Thinking about 9/11 as the Jewish High Holy Days approach
By Sally Friedman
Of course you remember where you were — and you always will. It was 13 years ago this Sept. 11 — and it was yesterday.
And if you’re of a certain age, 9/11 is emotionally paired with the lacerating memories of the day JFK was assassinated 51 years ago this year.
Of course we’re a different country because of both those tragedies.
The pain and loss of those days left us realizing that nothing would ever be the same.
Home was where so many of us yearned to be for those awful post-tragedy days. Home was our collective security blanket, the place that had always felt safe.
But after the shock waves of 9/11, in particular, September that year became a particularly unsettling, surreal period for so many. Count us in.
In the past, early fall was always twinned with the Jewish High Holy Days, days when families gathered for prayer and reflection, but also for the joyous feeling of togetherness and celebration.
Yes, another year. Another chance to give gratitude, even a sense of awe, for our good fortune in the Jewish year gone by.
But in 2001, there was such a vastly different atmosphere. In our synagogues, that year, rabbis who usually planned their High Holy Day sermons weeks in advance were confronted with the Herculean challenge of helping congregants make sense of this senseless act of terrorism, one that took place on what we long thought of as our "safe" shores.
How vivid the memory, still, of seeing our own synagogue practically barricaded. A large police presence — a demand for identification from one and all — and a general sense on unease bordering on panic — was in the September air that year.
The world had gone mad.
We prayed that year, individually and collectively, for those who had lost so much.
We prayed for a better world, a safer world, for sanity and peace.
We embraced one another in our synagogue’s sanctuary, and then outside, where police cars were such a strange presence.
Yes Rosh Hashana, 2001, was like no other. How could it be?
Back at home, where my husband and I traditionally host the Jewish New Year’s feast, we all tried diligently to shake the ominous mood.
But it wasn’t possible.
Even my late mother, always cheerful and upbeat straight into her 90s, was still stunned by what she had lived to see. "I just can’t believe it," she said over and over again — this from a woman who had lived through two world wars, Korea and Vietnam.
So different was the mood that our youngest grandchildren, who knew that something weird was going in, but were not completely sure what, were strangely quiet. And quiet was not their style.
Two of them were far too young to even know about the World Trade Center catastrophe. Two were too old not to know.
And three were not yet born.
My husband, the family patriarch, was accustomed to making some remarks that reminded us all of what the Jewish New Year meant.
That year, he tried valiantly to do just that. But it wasn’t possible.
As a family, we had our own terror — our young son-in-law, Michael, our middle daughter, Amy, and out newest family member, her husband, David, were all at their offices in Manhattan on 9/11.
Hours would go by until we knew that all of them — but most specially Mike, whose office was across the street from the World Trade Center — were safe.
Those were some of the longest hours of our lives.
Just few days later, on Rosh Hashana, the enormity of those hours — and those memories — came rushing back.
Try as we might for normalcy, it didn’t happen. Everything was too fresh, too painful.
So there were a few tears. A few profound prayers of gratitude.
And what has become an everlasting reminder of the link between the predictable — and the impossible.
Each Rosh Hashana, we pause a bit to remember 2001. We don’t dwell on it, but we don’t ignore it.
And this year, when the holiday meal, based on the Jewish calendar, will be a couple of weeks later than that painful date, Sept. 11, we will still remember the huge impact of 2001.
So we will sip the sweet wine, dip apples in honey, and feel the swell of gratitude that here we are — an imperfect but loving family — marking the holiest days of the Jewish year.
Together.
Safe.
And ever so grateful.