Part of intuitive living is dealing with grief. In the grief process, you learn more about yourself, your family, and your support network than you ever believed possible. You learn about the strength of love, the strength of siblings, the strength of community. How much pain a heart can bear and still survive.
Sometimes grief is national, something we all share. Such is the case with Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who died in captivity after enduring unimaginable torture.
When I first heard he died, it felt like the day of my sister’s wedding.
Two weeks before, my little niece had died for unknown reasons.
My brother couldn’t attend the wedding because he was in aveilus. My grandfather had died just a few weeks before. Fast forward some seven years and my mother died and her funeral took place on a Tuesday, two days before the birth of my son.
And now we arrive at the current crisis to hit Am Yisrael, the death of the six hostages.
My heart can’t hold so many emotions at once.
My soul is underwater. I can’t think. I can’t breathe.
Six innocent hostages who suffered for nearly a year were found murdered.
As we drive to a wedding—a very important wedding—not the wedding of a relative, but someone who means a lot to me, I know we are meant to rejoice, yet we are also in mourning. Somehow, while we are mourning, we are rejoicing through the pain because if we can’t or won’t, they win.
I’m not a woman of few words. Whenever I fall silent, my husband asks me what’s wrong. But in moments like these, I cannot think. I cannot speak. I cannot breathe. My usual existence comes to a halt. A standstill. As if I’ve left my body and entered into an entirely new reality.
I knew there was a strong chance that Hersh was no longer alive, but I prayed every day that he’d return alive and well. In my refaenu, I’d say his name, Hersh ben Perl Chana. I heard his mother Rachel saying it was like he was right out of the shtetl. I listened and watched Rachel every single day since October 8th. I’ve never seen anyone so strong in the face of so much adversity. I wondered how she had the ability to stand strong and tall and speak with such eloquence and dignity to the world.
I asked Hashem. I wondered at the extraordinary Kiddush Hashem that would happen if we all watched Hersh being reunited with his mother.
When I checked the news for the hundredth time on Motzaei Shabbos and saw Hersh named as one of the hostages that had been killed, I felt my knees weaken.
Every single hostage is a life. And no one life is more important than the other. I think we all felt somehow much more united with Hersh because his family let us in and introduced us to him. We knew who he was through his family. People gave the name “Hersh” at many different coffee shops around the world to keep his name alive.
Now is not the time to say “G-d has a plan.” Even if we believe that in our logical brains, now is the time to cry and weep. To feel the grief and loss we all suffered as a nation and really as a world.
Don’t we all believe in a better world? A civilized world? Aren’t we all against the killing of innocent lives? Where have our paths crossed? Where have they been broken? Where do we go from here?
Rachel got up at her only son’s funeral after almost a year of not knowing if he was alive or not. And if he was alive, if he was being tortured. She started off by being thankful!?
I cannot begin to comprehend her greatness. I really can’t understand how someone can be so strong.
I never met Hersh. I don’t know his family. I have never lost a child and I don’t wish that on anyone. I can’t imagine even a tiny percentage of their pain. But I do know grief. I know what it is like to lose someone from your nuclear family. And this feels eerily similar, even if I don’t know his family personally.
But I do know them. I really do. We all do. K’ish echad b’lev echad. One person, One heart. That is the Jewish people. That’s who we are and have always been.
Like a family sitting shivah for seven days, not engaging in normal activity, so too, I feel we cannot. I cannot.
I keep scrolling on Instagram and the news, looking for information. Bargaining. I guess I am in the stages of grief like all of you:
“G-d, if we start doing x, will they be alive now?”
“G-d, if we had done such-and-such, would they be rescued?”
Your mind can’t stop. It keeps saying the same thing over and over. Ruminating. I haven’t found the magic words that I’m looking for. I really have nothing more to add to what everyone else has written. I feel some level of strength seeing everyone posting the same thing in solidarity, in unity, with love.
I too, send my love, I send comfort. I have no more words left. Hashem Yikom Damam. Baruch Dayan Haemes. We don’t say, “I send my condolences.” We say, “Blessed is the true judge.”
It hurts as I write this. It’s hard to bless Hashem when you are in so much pain. But if Rachel can, on the day of Hersh’s funeral, then I will too.
Thank you, Hashem, for bringing them into the world. You are the true Judge.
I know nothing. I understand nothing. Please bring Mashiach now and turn these days of mourning into days of rejoicing. n
Gila Glassberg lives in Woodmere and is a registered dietitian and a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. Her nutritional counseling approach is weight-neutral and body positive, based on intuitive eating principles. Through years of counseling and teaching, she has developed a personalized approach to help each client improve her relationship with food and ultimately, with herself. She can be reached at 570-878-3642 or via email at gila@gilaglassberg.com.
