Rachel Goldberg-Polin stood before a Houston audience Sunday night and admitted she still does not know how, or whether, the prayer she wrote for her son was ever answered. Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack alongside 250 others, held captive for almost 11 months, and then shot to death in a tunnel in Rafah along with five other hostages. His mother's appearance opened the 54th annual Ann and Stephen Kaufman Jewish Book & Arts Festival, a two-week run of author talks, film and live theater presented by Houston's Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center.
A Festival Built Around One Difficult Conversation
According to the Houston Chronicle, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon Polin, were the first guests booked for this year's festival, according to festival chair Michelle Moses. The couple spoke at the request of community members, the Chronicle reported, and their visit anchored a lineup that festival organizers hoped would feature a diverse range of authors' and artists' voices. The event ran Nov. 1-15, according to the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center of Houston, which also organizes the festival.
Festival materials described the opening-night program as a powerful and poignant conversation built around Goldberg-Polin's book, “When We See You Again,” as detailed by jhvonline.com. The conversation was moderated by Bobby Lapin, national president of the American Jewish Committee, per the community center's event listing, which also noted that tickets were not sold at the door and that the off-site location was shared only with ticket holders beforehand.
A Family That Became the Face of the Hostage Movement
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin became the global face of the movement to bring hostages home after their son was taken, according to the community center. Amy Rahmani, the center's arts and culture director, said many Americans felt a deep personal connection to Hersh and his parents following the family's many news interviews and meetings with U.S. and international officials, the Chronicle reported. Hersh was kidnapped Oct. 7, 2023, and killed in Gaza nearly a year later, as NBC News has reported.
Goldberg-Polin's memoir opens with a quote from a Los Angeles rabbi: “Words are redemptive.” She told the audience that the phrase had become, for her, a kind of prayer for her son's salvation and survival. Even now, she said, she does not know how or whether that prayer was answered.
'I Don't Know' as an Honest Answer
Marcy Laviage, a Houston psychologist and mother of two sons in their 20s, attended Sunday's talk and told the Chronicle she was struck by Goldberg-Polin's raw honesty and her refusal to offer a tidy answer or solution. “'I don't know,' I think, is the most honest and courageous thing to say,” Laviage said. Laviage recalled joining a Zoom call with friends shortly after learning of Hersh's death, saying the conversation gave her space to grieve him.
The Chronicle also reported that Hersh was remembered as a curly-haired, clumsy 23-year-old who once invited every one of his classmates to his bar mitzvah so no one would feel excluded.
Jewish Joy Alongside Hard History
Michelle Moses said festival organizers wanted to uplift joy and hope while still acknowledging the fallout of Oct. 7 and rising antisemitism, according to the Chronicle. The festival's programming, Moses said, aims to balance creativity, humor, tradition and joy with difficult conversations and historical topics. jhvonline.com separately reported that this year's theme centers on Jewish joy, with the festival calling it something especially personal and important to its leadership.
Moses told the Chronicle that many Jews have increasingly felt they do not belong or are excluded since Oct. 7. That sentiment lands against a national backdrop: the Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic assault, harassment and vandalism incidents across the country in 2025, an average of 17 per day, according to the ADL. The ADL said that figure was 33% lower than 2024 but still ranked as the third-highest annual total since it began tracking incidents in 1979.
What's Still to Come
Festival organizers had sold about 3,900 tickets so far, Rahmani told the Chronicle. The lineup beyond opening night includes Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller, known for “Rent” and “Hamilton,” discussing his memoir “Theater Kid,” and NBC News president of editorial Rebecca Blumenstein discussing “The Last Free Women,” a book she co-wrote about the New York Times helping evacuate four Afghan women after the Taliban takeover in 2021. A cooking class and brunch on Nov. 8 will feature Rebekah Lowin, whom Moses described as the “Jewish Martha Stewart,” cooking recipes from Lowin's book “A Year of Jewish Joy.”
