Mother of American hostage who was murdered by his Hamas captors thanks YU graduates for their love and support during commencement speech. ‘In this life, we are what we do.’
At Yeshiva University’s commencement ceremony last week, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli hostage who was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza last summer, delivered a powerful and deeply emotional keynote address, drawing from her family’s personal tragedy to offer graduates a call to unity, purpose, and action.
Addressing the graduating class, she opened with words of admiration and appreciation. “Graduates, you wise, passionate, brave, intentional young people. First, thank you. Thank you for being with us, and with the hostage families from day one,” she said. She praised the students for rising above communal differences and standing with those in pain, emphasizing that they did not hesitate due to differing religious practices or outlooks.
“You never stopped and said, ‘They don’t look like us, they don’t have our exact shita or hashkafa. Their shul does things differently than our shul.’ No—you looked at what connects us,” she said. “You said: your agony is my agony, your pain is my pain, your son is my mother’s son, and so your son is my brother.”
She connected this to the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible, which will be read during the Shavuot holiday next week. “Like Ruth in the Megillah that we will read next week, you said, ‘I will not leave you. Even after your son died, I bind myself to you.'”
Goldberg Polin highlighted gratitude as a core Jewish value, saying, “It’s the essence of being Jewish, right? The shoresh—the root—is being thankful. And I thank all of you.”
She also extended condolences to other bereaved families, the families of the two victims of last week’s terrorist shooting at a Jewish museum in Washington DC, noting, “My heart and soul are with Sarah and Yaron’s family today. ‘Min hashamayim tenuhamu.’ And they did everything right.”
In closing, she offered the graduates a profound life lesson forged in the depths of her family’s suffering: “We—people—we are not what we say, we are not what we think, and we are not even what we believe. In this life, we are what we do.”
In her final charge to the graduating class, she told them: “Go, you shining lights of wonder. Go be our North Stars. Go be our beacons. Go be our hope. There is a whole world out there awaiting your arrival. So go, you beautiful people—go and do.”
Her words were met with a standing ovation and tears from the students and faculty.
