Keeping 9/11
ChayaLeah has some thoughts...
Keeping 9/11Â
On September 11, 2001 I was living in Brooklyn, New York with my husband of two months. It was moving day. We were moving into our first apartment, a tiny one-bedroom in Crown Heights. We were young and still getting to know each other. We had been staying with my grandparents waiting for the apartment to be ready. Finally, that Tuesday was the day.Â
I won’t bore you with a play-by-play of how the day unfolded for us. Obviously, we didn’t end up moving for a few weeks as the city was totally shut down, and quite frankly, we weren’t in the mood anyway.Â
Living in New York at the time made a lasting impression on me. 9/11 changed the way I viewed America, the world, terrorism, President Bush, police, and firefighters. It was life-changing.Â
Every year since 9/11 my husband and I would spend the day watching old footage of the tragedy, we’d watch the reading of the names at Ground Zero, and we would reminisce about that day, week, and month. For the first time, this year, I almost forgot. I haven’t seen anything on TV; the cover of the NYT had nothing about 9/11.Â
I know this is what happens to historical events- eventually people move on and forget, but I’ve never experienced it happening in my own lifetime. It’s jarring. It’s hard to explain to my children how all-consuming 9/11 was for our country. How I cried and cried on the first flight I took after 9/11, just a few short weeks later. How do you explain that the New York City skyline will never be the same, or that much more devastatingly, almost 3000 families still mourn and cry for the murder of their loved ones? How do you explain that my life is divided into parts, before 9/11 and after, and not just my life, but our country’s life?Â
I can’t help but be sad that after 21 years it seems like we’ve moved on. I can’t even imagine how that feels to the families of the victims. I’m not ready to move on and I don’t think we should be. We need to try harder to make the memory of 9/11 so real that our children will remember it even after we are gone. I’m going to watch a 9/11 documentary on YouTube, what are you going to do?Â
Here's the link for the 9/11 documentary I'm watching today.
PS- Yael says that we should thank a police officer or firefighter wherever we are in the country.Â
Chaya Leah, you are coming at this from a very Jewish perspective - we remember, we make a point to remember. I think that one of the many reasons for antisemitism is just that. We remember, and in the case of the Holocaust - we have made sure that the world remembers.
I think we are unique in that regrard, how many people remember the killing fields of Cambodia, the slaughter in Rwanda? How about the Holdomor in Ukraine in the 30s? The murder of the Armenians in Turkey? I could go on an on. We Jews, remind ourselves every Yom Kippur of the many atrocities during the last 2000 years that the Jews have suffered.
No one else does that, they forget so quickly. So from a Jewish perspective 21 years seems like nothing - how can it be forgotten so quickly. It has, and a lot of it has to do with not allowing the images from that day, the falling people, even the people running from the towers covered in ash. that was all deep sixed quickly, way too quickly.
Look at Rwanda - 25-26 years - they remember but the world has completely forgotten.
So yeah, it falls to the Jews to be the memory bank of many of the worlds evils - and most people don't like us for that.
Very eloquent and moving ChayaLeah.