Hero Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s Favorite Cookies

“Hero Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s Favorite Cookies” are not your typical chocolate chip cookies. Bite down into one, and you will taste a bit of Israel by way of cardamom and cinnamon, and the addition of a third ingredient emblematic of Israel—dates.

“There was a twist,” said Marjorie Druker, the founder and creative culinary force behind New England Soup Factory and The Modern Rotisserie in Newton. “Hersh’s cookie had those two spices not typically found in an American chocolate chip cookie. The cinnamon and cardamom make the cookie pop, and I added a third ingredient, chopped dates.”

Dates have been native to Israel for thousands of years, and the country is a leading exporter of Medjool dates. Researchers at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies successfully grew a date palm from a 2,000-year-old date seed found during excavations of Masada in the 1960s. The palm, appropriately named Methuselah, thrives on the grounds of the Institute located on Kibbutz Keturah in the Negev. Last year, Methuselah yielded over 100 dates.

The addition of dates was personal for Druker. A frequent traveler to Israel, she included them in her rendition of Hersh’s cookie recipe after hearing a story on a trip to the Golan Heights that big and wide date trees offered protection to people hiding from enemies. “It became a symbol to remember the hostages and pray for their safety,” she said.

In addition to running two food emporiums, Druker can be found most Sundays at Run for Their Lives gatherings in Newton Centre. The group meets for a short run and then rallies to show solidarity with the hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza.

“Hero Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s Favorite Cookies” debuted in Newton in March 2024. Druker noticed that families of the hostages were posting their loved ones’ favorite baked goods recipes for Purim. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s mother, posted a recipe for her son’s favorite chocolate chip cookie. Druker made her version and brought them to a Purim gathering of Run for Their Lives, handing out 200 individual packets of the cookies.

The Goldberg-Polin family heard about Druker’s cookies from Hersh’s aunt, Bonnie Polin, who lives in Newton, and asked Druker to carry on making the cookies beyond Purim to keep the hostages alive in people’s minds. She continued using “the purest of ingredients: the best butter, organic eggs, vanilla, spices and dark chocolate. It has to be really special because when you bite the cookie, you have to think about Hersh and all the hostages.”

Druker said the cookies were a hit at the Soup Factory. “People loved them so much they sent them to their relatives out of town,” she said. Druker stopped making the cookies for a couple of weeks after Hamas murdered Hersh in a Gazan tunnel in September 2024. But she decided to resume making them for Rosh Hashanah as a symbol of hope for peace in the region and the return of the remaining hostages still held in Gaza. The Rosh Hashanah iteration is a smaller cookie. Druker personally oversees the baking, and the cookies continue to sell out at the Soup Factory.

For the moment, Druker is still baking cookies in Hersh’s memory. The cookies bring with them a sense of urgency “to keep the conversation going. We need to continue to taste and eat these cookies until every hostage comes home. To keep the conversation going so it doesn’t get lost. That’s why I continue to make these cookies,” said Druker.

(Photo: Judy Bolton-Fasman)