Another 9/11 post

Making good on a promise to never forget

I realized today after sending our latest episode that I forgot it was 9/11. Actually it was worse - I remembered, but I didn’t stop to think about it. Instead I wondered if this would affect traffic in DC where I was staying, or if tonight’s Douglas Murray speech I was attending would have appropriate security measures (it did).

I felt awful, not in a way one does when you forget a friend’s birthday or a memorial, but because I — we — kind of promised we never would. It’s hard not to think of it in light of the upcoming first year anniversary of October 7th, a year that feels both like a whole life time and one, continuous, neverending day. The thought of “remembering” it seems laughable right now as we struggle to close the curtain on this dragged out nightmare - is it October 8th already?

I don’t know when those affected by 9/11 went back to normal, or if they ever did. A few months after October 7th I recognized some of the initial shock fading away and the numbness creeping in, and I didn’t like it. I wanted to go back to that first, raw felling of pain and anger - not because I liked it, but because it felt important not to let any part of this story become bearable, routine. So today, in my adopted home of America, I’m taking some time think about 9/11 as something other than a paragraph in a history book, a “thing that happened once”. Instead I’m using it to remind myself what we all are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

I’ll leave it to more eloquent (and less tired) people than me to write about the implications of 9/11 (especially now in 2024 where it seems that we have learned very little), but I do want to share our memories from that day:

I was a young soldier on an IDF base in central Israel, serving as an assistant instructor to a group of cadets in a public information course - a role I was qualified for due to the experience I had gained in the full year that passed since I stood in their place. I remember trying to reach my parents who were traveling through the US at the time, waking them up in their Las Vegas hotel where they were sleeping off yesterday’s flight from New York. I think if there was a way to look at phone logs around the world that morning, they would all show the same words: turn on the TV. I have a vague memory of sitting in the base snack shop (Shekem Bahad 7, for my Israelis) with a few other soldiers watching the news, and being so shocked that it arrived to the US. By then frequent terrorist attacks were part of life in Israel: blurred boody parts on the news, front pages splashed in red, cries of pain and sorrow. You’d think we wouldn’t be shocked that it made it to America, and maybe we shouldn’t have been. But there was this deep, terrifying realization that this has grown bigger than our corner of the world. It was clear as day that America’s enemy is the same as Israel’s, and that maybe, maybe, the world will finally understand what we are all up against - and we can fight it together.

Chaya Leah: on September 11, 2001, I was living in Brooklyn, New York. I had just gotten married a few months earlier, and that beautiful Tuesday morning was supposed to be the day we moved into our new apartment. Early that morning, my grandfather asked Boruch to drive him to the polling station so he could vote in the local elections. When they returned, they told us that a small plane had hit the Twin Towers. My grandmother, finding this odd, turned on the TV. For the next four hours, we watched in horror and disbelief as the towers were struck again and eventually collapsed. News reports trickled in from Washington, D.C., and other parts of the country. I have never felt more afraid. America was under attack.

Outside, the air was thick with smoke and ash, and the sun was obscured by the devastation. Cars and streets were covered in soot, and the city felt like a war zone. Phone lines were down, making it hard to reach loved ones.

Boruch and I decided to drive down to the waterfront to see if there was anything we could do to help. When we arrived, we found Chabad community members who had walked across the bridge from Manhattan, dazed and scared. Though we didn’t know them personally, we offered them a ride in our van. An elderly African American woman approached and asked if we were headed to Crown Heights; she joined us as well. The atmosphere was haunting—quiet, eerie, and filled with an overwhelming sense of loss.

A few days later, my sister and I went into the city, hoping to volunteer. The scene was like a movie set—utter destruction. Firefighters sat on the ground, weeping. Train station walls were covered with missing person posters. I cried the entire way home. New York felt changed, perhaps forever. In the months that followed, though, there was a profound sense of unity. New Yorkers were kinder to each other. American flags waved on every street corner. Despite the tragedy, I had never felt more patriotic, more certain that America would endure.

Nine and a half months after 9/11, I gave birth to my oldest son. In that moment, I felt a deep sense of rebirth, renewal, and the continuity of life. The American dream lives on.

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I’ll end with the story of Danny Lewin, also known as the first victim of 9/11. Danny was a 31-year-old Israeli mathematician, co-founder of Akamai Technologies and a PhD student at MIT. He was also a veteran of the elite Sayeret Matkal IDF unit. Danny was on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles seated in seat 9B, and tried to attack one of the terrorists who was seated near him when the hijacking began. He was then stabbed by another terrorist from behind, and succumbed to his injuries on the plane.

And in memory of the 2,997 victims, including 343 firefighters, 23 NYPD officers, and 37 PAPD officers, as well the first responders who have lost their life since from illnesses related to that day, a number that is triple the original death toll and still rising.

May their memories be a blessing.