Rachel Goldberg-Polin on Being a Tragic Optimist + Why Love Is the Strongest Force We Have

27:54and it's a line that says, I am grateful to you, creator of the universe, for giving me back my soul. You have tremendous faith in me, which I love because normally I think the dynamic that we learn is that we're supposed to have faith in God and yet the very first thing we're supposed to say is, wow, I'm back today. You have faith in me. I'm not done. My soul's back. So I would say that line and then I would say, hope is mandatory. It's not a suggestion. It's not advice. It's mandatory. Go. And I would fling the covers off and I would say, pretend to be a human. Just pretend. You don't have to really be human.

28:33You have to pretend to be a human because I wanted to lie on the floor in the fetal position weeping, but I knew that he was in agony somewhere and that wasn't going to help. And so we really pushed ourselves. You know, we were exhausted and miserable and truly tormented. I mean, I've aged so much in the last two and a half years, as has John, as you mentioned, I say it in the book, like I'm very honest about it. I mean, my body died. I never got my period again. I've never colored my hair. So I had gray in my hair before, but I have a ton of gray in my hair. And, you know, I've never worn makeup again.

29:07I've never worn jewelry again. Like I'm very much a wounded, damaged person. I'm very much a disordered person, but I think that it makes sense given what we went through. And then, you know, that was 330 days of immense, exhausting, beseeching, begging, scraping, pleading, running, burning. And then the angels of death came to our door to tell us that Hirsch had been murdered. So, you know, that was going through yet another big frame into this other very unknown place. When you saw him and you saw that video of him being loaded onto the back of a truck and his arm had been blown off by a grenade.

29:52I know you were so happy that he was alive and to know that, but what was it like to see your son that you had cooked in your belly with no arm? It was shocking and confusing. And I only watched it once. John actually watched it many times because he derived a lot of strength from it. He said he's walking on his own two feet. No one was dragging him. He uses his non-dominant arm to get himself up into the pickup truck. The other young men were lying down. They were very badly wounded. He was obviously very badly wounded. He was also burned. And yet he was sitting up. He chose to sit up and he puts his head down in the crook of what's left of his arm.

30:37John derived a lot of strength from that. And interestingly, there is a continuation of that video that I only saw once. And it was after he was killed. On the ride to Gaza, one of the gunmen who had stolen him grabs him by the head. He has his head down. He's lost a lot of blood, so he was probably very lightheaded. Grabs him by the hair and pulls him up and says into the camera, take a selfie with me. And what I love about that moment, and I've only seen it once, is Hirsch looks right into the camera. Defiant. Yeah. I loved it. Even though I was horrific. He was obviously in complete shock and horror and trauma.

31:20He had just witnessed 18 young people get murdered in a five foot by eight foot tiny shelter. I mean, picture your bathroom with 26 people smashed in, including Anir, who had been standing in the door trying so hard to save these people, throwing out grenade after grenade as they were coming in. And finally, they killed him. And Hirsch saw that. And we also know that those two texts that we got from him were after his hand was blown off. And so he thought he was dying. And I think about that was how he chose to say goodbye, that a lot of parents tragically had recordings of their children screaming.

32:01screaming i mean imagine how the structure of your being in this world changes when you hear your children screaming as they're dying and that's the last thing you hear he chose not to record to us he just said i love you and i'm sorry because he knew we were going to be in terrible pain i was just going to ask you what do you think the i'm sorry was he knew we would suffer terribly and he's right and interestingly i know this is jumping ahead but someone pointed out to me and And I didn't realize I had done this, but they played it for me that at Hirsch's funeral, when they were putting him into the ground.

32:37And, you know, in Israel, when they bury people, we don't use coffins. So he was just wrapped in a shroud, which is like a sheet. And you could really see the contour of him. And as they were putting him into the ground, his body, I went like this and I screamed, I'm sorry. I don't remember doing that. But someone said that there's a symbiosis. That was the last thing he said to you. And that's the last thing you said to him. So amazed by you. You never cry in interviews. It's so rare. Well, I think it's actually really sad because it just shows how broken I am. Like it's a very human, healthy response.

