By Barb Arland-Fye
Editorial
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a mother who has cried millions of tears, wrote a poem conveying heartfelt empathy and hope that she shared with the United Nations on the 67th day of her beloved son Hersh’s captivity in Gaza. Rachel’s poem calls for compassion in its focus on nurturing relationships instead of vengeance, bitterness or dehumanization. It is a call for each one of us to take up in every interaction and encounter we experience.
Participants of another assembly heard Rachel’s poem, “One Tiny Seed,” during a memorial service Oct. 7 at Beit Shalom Jewish Community in Davenport, marking the one-year anniversary of the horrific attack by Hamas against Israel. In her poem, Rachel imagines another mother, “way over there … who looks just like me because we are all so very similar and she has also been crying.”
Rachel wonders whether she and the other mother can gather up their tears, “remove the salt and pour them over our desert of despair and plant one tiny seed. A seed wrapped in fear, trauma, pain, war and hope and see what grows?” Who among us hasn’t experienced fear, trauma and pain? A war of some sort, loss, and yes, hope? How might we plant one small seed and water it with our tears to see what might grow? Friendship, collaboration, fairness, hope born of faith in our God and growing into agape love?
This hopeful mother Rachel imagines sitting 50 years from now with the other mother. They laugh together, enjoying each other’s company in old age, content in knowing that their sons are living long lives and have blessed them with grandchildren. This vision should inspire us toward a paradigm shift that embraces an attitude of abundance and generosity, of community and fraternity, of trust and not suspicion.
Hersh was 23 years old and enjoying a concert celebrating peace, love and unity when terrorists abducted him and others from multiple locations along the border with Gaza — 251 people of different religions, ages and countries. A video clip from that murderous attack shows Hersh, with part of his left arm missing.
Rachel and her husband, Jon Polin, an Israeli-American couple, appealed publicly and persistently for the safe return of not just their son but of all the hostages. “There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East,” Jon said in a PBS NewsHour clip of the couple addressing the National Democratic Convention in August. “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.” He said a Jewish tradition views every person as an entire universe. “We must save all of these universes.”
During her speech to the UN marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Rachel asked her audience to imagine their loved ones as the hostages. “Look at their photos, read their names, and then replace their names with the names of your own daughter, son, father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, grandparent” (The Forward, 12-12-23, https://tinyurl.com/bdf52t7w).
Have we lost the ability to empathize? We need to exercise the muscles that build empathy by imagining a political opponent, a prisoner, an immigrant, an individual with a disability, someone struggling with mental health issues, an unborn child, as one of our loved ones. We need to exercise empathy on our social media platforms and in our interactions with people who offend or slight us at work, school, home, parish and store.
A Catholic mother from our diocese born and raised in another country posted on Facebook that someone asked her teenage daughter at a public event, “So, do you eat cats and dogs?” The mother observed, “Racism exists everywhere, but people seem to be a lot bolder about it these days … at the heart of it all, we are all human, deserving of dignity and respect. I could simply ignore the thing and move on, but surely we can raise our children to be better and do better.” Her post serves as a reminder to set an example for children, our own and others, on how to treat one another with respect and dignity.
Hersh didn’t return home alive. He was among six hostages killed shortly before the Israeli army attempted to rescue them 11 months after their abduction. Imagine that we are the grieving parents, siblings or other loveds one left behind. Do we respond with vengeance and bitterness or strive to plant a tiny seed from our sorrow and water it with our tears and a commitment to work for justice that will foster peace?
Barb Arland-Fye, Editor
arland-fye@davenportdiocese.org
