JTA
Last Shabbat in my Jerusalem synagogue, I began to see our complex world anew</
Jon Polin
September 4, 2025

…During my year of mourning since our son Hersh was killed in captivity in Gaza, I accepted the custom to not lead prayer services as the shaliach tzibbur on Shabbat or holidays. I’m not a particularly good shaliach tzibbur anyway, but I am generally willing. When Aharon the gabbai (who organizes the services) approached me as I was absorbing the photos and teachings on the wall and asked me if I would lead the opening part of the service, the Psukei D’zimra, I was thrown momentarily. I hadn’t performed any formal task at my synagogue since the cursed morning of Oct. 7, 2023, when I was in the role that Aharon is in today, gabbai. Was I now ready to take this step out of formal mourning? “OK,” I said, and I got up and started. “Rabbi Yishmael says on 13 principles the Torah is interpreted…” READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s father asks Netanyahu to stop ‘taking credit’ for his return Polin added that before Hersh’s murder, “a negotiated deal was possible to release a number of hostages, including Hersh and at least three others of the five with whom he was held,” and blames Netanyahu for instead deciding to “continue with the risky military operation in Rafah.” That decision, he said, led to the execution by their captors of Hersh and the five hostages he was held with — Carmel Gat, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi, and Alex Lobanov.

YNET ‘Let leaders decide who in their family will suffer hunger and torture in a tunnel—or take their place’ Despite the relentless toll of their grief clock, they do not shy away from words. Instead, they face, with a kind of reverent fear, the weighty questions that have been forced upon them—just like the reality they never chose, since that cursed morning when terrified children huddled in a shelter that became a death trap. They have no privilege of escape, no way to flee a calendar closing in on them: on one side, news of the looming operation to capture Gaza City; on the other, the first memorial marking the day their son was murdered by his captors.