— Mirrorball, Taylor Alison Swift (2020)

🥺❤️

“oh, since the day i saw you i have been waiting for you. you know i will adore you ‘til eternity.”

“and they called it puppy love” 🐾

had to go to the store and did not get this but did i look at it? yes

Jewish Journal

Hersh and a Story of Love

He was everyone's Hersh.

He was everyone’s Hersh.

Hersh’s charismatic smile let you know he was, as his mother Rachel described, a “happy-go-lucky, laid back, good humored, respectful and curious person.” He was, as the death announcement put it, “a child of light, love and peace.” People were drawn to the story of a young man who loved soccer and music, had a passion for geography and travel, who had just gone to six music festivals in Europe over the span of nine weeks.

And then came October 7th. Hersh’s last messages to his family, at 8:11 AM on October 7th, were “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”

Hamas kidnapped 251 hostages that day. But a statistic doesn’t ignite the same passion as an actual person; and through Hersh, the world connected to all of the hostages. Heads of state spoke about Hersh. At the Democratic National convention many in the crowd openly wept for Hersh, and chanted “bring them home.” His image was posted everywhere; “Bring Hersh Home” was graffitied on walls and printed on posters. Tehillim groups prayed for Hersh, and a Sefer Torah was written in his merit.

And after Hamas murdered Hersh, millions of people cried; and they cried for all of the hostages, including [those] who remain in captivity.

Hersh’s story is one of love. His parents Rachel and Jon Goldberg Polin advocated for him 24/7. Despite their overwhelming pain, what Rachel called “our planet of beyond pain, our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears,” they found the superhuman strength to advocate every single day, to remind the world how many days it was since Hersh was held captive. Rachel and Jon traveled everywhere to do everything and anything possible to bring him home.

Most of all they told the world how much they loved Hersh, and got the world to love Hersh as well. Even at the funeral, with an otherworldly expression of spiritual strength, Rachel declared that “I am so grateful to God, and I want to do hakarat hatov (offer gratitude) and thank God right now, for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh…. For 23 years I was privileged to have this most stunning treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.”

The Rambam says that when you truly love someone “you will recount their praises and call on other people to love them.” And that is what Rachel and Jon did.

Love has its limits. At Hersh’s funeral, the speakers apologized to him for being unable to bring him home; sadly, this immense outpouring of love could not accomplish what everyone desperately wanted. But the Song of Songs says “love is as strong as death.” Jon declared at the end of his eulogy that Hersh’s memory “can begin a revolution.” And without question that is what love can do.

Love is belittled because it is bewildering. It is immaterial, a force that ought to be reckoned with but cannot be measured. Charles Darwin wondered whether altruism would disprove his theory of natural selection; to sacrifice oneself for others contradicts a theory based on a single-minded pursuit of survival. (A person of faith grappling with the same question would see the traces of a divine love tucked away in the DNA of the universe.) From a political standpoint, love is the frail runner up to raw power. Machiavelli wrote that “it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.” In a world about survival and strength, love is seen as the veneer that covers up far uglier forces.

Judaism sees love as the very center of the universe. There are commandments to love God and to love all of humanity, both one’s neighbor and the stranger. Hillel explained that the entire Torah can be reduced to the commandment of loving others; one first experiences the divine in interpersonal connections, and only from there does the rest of the Torah become comprehensible.

The world begins with love; the Book of Psalms (89:3) says “the world was created in kindness.” Rav Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto see love as God’s very motivation in creating the universe. Love becomes the spiritual blueprint for all of existence.

The very human love we have for others reflects this larger divine love. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook offers a fascinating perspective on Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, a biblical book written in the style of a love song. In the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva already reinterprets Shir HaShirim as a metaphor of the love between man and God; ordinary love songs don’t belong in a holy text. Rabbi Kook offers a fascinating reinterpretation of Rabbi Akiva, and explains that the ordinary love songs in Shir HaShirim are actually a small-scale reflection of the greater love between man and God; and that is because our “ordinary” loves are not ordinary at all. All loves lead one to the divine.

It’s difficult to talk about love at a time of war. Love sometimes requires one to go into battle to protect one’s family, reluctantly but resolutely. But that is not at all the goal; Isaiah dreamt of a world where the swords are beaten into plowshares. War is our nightmare; the dream is peace, of each person sitting contentedly under their own vine and own fig tree.

And that is the love we continue to search for, an otherworldly force that will transform history. Rachel explained that Hersh had a unique ability to bring people together that he had “befriended… German (soccer) fans over the years when they visited Jerusalem to watch their team play soccer. Together they painted a peace mural with both Arab and Jewish residents near our home in Jerusalem…” One prays for the day when this will be more than a mural.

Judaism proudly asserts the power of love. Machiavelli’s approach is tempting; sometimes all that matters is pure strength. But the mistake is that brute force works for a generation or two, until there’s a crisis. Then the fear disappears, and the ruler is deposed. Power is as finite as those who wield it, grasped tightly by princes whose lives are short and temporary.

To survive for a generation or two, one needs power; to survive for millennia, one needs love. And that is the story of Jewish history. Jews are a people who never quit because they had a passion for God, Torah and the Jewish people. The love Jews around the world had for Hersh (who was named for a great-uncle who perished in the Holocaust) is part of this same never-ending story. The Jewish people are living proof that love can outlast power.

The day of Hersh’s funeral, several posts on social media reported about children being named Hersh in the memory of Hersh Goldberg Polin z”l. These were not relatives or even acquaintances of the family. Just ordinary Jews who cared, and wanted Hersh’s legacy to continue onward. They were naming their children after a man they loved but never knew.

They were sharing Rachel and Jon’s remarkable love for Hersh with their own family.

And in doing so, they were starting a revolution of love once again.

May Hersh’s memory be a blessing, and a revolution.

though this is from September, I had never read it until last night, and I think we need it this week.

Moodboard: Art Appreciation - Autumn.

❝This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared.❞

trouble is, idk what to do with the fear that we're going to wake up to seeing people dragged out of their homes and shot in the streets around the world, like that feasibly feels like a thing that is coming. and that will be justified by the left when it does

eta: i am not being overdramatic, as an example:

Marilyn Monroe at the Plaza Hotel Fountain in New York City (1957). Photo by Sam Shaw.

got our car back after $3600 worth of work, now all we can do is hope it’s fixed and continues to drive.

went with my mom to a follow-up emergency appointment about the awful wound that developed after the treatment on her arm, and they think the reason it reacted so badly and painfully is because she has cancer. apparently the cryotherapy tends to anger/activate those cells and bring them to the surface. they did a biopsy, we’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks and how to proceed with treatment from there. my dad’s been having a rough time with his lately, so praying anything with my mom won’t be too aggressive, but it’s impossible to know yet.

every day i have to see horrific things and people being unmasked ghouls with unleashed hatred on here and it is a terrible place. so. my heart is broken.

this, seemingly like all my other blogs (RIP 💀) was a bit of a failed experiment, i am taking a break for the foreseeable future. it could be short of long. tbh it seems extremely pointless to keep going or even try being here, and at the present moment, i cannot imagine feeling anything but despair if i am on here during the holiday season, and i simply would rather not do that. i need to have the energy to focus on my mom and help her in any way feasible, and my health has been taking extreme turns for the worse all year, i am more physically fragile than i have been in quite a while. the last three weeks have been the most unbearable i have ever spent online and living in this state is unsustainable. idk when/if i will feel like coming back more regularly, considering the atmosphere. my overall engagement and interaction will probably not be the same, it's just what it is. please remember that i tried. i tried so much harder than you realize. take care 💙