They're perfect,
Speaker 2: they're complete, nothing's missing from their family. But we got
Speaker 2: this additional, magnificent, glorious cookie for twenty three years and
Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty four days. And I will pay
Speaker 2: with the pain that price of having had that transcendent gift.
Speaker 2: And so why did it happen that? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not privy to that, but I really believe that
Speaker 2: it is part of a plan. It doesn't exonerate or
Speaker 2: give a pass to the people in power and in
Speaker 2: places of influence who could have done things to save him.
Speaker 2: It doesn't give them a pass, but I really believe
Speaker 2: there's a much larger picture, and I am thankful that's
Speaker 2: how I see it, because I think that even with
Speaker 2: all the suffering that I'm bearing, it would be almost
Speaker 2: impossible if I didn't have that kind of perspective on
Speaker 2: what I see as having happened to us.
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel's name comes up in the book and is
Speaker 1: intertwined with Hersh's story. And my grandma was a Holocaust survivor,
Speaker 1: and I picture Hersh's face. I feel, you was killed
Speaker 1: because he was Jewish?
Speaker 2: It was. And you know in Yadvishem Holocaust Museum that's
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem, in the old entry hall, it's now been redone,
Speaker 2: there used to be a quote on the wall that said,
Speaker 2: a person who's killed because he is Jewish is called holy.
Speaker 2: If you're only killed because of that one reason, it's holy.
Speaker 2: And I think that Kirsch very much was holy. I
Speaker 2: think that the beautiful sixth were holy. Edin, Carmel, alex
Speaker 2: Almo Orie who he was killed with, were holy. I
Speaker 2: think the forty six who were killed in total in
Speaker 2: captivity were holy. I think the people who were killed
Speaker 2: in the Holocaust were holy, and that's also a hard
Speaker 2: word holy. You know, we'll say things like oh, it
Speaker 2: means hallowed or sacred. Really holy in Hebrew means separate, different,
Speaker 2: and they were separate and different.
Speaker 1: You write, our spirits were mangled, and our hearts were stolen,
Speaker 1: our life was stolen. There is nothing like the feeling
Speaker 1: of putting someone you carried for nine months inside of
Speaker 1: your body into the ground.
Speaker 3: I've noticed when you talk about the pain, you touch
Speaker 3: your chest very often.
Speaker 2: My therapist said that too.
Speaker 1: Really, yes, what does it feel like to carry this
Speaker 1: around every single day?
Speaker 2: I think it's exhausting and confusing and a gift because
Speaker 2: it is that love. And I'm very aware that pain
Speaker 2: is grief, and grief is love that continues to grow
Speaker 2: after the person is gone, and that's really beautiful and
Speaker 2: that is never going anywhere. The love that is stronger
Speaker 2: than death. That's really just this absolutely shining idea. And
Speaker 2: I love that because I think I talked to Anderson
Speaker 2: about this that I think hate Peter's out I really do.
Speaker 2: I think that the strongest force that outlives time and
Speaker 2: outlives death is love. It's such a privilege. So I'm
Speaker 2: not good at this. I'm very turned inside out, and
Speaker 2: I'm ugly in terms of like pulsing and oozing and bleeding.
Speaker 2: I'm a wounded animal because I love him and I
Speaker 2: love him the second and he's right here.
Speaker 3: You can feel him still.
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure, all day, I mean, And that's what's exhausting.
Speaker 2: And John and I talk about that all the time. Again,
Speaker 2: we're not unique millions of people. I'm only familiar with
Speaker 2: bearing a child. I've been blessed. I haven't buried parents.
Speaker 2: I have half siblings who are alive. You know, I
Speaker 2: did bury grandparents, but I think that I very much
Speaker 2: expected that one day I was going to bury them,
Speaker 2: and I had wonderful relationships with them, and nobody had
Speaker 2: a horrible death. So this is a really challenging weight
Speaker 2: that I will always carry. And what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: try to aim for and aspire to is to figure
Speaker 2: out how do I carry it a little less clunkily
Speaker 2: and a little bit more gracefully. But I will always
Speaker 2: have it, and I actually feel really privileged.
Speaker 1: He who has why can bear anyhow is it insane
Speaker 1: to ask you what your why is?
Speaker 2: Now? We're trying very hard to figure it out. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think, to me, it's clear that part of our
Speaker 2: why is to pick up Hersh's why and keep running,
Speaker 2: even though I think he did his why. That's why
Speaker 2: he's not here anymore, you know. And I say at
Speaker 2: one point in the book, because when the final hostages
Speaker 2: came home who were alive, a lot of people said
Speaker 2: things to me of the genre of it should have
Speaker 2: been Hersh. It's not fair. How is it not him?
Speaker 2: And I said, he's not supposed to be here. And
Speaker 2: the way I know he's not supposed to be here
Speaker 2: is that he's not here. You know. I also get
Speaker 2: a lot of solace from this idea that the patriarch
Speaker 2: of Jewish mysticism, the Balshemtov, was once asked why do
Speaker 2: souls come to this world, this messy, tricky, difficult, complex place, like,
Speaker 2: what is the point? Why are we here? And he said,
Speaker 2: every soul comes to this world so that one day
Speaker 2: that soul can do one act of kindness for one
Speaker 2: other person and that's it. That doesn't mean you don't
Speaker 2: have to be doing thousands of acts of kindness throughout
Speaker 2: your life. You do, and to improve things and to
Speaker 2: live a life of meaning. But it means that really
Speaker 2: there is one thing in your lifetime, one thing, and
Speaker 2: it could just be smiling at someone who no one's
Speaker 2: gentle with. And I thought to myself, could it be
Speaker 2: that Hirsch did his kindness when he was two and
Speaker 2: we were living in Berkeley, or when he was six
Speaker 2: and we were living in Richmond, Virginia. Or when he
Speaker 2: was fifteen and we were living in Jerusalem, or when
Speaker 2: he was twenty three and he was in a tunnel
Speaker 2: under Ratha. I don't know, but it occurred to me
Speaker 2: maybe I already did my kindness when I was twelve
Speaker 2: years old, So why am I still here? And I
Speaker 2: realized maybe someone else has to do their one kindness
Speaker 2: to me when I'm eighty eight. So I have to
Speaker 2: stick around because that's the synergy of this enterprise, of
Speaker 2: being interwoven in the human tapestry of life. And what
Speaker 2: I do know for sure is Hirsch did his kindness,
Speaker 2: and he did his Why Rachel, thank you so much?
Speaker 2: Thank you. Danielle.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day,
Speaker 1: to have a good day. I'll see you next week.