In The Wake of 911
Kol Nidre Sermon
September 26, 2001
Congregation Habonim
by: Eli Rubenstein
When I was planning my themes for this year’s Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur’s season of
sermons, I intended to devote tonight's sermon to the theme of gratitude, to the idea of
recognizing the goodness and blessings that other people bring to our lives, gifts we often
take for granted.
But the events of September 11, forced me to change my theme. Indeed, the events of
September 11, have entirely changed the way many of us view the world.
Like most people I know, the images of that day were so horrific, some times we found
ourselves wondering if it actually happened.
I have lost count of the times I stared blankly at the footage of the two planes crashing into
the world trade center towers. And each time I saw it, it was as unbelievable as the first
time.
Why? Because we share values that have become so ingrained in our culture, they have
become second nature.
We value our own lives, and we value the lives of others. And we have built a world, where
the preservation of human life is a paramount value.
We have endless debates on the merits of capital punishment for even the most violent and
murderous criminals. And we have other debates on assisted suicide for terminally ill
people whose suffering is immense.....
We try to ensure that all of have access to medical care, and we build special facilities for
the disabled. We mount large scale public drives to fund research to heal incurable illnesses,
to find bone marrow matches for cancer victims, and to locate missing children. We enforce
seat belt regulations on our commuters, and prohibit smoking in all public places. And we
force companies to list ingredients on their products because of food allergies held by tiny
percentages of the population.
All this....... because we have built a society which seeks to protect human life at all cost.
And then we are confronted by the images of these planes, all of whose passengers are
innocent, crashing into buildings, filled with yet more innocent civilians..... and the
senseless, needless, cruel loss of life that transpired in a matter of seconds. 2
And those who committed the act, valued their lives so little, that they conspired, trained
for and committed this act with a zeal and glee that shakes me to the core every time I think
about it.
I realized how deeply affected I was by this, when I was watching the memorial service last
Friday being broadcast from Parliament Hill in Ottawa. At the end of the service, they asked
all those in attendance to rise for a moment of silence in memory of the victims. And,
without even thinking, I rose as well, in my living room in Willowdale, and also stood for a
moment of silence.
Why? Because that attack was not limited to the passengers and crew on the hi-jacked
planes or the people in New York and Washington. That attack was on you and I, and on all
people who believe in the values of the west.... in human rights, equality, religious freedom
and freedom of thought, a free press and democracy.
And so, as I mourned for those who perished, I also felt the fear, the uneasiness, and the
disquieting awareness, of knowing that there are not small numbers of people in the world
to whom the west: Jews, Christians, moderate Muslims and others, are the ultimate enemy.
And who would destroy our way of life, and destroy us, and them.....at the blink of an eye.
And they may yet try to do so again.
The events of Sep. 11 are deeply troubling to so many of us because of what it reveals about
the nature of some of the people with whom we share this planet.
What does Sep. 11 say about human nature? What do the events of Sep 11 mean for the
future of peace in the world, and for life in our relatively unspoiled our corner of the world?
But even as we feel the despair these questions prompt in us, we must remember this:
While we cannot always control what happens to us, we can master our response - even in
the most trying of circumstances.”
And how does one respond to an event of this magnitude?
Truthfully, it’s so difficult to find words in the wake of this tragedy, still so fresh in our
minds, when we feel the pain of the victims and sense the current climate of fear that seems
to be engulfing our world
And it so difficult to devise a strategy, when we are dealing with an enemy that is that same
time so dangerous, so elusive and so filled with irrational and unending hate.3
But there are a number of responses we must and should have. First and most obvious is to
help the victims, and their families, by donating to the various relief efforts that have
immediately come to the fore.
Then there is the whole area of political responses to this attack....
From a Jewish perspective, the highest goal in life is peace. The Talmud tells us that God
would even utter an untruth, rather than cause hostility between people.
Every rule taken to an extreme, though, becomes absurd. And while the Torah says that our
highest value is peace, ironically, we sometimes must use force to keep the peace.
