Community honors Hamas hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin with first kosher fridge

In a community that refuses to let his memory fade, 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American citizen with Chicago ties who was held hostage for nearly 11 months before he was killed by Hamas, is being honored through a new initiative in Skokie centered around his legacy.

Hersh’s Fridge, as organizers call it, is the nation’s first completely kosher fridge. It offers donated meals, produce, dry goods and other groceries to anyone in need in the neighborhood, 24 hours a day.

“Anonymity and dignity are the values at the base of this project,” said Rabbi Hody Nemes, executive director of Solu, the Orthodox Jewish social action group that founded the community endeavor.

“There are so many wonderful food pantries and soup kitchens that serve people who are hungry in our community, but we saw an opening for a way of feeding people where they could take anonymously at any time,” Nemes told Pioneer Press.

The fridge’s slogan, taken from the Hebrew text of the Jewish Passover Haggadah, is emblematic of its central mission: “All who are hungry, let them come and eat,” Nemes said.

“We take the word ‘all’ very seriously … that’s why we are so delighted that the whole community is taking (food), people who keep kosher, but also people who don’t, people who are Jewish, people who are Muslim, Christians and far beyond.”

About 250 people attended the fridge’s official opening Sept. 2, including members of Goldberg-Polin’s extended family, Solu organizers, volunteers and local residents.

“(Solu) is truly, like in the Wizard of Oz, the power behind the curtain of this magnificent, holy and godly program,” Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, said at the dedication ceremony.

“I don’t love that it will always be needed … but I love the ease with which everyone can be involved in this mitzvah.”

Nemes said the idea for the fridge began roughly four years ago, when Solu volunteers completed a service project of packing food in local community fridges.

Organizers felt inspired to build off that work, but have it be specifically catered toward the kosher-keeping Jewish community.

Nemes set up a meeting for interested parties to investigate the idea on Sept. 1, 2024, the evening before news broke of Goldberg-Polin’s death by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Our community feels a deep connection to Hirsch because his parents grew up here, many of his extended families still live here, and also from what we learned about him over the year that he was in captivity through his parents’ advocacy, we understood we shared a lot of values with him,” Nemes said.

News of Goldberg-Polin’s killing “shattered” many in Skokie’s Jewish community, he added, and organizers questioned whether to move forward with plans for a community fridge at all.

A week later, words spoken by Goldberg-Polin’s father, Jon Polin, during his son’s eulogy gave the group the motivation they needed to keep going.

“His father said three words: ‘Ye-hee zikh-ro mah-peh-kha,’ which means, ‘May his memory be a revolution,’ … a revolution of bringing communities together, of looking out for the overlooked and we wanted to be part of that revolution.”

After Goldberg-Polin’s parents gave their blessing to name the fridge in honor of their son, Solu went to work.

Hersh’s Fridge co-chair Amanda Goldstein said the initiative soft-opened to the community last October and is visited roughly 50 times each day.

““Our soft-launch last year happened to coincide with a cut to SNAP benefits, which I think launched us into a real understanding of a need in our local community that is so much greater than any of us ever anticipated,” she said.

Any businesses that want to donate qualifying food are welcome to, and Solu hopes to partner with other faith-based institutions, schools and youth groups to expand public awareness and accessibility to Hersh’s Fridge, Goldstein added.

“Each of these items is not just making someone’s day better, but really giving them hope and really changing their lives, and that’s not something that we at all take for granted,” she said.

cmurphy@chicagotribune.com