At the first anniversary in 2002, Levend Joods Geloof asked me for a contribution, which I called, "Unhappy with the Old Year, Unsure of the New (Ongelukkig met het oude jaar - onzeker over het nieuwe)." I highly recommend you read my response to their request at the tenth anniversary before reading these reflections at the twenty-fifth anniversary.
Everything I wrote at the 10th anniversary is still true. I can't look at the Freedom Tower without thinking about the Twin Towers. I have been to the Memorial many times. I still have not visited the Museum, and I thought it had closed, but now I understand it is open (or has been reopened). It's time I make myself go.
The divide in our country is not only between those for whom it is, suddenly, twenty-five years after 9/11 and those of us for whom it is the twenty-fifth time that the anniversary of 9/11 is occurring. We have compounding divides. A wonderful Muslim mayor who will be attending the ceremony and extremely vocal Islamophobic voices calling for him to be barred. A felon, twice impeached, who has already threatened mail-in ballots, has tried to provoke a Muslim nation into disrupting the midterm election, and will likely fake his own terrorist attack and blame it on Muslims if it doesn't happen (the Turkish dictator so admired by his minions already tried it but lost the election anyway).
This year, we have the astounding alignment of 9/11 and the first day (Jewish days start the evening before) of Rosh Hashanah, which is also Shabbat. In other families, Rosh Hashanah is a time for family gatherings, of celebration, of dipping apples in honey in hopes of a sweet year. I will be volunteering in the lobby of my congregation's sanctuary on 9/12/2026, and attending services on 9/13/2026, the second day, to hear the shofar be blown and undoubtedly be given an honor, which I don't necessarily deserve.
I semi-retired on Labor Day last year, so last year I was already not working on 9/11.
Every plane appearing in the city skies brings me back to 9/11. I swig orange juice every morning to keep my chronic bronchitis (“World Trade Center cough”) at bay. The subway maps still call it World Trade Center.
A lot has happened in 15 years - and in the last three years, from a Jewish perspective.
Yes, I marched silently in hopes of bringing the October 7 (2023) hostages home (those alive and dead have since all been returned). I recited weekly prayers for the return of the hostages and the welfare of the Israeli Defense Forces. I am still a staunch anti-anti-Zionist (as articulated by Ellen Willis in a famous 2003 essay) and, like Willis and A.B. Yehoshua, I support and affirm the Law of Return ("only a person who supports and affirms the Law of Return is a Zionist, and anyone who rejects the Law of Return is not a Zionist" (translation by Gil Troy)), but recent actions of the IDF, prison guards, and the settlers, and opinions in the Jewish and Israeli media and in Israeli polls, have distanced me from the Israeli people (M. Gessen wrote a wonderful essay about the choices made by four Israeli dissidents), and I no longer offer those weekly prayers for the IDF. When Rachel Timoner, Senior Rabbi of Brooklyn's Congregation Beth Elohim, wrote of the Jewish community being divided into two camps, pro-Israel versus pro-Palestine, I remember thinking that I, like the rabbi, belonged to both camps. Although it is not misinformation or disinformation, there is a lot of malinformation: half-truths that don't tell the entire story.
I am writing this, of course, before the onset of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I am not in denial about the rise of anti-semitism in my city, my country, and in the world. But I am also pained by the mainstreaming of Islamophobia. As to Israel, I want it to be a democratic state, with a constitution that protects all minorities, and I care more about that than maintaining a majority, demographically, of Jews in Israel. In other words, as long as it maintains the Law of Return, I don't care whether Israel is a Jewish state.
Are we B'Nei Yisrael, the Children (or Sons) of Israel, or Am Yisrael, the People (or worse, Nation) of Israel)? I am not a member of the nation of Israel. This does not alienate me from all Jews, but it does alienate me from many Jews. These are my thoughts on September 11. I no longer can speak for my fellow Jews in the Diaspora, as I did before.
I am never happy on September 11. I have never been that happy on Rosh Hashanah. The sweetness of Rosh Hashanah is bittersweet this year. L'Shana Tova: To a Good (not Happy) New Year's Day. The rest of the year, I will be happy, but not on this day.
Link back to My Personal September 11 Page.
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