It’s been 613 days since October 7.
613 days that the 56 hostages still in Gaza, alive and deceased, have been held in the dark, apart from their loved ones. It’s an incomprehensible number.
And yet, in Judaism, it is also an auspicious number: 613 is the number of commandments, mitzvot, in the Torah. “The 613 are listed in Maimonides’ Sefer Hamitzvot (Book of the Commandments), divided into ‘positive’ (things one is required to do) and ‘negative’ (things one may not do) commandments,” according to MyJewishLearning.
Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the parents of of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, are urging us all to make this day — number 613 — a day in which we all do a good deed, big or small, to “flood the world with goodness and light in merit of all the cherished hostages coming home.”
The two did the same on the 300th day of captivity, in July of 2024. Jon shared in an Instagram reel that “it was the most strengthening, invigorating week of our challenge in trying to save the hostages.”
You can share the good deed you’re doing today in this Padlet the family has created. It can be a service for your neighbor and community, anything that makes you feel like you are doing something kind and good. More than one hundred people have already shared their deeds, like reciting prayers, delivering some banana bread to the local public safety office, visiting the sick in the hospital or lighting a candle.
Jon and Rachel want us all, regardless of faith or denomination, “to help repair our broken world with positive actions.”
In a time when our world feels so dark and so divided, answering their call — and bringing in more light, and more kindness — is exactly what we need.