This is why Torah also teaches us that we are allowed, in fact, we are obligated to defend
ourselves in the face of evil. And we must defend others: Lo tamod all dam ray-eh-cha “Do
not stand by idly while your brother’s blood is being spilled”, the Torah warns us.
And I must admit, that I become very disheartened when I hear people, well meaning
people, saying: “You know if you respond with force to this act, you will only breed more
violence...and the like...”
Marcus Gee in the Globe wrote these words last week:
“Our moral scruples are the terrorists best friend. In their view, we are corrupt and weak
while they are pure and strong. If they attack us, it is partly because they believe that we
are too feeble to fight back.
George Orwell spent a good part of the Second World War arguing with pacifists and
appeasers who thought "that everything in the garden would be lovely if only we stopped
the wicked fighting, and that fighting back is exactly what the Nazis want us to do."
"Any government which refused to use violence in its own defense would cease almost
immediately to exist," he said, "because it could be overthrown by any body of men, or even
any individual, that was less scrupulous.
Perhaps a story would better illustrate this point. Last year my friend bumped into her
kindergarten teacher in the grocery store, someone she hadn’t seen in decades
She went over to her, and said: You don’t remember me, but I was in your kindergarten
class at Eitz Chaim Hebrew School many years ago.”
“Of course, I remember you, Daphna. And I'll even tell you a story about yourself. There was
a class bully by the name of Yichezkiel, who used to push all the other children around the
moment I turned my back. One day you came to me complaining that he hit you. I was so
exhausted with dealing with him, I told you to go hit him back. You returned a few minutes
later, still looking disappointed. I asked you what happened, and you said, “I went over to
Yichezkiel, but I didn’t hit him. Why not? Well, I asked him for permission to hit him, but he
said no....”4
Terrorists are not English gentlemen. They do not have table manners, or fight by the rules
of the Marquis of Queensbury. And if we do not deal with them forcefully, we will be
complicit in our own victimization.
Now there is much more we could discuss concerning our political response to the Twin
Tower bombing and the other terrorist outrages....
We could focus on the dangers of triumphalist religion. As I said on Rosh Hashana, there
are many major religions in the world. These religions share at least one attribute in
common: they all have aspects of the truth inside their systems, their rituals, and their
observances. But of all world religions, there is only one that I know is false....and most
certainly untrue. And that is the religion that claims to have the only truth, the religion
claiming that unless you adopt their tenets you are an inferior human being.
We could also talk of the danger in dismissing this world, the here and now, in favor of a
more glorious afterlife. There are some streams in Judaism that would even suggest this
philosophy.
I side with the way one writer answered when he was asked the question about his belief in
afterlife. He said: “Let’s take one world at a time...”
But Yom Kippur is primarily a time of personal reflection, a look at ourr own souls, our own
challenges, our own everyday struggles.
And in this vein, I asked myself what do the events of Sep. 11 mean to us as individuals?
And, I thought of some of the stories concerning the individuals who perished on Sep. 11
that I came across in the days that followed:
I read about a fireman, Andrew Desperito, who was also summoned to rescue victims of a
terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Then, he suffered from smoke
inhalation but otherwise emerged unscathed.
On Sep. 11, as the New York City firefighter escorted a woman to safety from the north
tower, he was buried under the crumbling rubble. And so were countless other firefighters
and police officers, who gave their lives trying to rescue the men and women trapped in the
twin towers.
I read about about a passenger on one of the flights, Lynn Angell, wife of Hollywood
Producer David Angel. The couple was traveling from Boston to attend the Emmy Awards
that weekend.
The couple was heavily involved in philanthropy and Lynne spent much of her time
volunteering as a librarian at Hillsides, a home for abused children that the couple helped
renovate. Lynn, in fact, sent each of its 66 residents a postcard from Cape Cod this past
summer.5
"She was a driving force behind creating one of the nicest children's libraries I've ever
seen," home director John Hitchcock said. "It's a huge loss to us."
I read about Daniel McNeal, 29, who was planning on walking his sister Kathleen down the
aisle at her wedding on Sept. 29. But instead of walking her down the aisle, McNeal was
carried to his final resting place at his funeral just over a week on Sep. 18, 2001 following
services at the Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Md.
