Rachel Goldberg Polin on Fiddler’s Roof
“May the Lord protect and defend you. May the Lord shield you from shame,” the Shabbos song from Fiddler on the Roof rang out into the Toronto theatre the night I recently joined a sold out crowd to hear Rachel Goldberg Polin, mother of Hersh, z”l. No, the music did not play in the somber auditorium where Ms. Goldberg Polin spoke from her soul about the grief of losing her twenty-three-year-old son who was cruelly murdered while in captivity in the tunnels of hell in Gaza. Rather, it was belted out in the theatre directly below us, where an exceptional production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish was taking place simultaneously. Jewish history all in one venue, a tel of our present atop our past.
The Goldberg Polin event was sponsored by Chabad on Bayview Avenue, so while actors were dressed up in long black coats, tsitsis and peyos below us, the Chabad rabbi stood in his black suit and beard introducing the evening, pondering how we might find a place between heartache and hope. It was the question the star of the show, Tevye asked too. “How do we keep the balance?” The answer from both men -Tradition. While Tevye and crew sang of bubbes and zaydes and sons and daughters, we were shown a Chabad video of much the same, a community of Jews young and old who found joy in their Jewish lives by coming together in celebration and sanctification.
Indeed, Goldberg Polin herself spoke about her own meaningful journey to tradition when as a teenager she began attending an Orthodox high school. “I had found the perfect life,” she told the audience, referring to the Jewish life she had built for herself upon embracing an observant lifestyle. An eerie proclamation, given how a nightmare unfolded for her and her family on October 7. It was also the beginning of a collective nightmare, as Jews across the world learned of the horrors that ensued in Israel and were drowned by a tsunami of antisemitism in its aftermath. Still, hearing the reflections and insights into what it means to be with pain and loss from the woman from Chicago who never dreamed of becoming an iconic figure in the face of grief, was like a salve to our still open wounds. Despite her very personal, ongoing, deep pain, her generosity of spirit permeated our own souls. She was a body starving and depleted, but still offering her precious crumbs of sustenance, her wisdom, to us, the needy. “You don’t get through grief,” she instructed the moderator and all who were listening. “You get different.”
Today, as Diaspora Jews, we have gotten different. No longer can we walk into a Synagogue, Jewish cultural event, day school, and even our own neighborhoods, without being vigilant, aware, eyes scanning billboards, electricity polls, bus stations for new evidence of graffiti, stickers and words of hatred. We create WhatsApp groups. We share articles. We proudly wear Magen David necklaces. We tell jokes to make light of dark times and share funny clips on social media. We profess love in the face of death and hate. We come together over and over and over again – to search for a lost child, to march against antisemitism, to knit scarves for hostages to wrap them in love, to bake challah loaves in support of the young men and women we’ve never met who protect our Israel. We write letters. We volunteer. We go to plays and film festivals and speakers we might not have given much thought to before because, now, they legitimize and strengthen us. And tradition, tradition is ultimately what binds us all, keeping us connected to something greater than ourselves, something historic, preventing us from crumbling apart.
Kol Yisrael Arevim ze la ze, all of Israel is responsible for each other, I learned in my youth, growing up in a Toronto that doesn’t exist anymore, its own Anatevke. Like so many Jews these days I, too, ask will I have to leave this country where I was born, where my family has lived for one hundred and twenty years? (Another irony. Ad meah v’esrim in Canada, and then what)? In these difficult times, when lines we didn’t ask for have been drawn around us, we have returned to what we once took for granted or blinked away. Like Tevye and his community, we face the same uncertainties -authorities who say they care but won’t take meaningful action against the threats against us, bystanders who continue to float along the rivers of their lives, offering a tepid nod here or there, (maybe), while the shoreline next to them of a secure Jewish community in this country erodes.
Grief is a badge of love, said Rachel Goldberg Polin, and loss is part of the human condition. That love is stronger than death, and that grief an extension of that love, she offered in her resonantly distinctive, calming timbre. And so, we Jews prevail, wearing the badge, loving each other when we flock to Jewish speakers, walk for Israel, write to our politicians, check in with each other (did you hear what happened at McGill, Kehillat Hatorah, Shaarei Tzeddek, OCAD and on and on…?), proudly declaring our right to exist, loudly responding to the daily threats we face. And yet, there is also a sameness. Though many of us thought for a time we were different than our parents’ generation, our grandparents’ and definitely our great-grandparents’ generations (mine were murdered in a pogrom in Russia), we are an extension of them in the same way grief is an extension of love, in the same way Fiddler is being enacted below while on the roof above it, we are living out our own Fiddler story.
Rachel Goldberg Polin must be right about love. It can grow in the face of loss, death, hatred. Recently, a friend who isn’t Jewish shared a podcast from Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast entitled Love and Judaism. This was an act of love. Some months ago, this same friend took the time to email me and ask ‘what can I do, how can I be of support in these terrible times for Jews?’ and that, too, felt like love. This week I listened to that podcast where Ms. Tippet interviewed Rabbi Shai Held who published a novel called Judaism is About Love. More than an hour went by before the question of how to love our enemy specifically post October 7 was broached. To any Jew listening, this was the elephant in the living room of the show. As I understood it, Rabbi Held said roughly this: Loving your enemy is caring enough about them to pray that they gain insight into their hateful feelings and actions and understand their impact. Easy? No, but I wonder, how else do you draw a line back from hatred to humanity. As a therapist who has worked with many children over the years around the issue of bullying, I have learned that it is only when the bully understands, with compassion, the impact of their actions on the victim that a bridge of repair can transpire. “Are you angry?” the moderator asked Rachel Polin Goldberg to which she adamantly responded, “I’m not angry…I don’t know why.” Instead, modelling moral clarity, she asked what kind of humanity she would have if she couldn’t cry for all dead babies.
Like the Fiddler on the roof, we are in a shaky time, but we will persevere, finding that delicate balance that has led so many of us to cling harder to our Jewish identities, to our Judaism, our lifeline. Goldberg Polin said her love for her son Hersh is like a plant that is ever growing and changing shape. Perhaps, so, too, are all of us Jews since October 7 like plants. We draw sustenance from our roots while we change and grow and forever position ourselves to face the light.