33:13But I also think that I've cried so much. You know, I'm not all here. Part of me is already in the world to come with hers. And so I'm not normal. And I referred to it earlier that I read an article by the American Psychiatric Association a few weeks ago that said, if you're still grieving after six months, then you have a disorder. And I was like, I have a disorder. And I'm actually very proud of this disorder. It's called I Still Love My Son. The love is still here. Love is stronger than death. But I am disordered. I mean, I think of in Chicago growing up, there were always those parking meters.

33:50I don't know if they have them here in LA, but they were always broken. And so my mom would always leave a note on the parking meter saying, the meter is broken, don't give me a ticket. And I feel like the meter was disordered, like it was out of order. And I feel like that, like I am broken, don't give me a ticket. And dis in Latin means the opposite of. So I'm the opposite of order. I mean, it's not that I'm unique, because there are millions of people who have buried their children. But that does feel the opposite of the order that I would have preferred.

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36:45I've watched, I think, almost every interview you've done. And no matter how long a journalist has been doing their job, Anderson Cooper, Bionna, no one can get through an interview without crying. And I'm really wondering how you feel watching other people in pain over pain that only you can really understand. I actually really think it's a beautiful human response. I think people really grew to love Hirsch and love a lot of people. We love a lot of people that we've never met. And during the really shocking, sticky, tricky days that we were trying so desperately to save Hirsch and these other hostages, the world grew to love a lot of those hostages without ever having known them.

37:32And 46 of those hostages who were taken alive were killed in captivity. And there are people all over the world who grieved for them and continue to grieve for them because they grew to love them. And I think that there's something really powerful and uniting about that, that you can love people that you never met and you can grieve people you never met. So when I've had these experiences speaking to people and they have the right human, empathetic, kind, merciful, compassionate, graceful response, I think it's the most beautiful personification of the human experience. You started wearing a piece of tape every day that Hirsch was gone.

38:15It was 330 days. And what began as a marker became something that the world really came to recognize. Do you remember the first day that you put it on? I put it on the first day on day 26. And it was because it was driving me to insanity that we were doing 10 to 15 media clips a day because we speak English. So we became very much sort of an easy go to. There were plenty of families that were speaking many different languages because, you know, the original cohort was from more than 30 different nationalities. There were Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. So there were people speaking all over the world in all different languages.

38:59But because we were English speakers, we were speaking a lot to the international English speaking media. And the first question was always, how many days has it been since you've spoken to your son? And I just thought, I can't take this anymore. I remembered being a little girl in Chicago one night wandering out of bed. I couldn't sleep. And I wandered into our living room and my dad was watching the news. And it was ABC News. And there was a show called Nightline. And there was a man, an anchor named Ted Koppel, who had this big head of gingy red hair. And he had behind him numbers. and I said to my dad what is that number and he said that's the amount of days that hostages have been held in Iran and he explained to me and I was nine years old I was a little girl and he explained to me because I didn't know what a hostage was and I didn't understand what had happened and I thought back to that and I thought I'm going to be the human nightline Ted Koppel counter and I went and got tape and I also thought there was something very accountable Everyone had to do what felt good to them.

40:07You know, some people wore a necklace, some people wore a bracelet, some people wore a ribbon. Everybody did what spoke to them. To me, it was very important to show the failure of another day, that the number changed every day, that my prison number changed every day. I was in prison and I remember on day 88, which I talked about in the book, that I was speaking to a group of college students and a young man raised his hand. and it was the most gorgeous question, but it broke me. He said, what can we do to ease your pain? And no one had asked me that in 88 days. And I started crying and I put my hand on the number and I said, and it sounds so naive now thinking back.

