By Jacob Gurvis
JERUSALEM — It’s not often that a professional sports team attends the funeral of one of its fans. But as the Hapoel Jerusalem soccer club demonstrated over the past 11 months, Hersh Goldberg-Polin was no ordinary fan.
Goldberg-Polin, the 23-year-old American-Israeli who was killed by Hamas after nearly a year in captivity, was one of the faces of the “Bring Them Home Now” advocacy for the release of the hostages.
The club has unveiled a new jersey honoring Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The jersey features Goldberg-Polin’s face on the front, surrounded by the phrases “May your memory be a revolution” and “a child of light, love and peace” in Hebrew.
The “revolution” line is a reference to the eulogy delivered by Jon Polin, his father, at Goldberg-Polin’s funeral on Sept. 2 in Jerusalem.
His parents, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, spent the past year traveling the world to mobilize support for their son and all of the hostages, including stops at the Democratic National Convention and the UN, and earning a spot on the Time 100 list.
In Jerusalem, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a California native with a deep love of soccer and travel, was largely known as one of the many dedicated fans of the Hapoel Jerusalem Football Club, which plays in Israel’s top-tier Premier League. He was a member of the Malha Brigade, the team’s official fan club.
“We awaken to a horrible day for the Hapoel Jerusalem community,” the club tweeted on Sept. 1.
“After nearly a year of crying out his name and praying for his safety, the mourning is unbearable, and words can’t begin to describe it.”
The message was one of many shared by the team and its fans recently and throughout the past 11 months, as Goldberg-Polin became a symbol for the team itself:
Banners bearing his name and face, accompanied by messages like “Bring Hersh Home,” were commonplace at the team’s games.
At Goldberg-Polin’s funeral on Sept. 2, fellow supporters of Hapoel Jerusalem turned out in large numbers, wearing their red-and-black team paraphernalia.
The team’s official social media accounts shared photos and videos in real-time from the procession and ceremony at Har Hamenuchot, Jerusalem’s largest cemetery.
Goldberg-Polin, 23, was one of six slain hostages Israeli troops discovered in Gaza on Aug. 31, a day or two after they had been killed by Hamas.
Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage at the Nova music festival during Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7.
Two days earlier — before the news broke of Goldberg-Polin’s murder — as the team took the field on Aug. 31 for its first game of the new Premier League season, fans were greeted with a video message from Goldberg-Polin’s parents, who thanked the club for its support.
“Shalom, Hapoel fans and friends of Hersh,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin said in the video. “We, Hersh’s parents, thank you so much — for everything. Hapoel fans, players, owners, employees — everyone.”
Jon Polin said:
“We can’t thank you enough. You should have a successful season, and we should all have a successful day — that today we’ll bring back home Hersh and all the hostages, along with a Hapoel victory.”
Soon after, the news broke that Goldberg-Polin’s body — and the bodies of five other hostages — had been found in an underground tunnel.
Tal Ben Ezra, a Hapoel Jerusalem executive, told Haaretz. “We’re brokenhearted. It’s our friend in the stands. We got to know the family over the past year. We were in close contact with [Rachel Goldberg-Polin], and she also became a part of our family . . . We used all our platforms to call for his release.”
The team has arranged mental health support for grieving fans. “We’re hurting, and we’ll continue to stay by the family, and we’ll perpetuate his memory.”
Prior to the team’s first game on Aug. 31 — hours before news broke that Goldberg-Polin’s body had been found in Gaza — his parents, who had become global faces of the movement advocating for the hostages’ release, addressed the fans in a video message.
“Shalom, Hapoel fans and friends of Hersh,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin said in the video.
“We, Hersh’s parents, thank you so much — for everything. Hapoel fans, players, owners, employees — everyone.”
Hapoel Jerusalem is in 10th place in the country’s top-tier soccer league.
Founded in 1926, the club has long been associated with Israel’s labor movement. The Hapoel sports association, whose name means “the worker” in Hebrew, was founded through Israel’s Histadrut labor organization as a then-rival of the Maccabi movement. Its original crest displays a variation of the communist symbol, showing a hammer and sickle with a boxer.
In 2007, a group of fans who were displeased with the soccer team’s ownership created their own club, Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem. In 2020, the fans purchased the legal rights to Hapoel Jerusalem, and the club touts its legacy as Israel’s first fan-owned club.
The organization offers social programs for women, at-risk youth and people with disabilities.
The club’s left-leaning identity appears to have been a draw for Goldberg-Polin, whose mother once described him as a “crunchy granola dreamer.”
Goldberg-Polin fell in love with Hapoel after he first attended a game as a seven-year-old who had just moved to Jerusalem from Richmond, Va.
As a teen, Goldberg-Polin would travel across Israel to attend Hapoel’s away games, telling his mother that each match was “the most important game of the season,” according to The Lever.
He quickly became a fixture at Hapoel games, where he was often spotted in the stands, singing at the top of his lungs.
At first, Rachel Goldberg-Polin was hesitant about her son’s devotion to a sports team. But she told The Lever that she eventually came to see Hapoel Jerusalem as “a social justice club that happened to have been attached to a soccer team.”
It’s an outlook reflected in a sign Goldberg-Polin kept in his bedroom — in English, Hebrew and Arabic — “Jerusalem is Everyone’s.”
