Hersh Goldberg-Polin is on chapter six of the book “The Art of Happiness.”
The 23-year-old dual US-Israeli citizen left the tome on his nightstand on Oct. 6, 2023, when he left his family’s home in Jerusalem to attend the Supernova Music Festival near Kibbutz Re’im.
In the early hours of Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists stormed the festival, killed 370 people and took 44 more hostage – including Hersh.
Six months later, he and 133 others are still held captive in the Gaza Strip.
“We are still in a state of incomprehension,” Hersh’s mother, Rachel Goldberg, told The Post.
During a recent visit to The Post’s offices, Rachel and her husband, Hersh’s dad, Jon Polin, both wore pieces of tape with the number 182 – the precise number of days since their eldest child and only son was taken.
The pair – who met as children in Chicago and moved to Israel when Hersh was seven – were in New York as part of their ongoing effort to secure the release of Hersh and the remaining hostages.
‘’It’s totally unacceptable that it’s six months, and we’re not yet seeing any real traction on getting our loved ones home,” Jon said.
On the day of the interview, the couple was frustrated to hear that President Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly did not mention the hostage issue.
“There should not be a political conversation happening about the region that does not immediately call for the release of all the hostages today,” Jon insisted.
“There are eight US citizens [held hostage]. We actually do know that three of them are dead. We don’t know the fate of Hersch and the other four. How in the world is that not an immediate topic?” Rachel added.
Follow along with The Post’s coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas
Politicians in the US – including Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken – have met with the hostage families several times, but leaders in Israel have been less available, Jon said.
“All of us – our political leaders, across Israel, across the US, Hamas, Egypt, Qatar – we’re all failing [the hostages],” he lamented.
“It’s unthinkable that they’re there 182 days in. And what scares me is how recently it feels like we’re getting further away from the elusive goal of bringing them home.”
Goldberg and Polin’s tirelessness, they explained, is a matter of survival – not just Hersh’s, but their own.
“At a certain point, we did realize that hope is mandatory, optimism is mandatory,” Rachel said. “We’re trying to save our son’s life, we’re trying to help save the lives of all of the hostages who are still alive.”
“It is so hard to focus on anything that is not immediately directly connected to activities to bring Hersh and the other hostages home,” Jon added.
“I don’t have the ability to let my mind go and do something else.”
Rachel has not listened to music, eaten sugar, put on makeup or jewelry, or even worn her hair down since Oct. 7.
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Even consuming food, she said, feels “perverse” in the face of her son’s suffering.
The family is haunted by the last known video of Hersh, which showed him being forced at gunpoint into the back of a pickup truck driven by Hamas attackers who had just killed several other festival goers – including his friend, Aner Shapira.
Hersh’s left arm – his dominant one, Rachel pointed out – had been torn off from the elbow down.
“It’s the kind of video that no person in the world should ever have to see, and would ever want to see, about their loved one. To see your loved one covered in blood, with a limb missing, at gunpoint, being put on a truck, is a horrifying image,” Jon said.
As the war in the Gaza Strip becomes increasingly mired in global politics, Rachel and Jon speak to the borderless tremors of its human costs, including both the suffering of the hostages and Gazan civilians.
“I have thought all along and still think now that the real people who are suffering are the normal, regular, everyday people. And that’s on both sides,” Rachel told The Post.
Amid their daily agony, Rachel and Jon delight in recalling memories of their son, whom they described as a “laidback” and “funny, but not clownish” young man with an insatiable curiosity about the world around him.
“He’s wild about soccer, wild about music festivals…he’s a voracious reader,” Rachel gushed, before launching into memories of a boy who devoured library books on topics ranging from the US presidents and the Civil War to Buddhism.
Hersh was named after Rachel’s great-uncle, who was murdered in the Holocaust. In the months since his abduction, the family has received support from his soccer friends in Germany.
“I have talked about the irony that it would be unimaginable 80 years ago to think that the people who would be trying to save his life the most in all of Europe would be the descendants of people who, 80 years ago, were really trying to see the end of Jewish people,” Rachel pointed out.
“And it also gives me some form of hope to think maybe, 80 years from now, Hirsch’s grandchildren and the grandchildren of Gazans will be friends and advocating for each other,” she said.
Rachel and Jon spoke to The Post a few weeks before Passover, the Jewish holiday that marks the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt.
They are holding out hope that he will return to his family in time for the holiday.
“We plan to have [Hersh] home, at our table,” Rachel said.
Then, of course, he will get to finish “The Art of Happiness.”