40:52I said, if God forbid we get to day 100, please don't make me be the only person on earth wearing this tape. And by the afternoon, the woman who had organized that trip sent me a picture on WhatsApp of the 100 students on that trip. After lunch, they were all wearing 88. They had started on that day. And we had on day 100, over a million people sending us pictures, selfies of them. And they had started wearing the tape and starting on day 100 around the world. And, you know, this crossed all barriers. It was people of all different backgrounds, all different belief systems, all different brands and textures and colors and faiths and philosophies.

41:38And everyone was just trying to come together in this painful, out-of-the-ordinary situation by doing something symbolic of saying, we are with you and the days are moving. We were trying so desperately hard and we continued wearing that tape. We buried Hirsch on day 332. And you can see pictures of us, you know, standing there burying him and we're wearing the number. And we kept wearing the number until day 843 when the final hostage was returned back so his family could bury him. You say on day 88 that student asked you how they could ease your pain. And I can imagine that the outpouring of support from people near and far must have been helpful and overwhelming and just a mix of feelings.

42:30Did you feel supported by people? Were you frustrated by what people were saying to you? Could you even deal with somebody else's feelings? I was very grateful. I think all of us, all of the families were tremendously grateful at the outpouring of really kind, benevolent people saying, what in the world can we do? We really want to help. I personally had a problem, which I still do to this day. And I admit that it's my problem. I actually remember when I was in high school and my mom said, now, if you ever break up with someone, you always have to say, it's not you, it's me. She said, it will be them.

43:06But you can't say that because it will hurt them. But I am telling you this problem. It really is me, which is people would say to me, how are you? And to this day, it's the most excruciating, confusing question that I get. because when Hirsch was being held, I felt like my leg was in one of those old-fashioned bear traps, like these teeth were chopping into my skin and tearing my tendons. And for someone to say, how are you? I felt was like cruel and perverse, but really they meant it in a very innocuous, even kind-hearted way. I didn't know how to answer and I still don't know how to answer.

43:46I say, do you not see that there's a knife sticking out of my heart right now? I mean, how can you ask me how I am? It's like walking by someone in the middle of being raped and saying, how are you? Like, it just seems so perverse. And yet people don't see it. It's not their fault. And I said, someone asked, what does this book do? And I said, I think I'm trying really hard to show you this knife. Like, how do you explain to someone who's been blind their whole life what blue is? It's very difficult. But I'm trying to show you blue. I'm trying to show you this pain. And I do have to figure out how do I answer that question.

44:27Recently, I was talking to a journalist who said, how are you? And so I thought, OK, I'll tell the truth. I said, I'm suffering. And he went, no, really, how are you? And I said, I'm really suffering. So then we hated each other. And we had to start, you know, this conversation. But I thought when you're asking someone in grief, mourning, loss and suffering how they are, you're putting them in a situation where either they tell you the truth and then you feel terrible or you're making them lie. And they have to say, oh, OK, I'm getting there. I'm, you know, one day at a time or, you know, trying to breathe or whatever.

45:04Again, this is part of my problem because I know another mother who lost her daughter since October 7th. And she told me that when she goes to the grocery store, if people don't ask her how she is, it hurts her. So, you know, it's a really tough tightrope for kind, caring, sensitive people to try to walk. I want to ask you about how you wrote the book because you mentioned that you were writing it in the pain. And the way you wrote it, showcase that to me, there are a lot of moments of these staccato sentences and space. I almost felt your breath sometimes in that space. Why write the book in such dire pain?

45:47I think it was very much honestly self-serving. I was choking. I was drowning in suffering, in severe, thorny, molasses-thick suffering. And I was choking. Like, I felt like I was barely alive. And John said to me, you need to get this out. I mean, I was literally, like, my throat felt closed. And so I think in a way it was giving the Heimlich to myself. And I'm very honest about it in the book. You know, I said in the beginning, I am still underneath this truck. Like I've managed to get one arm out and I'm typing with one finger, hunt and pack. I have no perspective. I have no panoramic distance from this trauma, from this hit.

