JERUSALEM — Rachel Goldberg-Polin has released her memoir "When We See You Again," recounting her grief and advocacy after her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was abducted from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023 and killed nearly a year later. The book, written from her home in Jerusalem, traces the family's campaign for the release of the 251 hostages taken into Gaza by Hamas.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin was at the festival near the border with Gaza when Hamas attacked, killing 378 people at the site and wounding hundreds more. He took shelter in a bomb shelter with more than two dozen people, including his friend Aner Shapira, who threw back at least ten grenades before being killed. After being severely wounded by a grenade, Hersh Goldberg-Polin was forced into a pickup truck and driven into Gaza with three other hostages. He sent his mother two messages that morning: "I love you" and "I'm sorry."

After the abduction, Goldberg-Polin began wearing a piece of tape on which she wrote the number of days since the hostages were taken, placing each piece on a wall in her apartment. She met with the pope and world leaders and gave hundreds of interviews during the campaign.

On day 201 of the hostage crisis, Hamas posted a propaganda video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. On day 328, Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin joined other hostage families in screaming their loved ones' names into a microphone toward Gaza. That was the day Hersh Goldberg-Polin was murdered by Hamas. His body was found in an underground tunnel in Rafah on August 31, 2024, shot six times at close range.

In February 2025, Hamas released Israeli hostage Or Levy, who had spent time in a tunnel with Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Levy met with Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin five days after his release and told them that Hersh had laughed, smiled and repeated the mantra "He who has a why can bear any how." Levy said the mantra saved his life. "The only reason why I survived was him," Levy said. He also told Rachel Goldberg-Polin she was her son's "why" and that Hersh had heard her voice on the news after she spoke to the U.S. secretary of state. Levy had the phrase tattooed on his arm shortly after he was freed.

Goldberg-Polin said her understanding of grief has evolved. "Sometimes 100% is not enough," she said. Earlier this year, she took the tape pieces down after the body of the last hostage was returned to Israel in January. The ball of tape now sits in her son's room, which she has otherwise kept as he left it. "When I look at the pieces of tape, I see symbols of failure," she said. "What we were fighting for did happen. We got all of these people home, not as we wanted. We wanted them home, alive, but they had come home."

In the memoir, Goldberg-Polin writes that "the pain is chronic, ever-present, constant. Gnawing. Circular, not linear." She said her understanding of grief had changed. "I was dreading and uncomfortable with grief," she said.