McNeal was an analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners, one of 67 investment bank employees
trapped in the World Trade Center's south tower.
After the first plane hit the north tower, McNeal called his mother, Kitty, in Towson, Md.,
from his 104th-floor office. Then McNeal called his father, Michael, dying of lung cancer at a
hospice, and told him not to worry.
I read about Danny Lee, the roadie for the Backstreet Boys, who was determined to be at
his wife's side when she gave birth to their second child. After a long night breaking down
the stage in Boston, he caught the first flight home to Los Angeles the next morning.
I also read about Rev. Mychal Judge, the New York City Fire Department chaplain who died
when he was hit by falling debris as he ministered the last rites to a dying fireman at the
scene of Tuesday's terrorist attacks. He was well known for his compassionate care for
families of previous air crash victims.
And then, I read about the heroic efforts of five men on United Flight 99, who after they had
learned of the other hijackings and intentional crashes, stormed the cockpit, causing their
plane to crash in a Pennsylvania field. The actions of these men, Jeremy Glick, Lou Nacke,
Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, probably prevented the plane from hitting the
White House and causing even more loss of life.
One of the men, Jeremy Glick, was taking his first business trip in months. Since the birth of
his daughter, Emmy, three months ago, he had been reluctant to leave home until his wife
felt that it was OK. Above the story I read concerning United Flight 99, there was a picture
of Jeremy Glick. Obviously it was a recent picture, because it shows him embracing a
smiling newborn child.
One of the news magazines that covered the disaster, showed pictures -terrifying pictures -
of people leaping from the flaming towers to their deaths. One of the pictures, showed a
man and a woman holding hands as they fell to the earth, their last act before their deaths
And when I thought of that gesture, that last moment of hand holding, of the picture
of Jeremy Glick kissing his new -born child... and of the countless stories of people calling
their brothers and sisters, their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters, their
husband and wives and fiancées, from the World Trade Center, to tell them that they loved
them and didn’t know if they would survive....6
I realized what one of our responses to Sep. 11 needs to be...
The poet Zelda tells us that Each of Us Has A Name, but this name is not just the
alphabetized name given to us by our parents. This name is given to us and is woven by us,
through our work, and through our play, by our friends and by our enemies, through our
loves and our hatreds, and finally by our deaths. She writes:
EACH OF US HAS A NAME
ZELDA (TRANSLATED BY MARCIA FALK)
Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents
Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear
Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls
Each
of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors
Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing
Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love
Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work
Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness
Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.
And I can think of no greater contrast to the names that the victims and the terrorists left
behind than in the manner of their deaths.7
The last acts of the victims, the last hugs goodbye before they left for work, the last phone
calls to their loved ones.......shows us the kind of people who were lost in this tragedy.
People who loved and were loved by others.
By contrast, I doubt very much that the terrorists hugged anyone before their flights or
made a desperate call to a dear one to wish them a tearful goodbye before they committed
their evil acts.
And when you love no-one, and you are loved by no-one, when you feel you have nothing
to lose in life , then life- yours and others - may seem all too expendable
And so, our response after Sep. 11, both in memory of the victims, and as a denial for what
the terrorists stood for, is to be more loving, to be kinder and gentler with each other, to
pull ourselves closer to those who make our lives so much more meaningful by their
presence.
In fact, many people did just that. After the news of the bombing they went home and
hugged their spouses, their children, their significant others....as if instinctively saying: “We
must draw even closer together during these hateful times.”
So, in a way, this evening’s sermon turns out to indeed be about gratitude, reminding us to
appreciate the love we have in our lives, to cherish every moment, to realize how fortunate
we are to have family, to have friends, to have community.
I have told this story before, but it is one worth repeating. I heard the story from a 16-yearold
girl, from Hamilton, who was attending Jewish storytelling at Habonim during
Holocaust Education Week a few years ago.
My Grandmother’s Rule
My Grandmother lived in the town of Apt, at the outbreak of WWII. She had just celebrated
her wedding, when the Nazis overcame the town and deported all the able bodied man -
including her husband -to a labor camp. Over the protests of her family, she went out in
search of him. When she returned to Apt a few days later, no-one was left. They had all
been deported by the Nazis. She never saw her family again.