46:30I know there are people who wait and then they're able to sort of collect their thoughts and really give a real sort of comprehensive and smooth explanation of what they're grappling with. I didn't have the time or the privilege of the time of that because I was drowning. And so that's why I'm also careful. You know, this is not a memoir. This is not a tell all. This is not he did this and she said that. This is not I was down here and beaten down and now I'm up here. You know, this is the road to recovery and resilience. None of that. I wish. It's not what it is. I think it's what a lot of people want it to be, because people want all of us who are broken to be better.

47:19And that idea, I think, is so complicated because, again, it comes from such a good nugget of a place. And yet I was speaking to this young woman who was explaining to me, oh, that kind of rhetoric of, you know, you'll get there and you're going to be better. This forced betterness, this forced language of resilience is actually toxic positivity. I was like, oh, my gosh, you're a genius. And she said, no, no, it's an actual term. I didn't come up with it, but I had never heard it before. So I put it on to her and think she's a genius. And then I walked home obsessed with this idea, which I think we do a lot because we're so scared of pain in Western civilization, in our culture.

48:03So afraid of pain that, you know, it's block it out. This is probably part of the opioid crisis is like we don't want to feel anything bad. And I think it's actually emotionally barbaric. It's emotionally gaslighting to people who are really in pain. And I'm not just talking about people who've buried people core to their identity and existence. I'm talking about people who all of us are carrying something that's very painful. That's part of the human enterprise. That's what happens to us. So I went home and I Googled what is the antidote? What is the opposite of toxic positivity? And I find this term that's called tragic optimism.

48:44And I was like, oh my gosh, beauty. I love it. That's me. because I am an optimist, but I am enrobed in tragedy. And I'm okay with that. And then, of course, you may have heard me talk about this, but I said, who came up with that, right? Because like, wow, that's my new identity. Who coined that term? And it was Viktor Frankl, who you know I loved. Well, Hirsch loved Viktor Frankl too. While he was in captivity, he would say, he who has a why can bear anyhow, which is a line from Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. You learned from another hostage, Orr, who had three days with Hirsch in captivity, what his spirits were like.

49:27And Orr said that he was laughing at some points and really emboldening people with Viktor Frankl's line. Did you feel a sense of pride? I did. And I also felt a sense of comfort and consolation, knowing, first of all, that he wasn't broken. My assumption was that he was broken. You know, I'm his mother. I see this horrible video. I know from intelligence sources, they were telling us that they were starving, they were being tortured, any little bits of information that we were getting, which was not very much. And it was months apart. So my assumption was that he was broken. I knew he had this horrible injury.

50:06And then to hear from Orlevi, whose name means light, to hear that Hirsch made him laugh. Hirsch shared his mantra from Viktor Frankl, which is actually a riff on something Friedrich Nietzsche originally said. And then having Ellie Sharabi also talk about Hirsch sharing that mantra as well with him. It gave me back a little piece of another piece of being here in this world.

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52:53Something that stood out to me and so many people watching you as you went through the 330 days is that you were able to carry multiple truths at one time. You would cry out for the pain that you were feeling, your pain for wanting to get her home. And you would also cry out for the pain that the mothers in Gaza were feeling. And it was particularly striking, not just because I think that was so hard for anybody to do in that moment, but you had a son in Gaza being held captive. Why was it important for you to speak that way consistently? Well, I think that we are endowed with intelligence and insight and wisdom, and we actually have the ability to hold multiple truths.

53:44And this adversarial paradigm that we have constructed, that it's them versus us or team A or team B, has not served us well. And I wanted people to try to really not allow that line to be demarcated. I, from the beginning, was saying it's not like such a crazy statement. It's just that I think maybe it was a voice that was not so commonly heard. But I was saying, I am extremely worried and concerned about the innocent civilians in Gaza. And, not but, and I'm extremely worried and concerned about the innocent civilians in Gaza. who were dragged there on October 7th. You can hold both of those ideas.

