Like many of you, I’m sure, I remember exactly where I was early in the morning on September 11, 2001. My brother phoned me first thing in the morning and told me to turn on the television, America was under attack.
Jacqueline and I had been asleep. We rubbed our eyes, turned on the TV, and watched in disbelief at the image of the second plane crashing into the twin towers. Jacqueline was eight months pregnant with our second child. She had family living in New York City, including her mother, father, and older brother. My first cousin was living on the Lower East Side, about two miles from ground zero.
I remember so many moments from that day: the horrifying images of the planes hitting the towers playing again and again on the news; video of people covered in ash fleeing lower Manhattan; the heartbreaking photos of people jumping to their deaths.
It took a while for us to understand what had happened but within a few hours we knew with certainty that our country had been attacked by terrorists; and not just in lower Manhattan but at the Pentagon and in a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania as well.
The days and months that followed included an outpouring of international support and concern, along with story after story of heartbreak and loss.
Twenty-three years have passed.
The sorrow that I have felt over the past eleven months makes this year’s remembrance of that day even more painful. As I reflect upon the stories of those killed in Israel on October 7, I see in my mind’s eye the posters of the missing from that fateful day and I cannot help but connect those images to the posters of our hostages in Gaza.
But make no mistake–it’s the same story, a story of religious extremism and hatred strong enough to inspire a person to do the unthinkable: to murder hundreds and thousands of innocent strangers.
Of course, we could and–for another time–should, compare and contrast the different ways in which the world responded to these two terrorist attacks. We could, and for another time, should, compare and contrast the brutality, violence, and horror of the attacks; one committed in a much more sterile fashion using sleek jetliners as weapons of war, the other much more personal, direct, and bloody, including acts of torture and sexual violence. Also this: the 9/11 terrorists didn’t take anyone hostage so that they could continue the torture of those individuals, their families, and an entire nation.
But it’s the same story to be sure. And as Americans, let’s not fool ourselves, in the eyes of both sets of terrorists, it’s the same target. These terrorists make no distinction between the “Little Satan” and the “Great Satan,”: Israel and America.
The memories of the victims of 9/11 should forever be a blessing. They were murdered by a cruel, demonic ideology of which the ultimate aim is the destruction of the values both nations share: open societies, rule of law, religious freedom, and equal rights for all people.
In our pain and even in our anger at the injustice of it all, let us find purpose and meaning in a tradition that urges us to respond to moments like these with compassion and love for the victims and their families, along with an unending commitment, in the words of last week’s Torah portion, to pursue justice, only justice, so that we and our descendants might live.
–Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback