SEPTEMBER 19 • 2024 | 5
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might bring more of the hostages 
home. Last month, after he told Time 
magazine (in English) that he was 
“sorry, deeply, that something like 
this happened” on Oct. 7, many of 
his critics found his words, absent 
a call for a full accounting of what 
went wrong, inadequate. 
“He’s sorry, as if he was someone 
from the United Nations who was 
unconnected to the event,” wrote 
Nehemia Shtrasler, a columnist for 
the left-wing Haaretz newspaper.
Danya Ruttenberg, an American 
rabbi and author of On Repentance 
and Repair, a book about apologies 
and forgiveness, said there is a differ-
ent valence to “I’m sorry” depending 
on the speaker.
When a government official says it, 
she said, “it’s both a lovely sentiment 
and kind of meaningless, because 
what would they have done differ-
ently? Is it, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t have 
saved your child,’ or is it, ‘I’m sorry 
we prioritized X, Y and Z and we 
should have made other choices’?”
By contrast, “when you have pro-
testers saying it, it’s an acknowledge-
ment that they, too, are responsible, 
it’s an owning of that responsibility, 
and to me that’s beautiful.”
She quoted a line by the late 
American rabbi, activist and theolo-
gian, Abraham Joshua Heschel: “In 
a free society, some are guilty, but all 
are responsible.”
“I think it’s exactly that,” Rutten-
berg said. “They are acknowledging 
that they are part of the greater 

communal body that also failed the 
parents and families of those who 
were murdered, and they are taking 
responsibility.”
In emotional remarks at her son’s 
funeral, Rachel Goldberg-Polin used 
the language of apology in ways that 
reflected all the anguish and contra-
dictions of the past 11 months.
She recalled how her son texted 
the family from a bomb shelter on 
Oct. 7 when he was badly injured 
and had witnessed his best friend 
Aner Shapira killed by a Hamas gre-
nade. “You had lost your arm, and 
you thought you were dying. You 
wrote to us, ‘I’m sorry’ because you 
knew how crushing it would be for 
us to lose you, so you fought to stay 
alive … all this time. But now, you 
are gone,” she said.
She also offered her own apology 
to Hersh, despite spending near-
ly every day since his kidnapping 
traveling and lobbying for his and 
the other hostages’ release. “
At this 
time, I ask your forgiveness. If ever 
I was impatient or insensitive to 
you during your life, or neglectful 
in some way, I deeply and sincerely 
request your forgiveness,” she said. 
“If there was something we could 
have done to save you and we didn’t 
think of it, I beg your forgiveness. 
We tried so very hard. So deeply and 
desperately. I’m sorry.” 

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor at large of the 

New York Jewish Week and managing editor 

for Ideas for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Families attend the funeral of slain hostage Eden Yerushalmi, killed in Hamas 
captivity in the Gaza Strip, at a cemetery in Petach Tikva, Israel, Sept. 1, 2024. The 
sign reads, “Sorry, Eden.”

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