Rabbi Jacob Goldstein does not want to see buildings or a cemetery at the World Trade Center site.
By: Lindsay Dell
The World Trade Center site should be made into a memorial for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and their families, the chief chaplain at Ground Zero said Sunday during an address at Princeton University.
"Ground Zero is holy ground," Rabbi Jacob Goldstein told approximately 100 students, professors and townspeople in McCosh Hall, stating that the site should therefore not be used for reconstruction of the towers or for a cemetery.
As chief chaplain at Ground Zero, Rabbi Goldstein views his mission as one of outreach and service to the spiritually needy soldiers, relief workers and visitors at the site.
After establishing an initial post on the edge of the scene, he has given at least one religious service on each of the 147 consecutive days he has been stationed there.
Also a colonel in the New York Army National Guard, Rabbi Goldstein compared Ground Zero to a war zone, equating the terrorists responsible for the World Trade Center’s destruction with an invisible enemy in a military campaign.
"Ground Zero is my third tour of combat, and probably the worst," he said.
During his 26 years with the National Guard, he also served in Grenada and in Operation Desert Storm.
Rabbi Goldstein is the son of two Holocaust survivors and has toured abandoned World War II concentration camps. He said Ground Zero is not dissimilar to the scenes he witnessed there.
"The World Trade Center was the ovens. Thousands were missing, yet few have been identified," the rabbi said.
In agreement with a theme pressed by President Bush in his State of the Union address, Rabbi Goldstein said Americans must support the military campaign in Afghanistan in order to defeat the perpetrators of the attacks and prevent another catastrophe like the destruction of the World Trade Center.
"We are standing as a testament to faith, and we will overcome them," he said.