54:28And I actually had read a piece by a journalist early on before I went to speak at the UN the first time on day 18. And he said, if you only cry when one side's babies die, it means that your moral compass is broken and therefore your humanity is broken. And I remember thinking, I really pray that I don't know how long this is going to take, but I don't want my humanity broken. And I was thinking recently because I was reading an article and there was a picture and it was of someone who did not look like me and he was not from my neck of the woods. And I started crying because it was a picture of someone who had lost his family.

55:09And I was so relieved. I thought, well, thank God that my moral compass is still calibrated. It doesn't mean like I'm this awesome person. I'm a normal person. It's just calibrated. Like when you start with weighing something that the scale should start in a fair and balanced way. And it was for some reason, something that people were very surprised to hear. I'm going to ask you something. And if you don't want to answer, I understand. When people ask you why this happened to your son, what do you say? You know, I'm a religious person, a person who really feels a closeness to this idea of God.

55:50I think that's a really loaded term, God. We all have different ideas of what that means. But I feel very much that we are all one little stitch in a massive tapestry that we are generally not privy to understand and see the whole entire work. We can't see everything. And so we see our little circle that we have our vision honed in on, and we don't have perspective. And I think a lot about how growing up in Chicago, my mother took me to the Art Institute often. She really wanted me to be cultured. And her favorite painting was by George Seurat, and it's a pointillist painting. So she would put me, now they have ropes.

56:35You're not allowed to go as close as we used to go. I actually think they put those ropes up because of us. They were like, that lady keeps putting her daughter right next to the painting. And she would say, what do you see? And I would say, oh, it's blurry. It's just, it's pixelated. I wouldn't say it's pixelated, but I'm telling you, it was just pixelated. It was just dots of gray and red and blue and green. And I couldn't make sense of it. And then she'd say, close your eyes and take 15 steps back. I don't know why 15, but that was her number and open your eyes. And then I would see this magnificent masterpiece in front of me.

57:06When you're very close to something, you just see the confusion and the chaos. I feel very blessed that I had Hirsch. Only blessing. What happened for those 330 days before he was killed was obviously twisted and torturous and so much anxiety and misery and very difficult to describe in words. And yet I also realized it was a privilege to try to save him. I realize that now because usually in life, you know, when we really love people, we say like, I would do anything for you, but we very rarely have to. And we really tried to do every single thing we possibly could, things I still can't talk about that we did.

57:46And then he was killed. And not everyone has had that opportunity before they lose someone they love to share them with the world to try so hard to save them. Many people have done that. I have friends who have lost their children to cancer. They tried so hard to save them. And I am able to see, even with this excruciation of suffering and mourning and loss and grief, that there's a how to the why that I have to carry and figure out. And I know that I could have just been a mother to two vivacious, dynamic, delicious daughters, which is what I have now. I have very good friends that also just have two daughters.

58:27They're perfect. They're complete. Nothing's missing from their family. But we got this additional, magnificent, glorious cookie for 23 years and 334 days. And I will pay with the pain that price of having had that transcendent gift. And so why did it happen? That I don't know. I'm not privy to that. But I really believe that it is part of a plan. It doesn't exonerate or give a pass to the people in power and in places of influence who could have done things to save him. It doesn't give them a pass. But I really believe there's a much larger picture. And I am thankful that's how I see it. Because I think that even with all the suffering that I'm bearing, it would be almost impossible if I didn't have that kind of perspective on what I see as having happened to us.

