When We See You Again by Rachel Goldberg-Polin

Author:Rachel Goldberg-Polin [Goldberg-Polin, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2026-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

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Everything changed because of that meeting with Or. A shaft of light, a sliver of Or, cracked open into our pitch-blackness. That single slice of a tiny flame made me want to understand what I was still doing here.

Or had given Jon and me such solace. We knew that Hersh, after all he had been through, was somehow able to remember wisdom that had helped another Jew, from another time in history, to endure and survive another chapter of the unimaginable. I wanted that book.

Two days after meeting Or at the hospital, I was at Lynne’s house. I walked past a windowsill and my eyes rested on a slender book lying alone on its side. It was Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl.

How odd, I thought.

“May I borrow this?”

Lynne, of course, said yes. I sat down that night to begin reading it.

Of the hundreds of printings and editions of this esteemed book, this particular copy had an introduction written by Rabbi Harold Kushner, a teacher I have admired for many years.

Rabbi Kushner explains that Frankl’s book is less a Holocaust memoir, per se, than an explanation of the sources of strength one needs to survive any genre of suffering.

The moment I read that, I realized this book and its lessons were a gift from Hersh. Because I would never have picked up this book if Or (and later Eli) had not shared that Hersh was quoting from it.

Now I use the book Hersh used to help himself and others—to help myself make meaning out of the colossal anguish and hardship of life without him.

Most people think of Hersh as having been one boy in this whole wide world, but as a mother, I saw the whole wide world in that one beloved boy.

From the day I found it, I’ve always traveled with this book. (Thank you, Lynne, for saying I could keep it.) It is never far if I need it; like when one brings Advil everywhere, just in case.

The main tenet of Frankl’s philosophy is that every person’s challenge in life is to find meaning. He says this can be done in one of three ways: through one’s life work, through one’s relationships, and after experiencing extreme suffering. Well, sign me up for number three.

I read Man’s Search for Meaning over and over again, searching in those pages. I need to know, what is my WHY ?

And once I think I know it, how am I going to do it?

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