When We See You Again Quotes

“When you only get outraged when one side’s babies are killed, then your moral compass is broken; your humanity is broken.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“And we said: There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East. In a competition of pain, there are no winners.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“HOPE IS MANDATORY. Go.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“I never knew how many wounds everyone was carrying, in different forms, in their pockets. Right there, but unseen. Although sometimes the outlines are detectable through the fabric.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“We do not feel grief for people we did not love.
And that is why we can feel grief for people we didn't know.
Because we can love people we didn't know.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“What’s your “Why”?”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“What does this person need?” rather than, “What do I imagine I would need in this person’s situation?”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“Grief is a badge of the love that continues to grow after its recipient is no longer here.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“If we always treat the person next to us as if they are the Messiah disguised as a regular person, we will be careful with how we speak and what we do in their presence. And if they choose not to reveal themselves in our lifetime, it will not matter, because we will have behaved respectfully and carefully with that regular person next to us. This is the most decent thing we can do in this complex and loud world, piled with confusion and brokenness. Let us work on the lost art of respectfulness.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“All But My Life”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“Tell me sir, do you really think you can change the world?’ And he replied, ‘No, I’m just making sure the world doesn’t change me.’ ”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“If we always treat the person next to us as if they are the Messiah disguised as a regular person”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“We talked about how Jews wearing kippot on their heads is a way to show we believe there is something above us, watching us. When we sense we are being observed, we behave differently. We behave better. I asked him just a couple of years ago what person he would imagine was watching him, from a window above, who would cause him to behave in an improved way. Even after all these long years, he said Mrs. Carlton, his beloved first-grade teacher from Virginia.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“We moved to Jerusalem, one of the most alluring, complicated, beautiful, textured, historic, dirty, loud, and holy places in the world. Coming from polite, respectful, clean, and staid Richmond, it was being thrust from one extreme to the other.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“I remember coming home and going straight to Dalya’s apartment to call people in the U.S. administration to tell them where we had been, whom we had spoken with, and what we now had to share. But very quietly. We said not to repeat the idea to anyone or it would not work. I remember getting to the office of an Important Person in Israel. The person in DC had called and told them what I had just said on the phone. Loose lips sink hostages. All that work and effort and tiptoeing, and with one blab, he had killed the deal.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“I remember going with other hostage families to Rome to meet the Pope. It was in the 40s. Days, not temperature. After he heard our tales of woe, he said something I found empowering. He said, “What you have experienced is terrorism, and terrorism is the absence of humanity.” I thought, I don’t want to lose my faith in humanity.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again

“Each apartment built since 1992 in Israel is required to have a safe room with a retractable steel window, extra-thick walls, and a reinforced steel door.”
― Rachel Goldberg-Polin, When We See You Again