59:27Viktor Frankl's name comes up in the book and is intertwined with Hirsch's story. And my grandma was a Holocaust survivor. And I picture Hirsch's face. I feel he was killed because he was Jewish. It was. And, you know, in Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum that's in Jerusalem, in the old entry hall, it's now been redone. There used to be a quote on the wall that said, a person who's killed because he is Jewish is called holy. If you're only killed because of that one reason, it's holy. And I think that Hirsch very much was holy. I think that the beautiful six were holy. Eddin, Carmel, Alex, Amog, Ori, who he was killed with were holy.

1:00:10I think the 46 who were killed in total in captivity were holy. I think the people who were killed in the Holocaust were holy. And that's also a hard word, holy. You know, we'll say things like, oh, it means hallowed or sacred. Really holy in Hebrew means separate, different. And they were separate and different. You write, our spirits were mangled and our hearts were stolen. Our life was stolen. There is nothing like the feeling of putting someone you carried for nine months inside of your body into the ground. I noticed when you talk about the pain, you touch your chest very often. My therapist said that too.

1:00:45Really? Yes. What does it feel like to carry this around every single day? I think it's exhausting and confusing and a gift because it is that love. And I'm very aware that pain is grief and grief is love that continues to grow after the person is gone. And that's really beautiful. And that is never going anywhere. The love that is stronger than death. That's really just this absolutely shining idea. and I love that because I think I talked to Anderson about this that I think hate peters out I really do I think that the strongest force that outlives time and outlives death is love it's such a privilege so I'm not good at this I'm very turned inside out and I'm ugly in terms of like pulsing and oozing and bleeding I'm a wounded animal because I love him and I love him this second and he's right here.

1:01:48You can feel him still. Oh, for sure. All day. I mean, and that's what's exhausting. I mean, John and I talk about that all the time. Again, we're not unique. Millions of people. I'm only familiar with bearing a child. I've been blessed. I haven't buried parents. I have half siblings who are alive. You know, I did bury grandparents, but I think that I very much expected that one day I was going to bury them and I had wonderful relationships with them and nobody had a horrible death. So this is a really challenging weight that I will always carry. And what I'm trying to try to aim for and aspire to is to figure out how do I carry it a little less clunkily and a little bit more gracefully, but I will always have it.

1:02:34And I I actually feel really privileged. He who has a why can bear anyhow. Is it insane to ask you what your why is now? We're trying very hard to figure it out. I mean, I think to me, it's clear that part of our why is to pick up Hirsch's why and keep running. Even though I think he did his why, that's why he's not here anymore. You know, and I say at one point in the book, because when the final hostages came home who were alive, A lot of people said things to me of the genre of, it should have been harsh, it's not fair, how is it not him? And I said, he's not supposed to be here. And the way I know he's not supposed to be here is that he's not here.

1:03:16You know, I also get a lot of solace from this idea that the patriarch of Jewish mysticism, the Baal Shem Tov, was once asked, why do souls come to this world, this messy, tricky, difficult, complex place? Like, what is the point? Why are we here? And he said, every soul comes to this world so that one day that soul can do one act of kindness for one other person. And that's it. That doesn't mean you don't have to be doing thousands of acts of kindness throughout your life. You do. And to improve things and to live a life of meaning. But it means that really there is one thing in your lifetime, one thing, and it could just be smiling at someone who no one's gentle with.

1:04:05and I thought to myself, could it be that Hirsch did his kindness when he was two and we were living in Berkeley, or when he was six and we were living in Richmond, Virginia, or when he was 15 and we were living in Jerusalem, or when he was 23 and he was in a tunnel under Rafa? I don't know, but it occurred to me maybe I already did my kindness when I was 12 years old, so why am I still here? And I realized maybe someone else has to do their one kindness to me. when I'm 88. So I have to stick around because that's the synergy of this enterprise of being interwoven in the human tapestry of life.

1:04:45And what I do know for sure is Hirsch did his kindness and he did his why. Rachel, thank you so much. Thank you, Danielle.

1:04:59Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day to have a good day. I'll see you next week.

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