Since that time, the young girl said, my grandmother had a rule:
Never leave the house in a fight, or without saying ‘I love you.” because you never know
when this will be your last chance to do so...”
One last point. Will becoming more loving to each other, and being more appreciative for
what we have in our lives ------will this eliminate terrorism?8
No, of course not. But it means that our spirits will not be broken, nor will our hearts be
deadened to each other, because of the actions of the terrorists
And while we must act internally, we must also react externally.
In the latter category is the whole array of responses, stretching from international military
action against the network of terror and against governments that support them.....to
action on the domestic front, from more intelligent immigration policies (which does not
have to mean fewer immigrants) to stricter airport security to enhanced surveillance
capabilities.
On both the domestic and international fronts, our policies must be firm, measured and
appropriate.
Not to respond to the terrorist outrage, only encourages terrorists to strike again and again
with impunity. But to overreact, to respond out of unbridled anger and vengeance, may
result in the deaths of many innocent lives, and the escalation of the current crisis into a
worldwide conflict.
“Anger is only one letter shy of danger.”
On the domestic front, under reaction leaves us open to further terrorist infiltration.
Overreaction, means the unnecessary suspension of civil liberties, and the possible
transformation of our society into one where far too many of our individual rights and
freedoms are sacrificed on the altar of security - and the slope is slippery indeed.
We must be equally vigilant on both fronts. As we rise to fight the threat our liberty from
without, we must also see to it, that we ourselves do not become a fifth column, by
overzealously curtailing the very liberties that define our democratic societies.
May our leaders have both the courage and the wisdom to walk this fine line, to choose the
correct course of action in response to the terrible events of Sep. 11.
Many people who were in New York after Sep. 11 observed the site of the smoke from the
ruins of the destroyed towers breeze past the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbour.
The story is told of a little girl who asked her father: "Daddy, doesn't the lady ever get
tired of holding that flame up all of the time?"; Her father tenderly answered: "It doesn't
become tired, as long as she has all of us to help her."
In order for human rights, equality, religious freedom, freedom of thought and expression,
and democracy to thrive, in order for Lady Liberty to keep her flame aloft and burning
bright, all of us must stand together and support her struggle.
And that struggle is clearly far from over.9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to ask you all to rise now, as I read to you a special prayer I have adapted,
which is based on a piece edited by Rabbi Jack Reimer from a memorial prayer placed by
United Airlines in the New York Times:
A Prayer for the 11th of September.
On Monday, September l0th,when people asked me how I was feeling, I replied, without
thinking, fine, thank you.
On Monday, September l0th, the papers and the magazines were filled with important
stories about the fall TV schedule,
On Monday, September l0th, there were not many people in the religion section of the
bookstores,
On Monday, September l0th, I passed strangers without saying hello.
And then,....
On Tuesday, September 11th, the world changed. And I did too.
On Tuesday, September 11th, someone tried to take America apart, and instead, on
Tuesday, September 11th, America came together, as never before.
On Tuesday, September 11th, there were no longer white-collar workers and blue-collar
workers. On Tuesday, September 11th, there were only people trying to help other people.
On Tuesday, September 11th, strangers died for each other.
On Tuesday, September 11th, the best of the human spirit spit back into the e∂ye
of the
worst.
On Tuesday, September 11th, America was knocked to its knees.
And on Tuesday, September 11th, America got back up again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May we not soon forget the lessons that we learned on
that day.
May we not think ever again that the stranger going by is just a stranger.10
May we not think ever again that we are too busy to hug our children or too tired to tell
our mates that we love them,
May we not answer: fine, thank you without thinking, when someone asks us how we
are, the way we did on Monday, September l0th,
Instead, let us be really grateful that we are alive,
grateful that we have children to hug
and mates to love,
and grateful that we live in a free country.
And let us be grateful for the human spirit
that can rise above every catastrophe
and triumph over every adversity
the way it did
on Tuesday, September 11th
Fri, April 19 2024
11 Nisan 5784
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