On the years when Rosh Hashanah and September 11 fall together
Tonight, as the sun sets, Rosh Hashanah 5787 begins. It falls on September 11 this year — a convergence that has only happened once before in recent memory, back in 2018. I want to share something I wrote that year, because it still feels like exactly what this moment is asking of us.
What follows is the story as I first told it, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, September 11, 2018
Jack cohen from Unsplash
It was bedtime, but I couldn’t go to sleep before putting this story to paper. What happened that day will forever be a reminder of grace, miracles, and the unexplained mystery that weaves throughout our lives — one I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of.
As one of the rabbis leading services, I had been asked to say a prayer to commemorate 9/11. I was one of the clergy leaders with the Jewish Collaborative of Orange County, CA, founded by Rabbi Marcia Tilchin.
I proceeded in my usual manner. Since I didn’t have a prayer or reading of my own, I reached out to the T’ruah clergy list and to the “Jewish Poetry” group I’d started on Facebook five years earlier.
What I ended up preparing was a combination of sources. Colleagues told me about a shofar service Rabbi Irwin Kula created, with shofar blasts interspersed with the actual voicemail messages from people in the burning towers to their families—their final words. Even thinking about that made me weep.
My reading became three of those voicemails, and the prayer for survivors and witnesses of 9/11 by the liturgist Alden Solovy — placed inside the Mi Sheberach, the prayer for healing, with the Torah open.
I began by reading the three voicemails without introduction.
“Honey, something terrible is happening. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I love you. Take care of the children”;
“Mommy, the building’s on fire. There’s smoke coming through the wall. I can’t breathe. I love you, Mommy. Goodbye”; and
“Elizabeth, I love you a thousand times over and over, and over again. Please tell Emmie I love her, and take good care of her. Whatever decisions you make in your life, I need you to be happy, and I will respect any decisions that you will make. I will always love you.”
The energy in the room shifted. Everyone — everyone — knew what I was reading. The silence spoke volumes as people listened and remembered where they were on 9/11, the images frozen into our consciousness.
Then this happened.
When I finished and walked back into the congregation, a gentleman I didn’t know came up to me with tears in his eyes, grasped me by both shoulders, and said: “Rabbi, a miracle has happened here, and I just want to thank you.”
He — I later learned his name was Larry — explained that one of the messages I’d read was his brother’s, who had called his wife from the towers. Larry’s brother worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, one of 658 people from that company alone who died that day.
Larry had moved to Orange County only six weeks earlier from Long Island, and this was the first year he hadn’t gone to Ground Zero for 9/11 and his brother’s yahrzeit — after seventeen years in a row. He’d helped raise his brother’s children, who were infants when their father was killed, and now that they were graduating high school, he’d felt it was finally okay to leave New York.
Larry’s wife had found the Jewish Collaborative of Orange County online. That’s how he came to be sitting in our services, with his kids beside him.
That morning, Larry told me, he’d woken at five a.m. filled with grief, sure he’d made a mistake by not flying to New York. When I started reading his brother’s last words from the bimah, he knew he’d been brought to our services for a reason. He called it a miracle.
At Kaddish, Rabbi Marcia Tilchin — such a sensitive, beautiful rabbi — invited Larry up to share about his brother. He told the congregation the story I’ve written here. Afterward, he and his children were surrounded by fellow worshippers reaching out with words, hugs, and support. He’d found a new community.
That same morning, I had taught about God and the difficulty of God-language — how it’s only a container, a pointer, to That Which Is Beyond Us. I’d asked everyone to think of a moment they felt totally connected, in-flow, where the boundaries dropped away and they felt intimations of the holy. Most people, when I asked if that was an expression of the Divine, said yes.
Messengers from the Most High, whether we know it or not
My teacher, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, has a teaching that says, in part:
Everyone carries with them at least one and probably many pieces to someone else’s puzzle. Sometimes they know it. Sometimes they don’t. And when you present your piece — which is worthless to you — to another, whether you know it or not, whether they know it or not, you are a messenger from the Most High.
ashkan-forouzani from Unsplash
Being a Messenger
The thing about being a messenger is that we very often never know the impact of our contribution. It could be a simple kindness that was nothing to us but meant everything to someone else. We just never know when we are messengers from the Most High.
The twisting path that led me to prepare that particular reading, and the path that set Larry down in our sanctuary on that particular day, is a holy moment I still can’t explain. I just say: thank you.
Why I’m sharing this again
Eight years later, the calendar has brought these two days back together. Whatever this Rosh Hashanah holds for you — grief, gladness, or the two tangled together the way they so often are — may you find, somewhere in it, a piece of someone else’s puzzle placed into your hands. And may this year be one of miracles and healing, large and small, for each one of you.
Shanah tovah.
— Rabbi Jill
If this speaks to you, you can learn more about Path With Heart Community and Hineni here— I’d love to have you join us. Also, there’s still time to join our online non-traditional High Holy Day services HERE.
Links:
Rabbi Marcia Tilchen, Jewish Collaborative of Orange County
Truah, The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
Thank you for sharing this meaningful story. Shana Tova.