Dearest Rachel and Jon,

Yesterday you buried your son, your beautiful boy. You made it your job for 330 days to tell us all about Hersh, and we got to know him thanks to you. You told us about his sweetness and his respectfulness, who he was and what mattered to him. When we learned how much he loved music and travel and that he had plans to see the world, those plans became our aspirations for him as well.

Jonathan Polin (C-L) and Rachel Goldberg-Polin (C-R), parents of murdered American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, hold hands with their daughters during the funeral procession in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. Gil Cohen-Magen/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Most of all, you shared your love for him, and in doing so you helped us love him even though most of us never met him.

In so many ways, your faces became the faces of this past year of desperation and small miracles. 

You did not lose hope, so we did not lose hope. You carried us across an abyss of brutality with your clarion calls for his freedom and freedom for every hostage. You were at once ethereal and practical, strong and vulnerable. Your objectives danced between the particular and the universal. You explained your pain, injected us with optimism and charged us to join you. We were tasked to do everything we could to confront suffering with enhanced political activism, depth of spirit and love for each other. Resignation was never an option. Defeat was not in your vocabulary.

So, we thought, somehow, we would all meet Hersh soon. Maybe tomorrow. Just one more day. 

We’d wake up one morning, this wonderful news splashed across our screens, and we would dance in our kitchens and sing at our tables. On his world tour, Hersh would stop by our communities and let us celebrate him. He would thank us for joining his parents in the fight of a lifetime, and we would feel that in this broken world of misery and terror, we were able to accomplish one little thing which is really a great big thing: his release. We owed it to you as an extended family. It’s just what a mishpacha does. 

Rachel and Jon, we are so sorry.

We let you down. We did not exert enough pressure. We did not do enough to fight the evil, to salvage human life and bring your sweet boy home. It was the least we could do, and yet our American optimism was no match for the monster that is Hamas terrorism. 

Virtually every time you spoke or wrote, you used the words “now” and “in the blink of an eye,” as if fate could change in a moment like Joan Didion describes in The Year of Magical Thinking: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner, and life as you know it ends.”

Fate changed the families of so many on the cruel morning of Oct. 7, and yet there have been many magical moments since then and you taught us to see those moments, too. Acts of abundant and gratuitous kindness saved us from the brink of despair even when despair kept finding us. 

The Talmud uses the expression “blink of an eye” to describe the liminality of twilight. Twilight and dawn are complex times in Jewish law: Because they are neither day nor night, they may carry the legal status of both day and night and their attendant obligations.

The Sages then pause their debate to pose a fundamental question: What is twilight? They conclude that twilight is exactly when “the sun sets, as long as the Eastern sky is still reddened by the light of the sun. The lower part of the sky is colorless, and the upper part has not yet lost its color” (Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 34b). Twilight begins when color is drained from the sky.

Yesterday, watching you from all over the world, we saw the color drain from the sky as you stood among thousands of mourners on Har Hamenuchot. Then we watched the crowds stream into the late sun of Jerusalem at the end of the day. The end of the summer. Another goodbye.

Twilight is such a peaceful time, and part of its beauty lies in its temporality. In his poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Robert Frost writes: 

“Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.”

Nothing gold can stay. The sun sets, and the day is gone. Hersh is gone. Grief lingers. Our hearts are broken. 

What is distinctive about twilight, states the Talmud, is its uncertainty. It contains elements of both night and day. The sages of the Talmud then ask how long it should take for the sky to transition from day to night. Rabbi Nehemya argues that it lasts as long as it takes a person to walk about a mile after the sun sets. Rabbi Yossi claims it happens in the blink of an eye. Night enters. Day leaves. It is impossible to calculate due to its brevity.

Jon and Rachel, you had 23 extraordinary years with Hersh. It really was a blink of an eye, but that blink was filled with a vitality and urgency to embrace life. You told us to hold on tightly to our blessings. You inspired us to use our energy and vigor for good. You taught us that even in the dark of night, there is still room for affection, friendship and gratitude. You girded us with strength for the hard months ahead. You have been magnificent teachers. Please know that we listened. We are here for you now. We are here for you always.

“Redemption comes in the blink of an eye,” Midrash Lekach Tov states (on Esther 4:17). We will keep praying and protesting, writing and working towards the redemption of every last hostage in Hersh’s name and dedicate acts of goodness in his memory. 

His memory will always be a blessing.

Erica Brown is the vice provost for values and leadership at Yeshiva University and the founding director of the university’s Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership.