Rosh Hashanah I: Teshuvah in New York City

 

Dedicated to the 2977 kedoshim / holy souls murdered in the terrorist attacks on 11^th September 2001 in the United States of America on 23^rd Ellul 5761.

On Rosh Hashanah, it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  How many will pass away and how many will be born.  Who will live and who will die; who in his due time and who before…but Repentance (Teshuvah), Prayer (Tefillah) and Charity (Tzedakah) will enable us to pass over the evil of the decree.

My sermons over these Yamim Noraim, Days of Awe will focus on the three ways in which a Jew is able to use these holy days and the seven in between, known as the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah or Ten Days of Penitence, to appeal to Gd to ask for, as Rabbi Sacks ztl puts it ‘a royal or presidential pardon.’

Today, Teshuvah, repentance.

It is 25 years or 300 months or 1,304 weeks and four days or 9,132 days since the afternoon when I was walking back to the Jewish Care Centre I was managing at the top of Rectory Lane in Edgware at the end of my lunch break.  As I made my way up the short road, one of our volunteers stopped to ask me whether I’d heard about the plane that had flown into one of the towers of the World Trade Centre in the heart of Manhattan.  I expressed surprise and said that I hadn’t.

At that time, I was running an IT training centre for people with visual impairments or physical disabilities such as MS and stroke survivors.  I made my way into the building to find our members ‘glued’ to the large TV screen we had in the lounge.  They were watching the events unfolding on the BBC.  A few minutes after I entered, we saw the second plane hit the South Tower and, later, the two buildings collapse within half an hour of each other.

Once seen, never forgotten.

A quarter of a century ago, yesterday.

A relative by marriage, Robert ‘Bob’ Speisman, was an executive vice president at the diamond company Lazare Kaplan International Inc.  On the morning of 11th September, he was travelling from Washington to Los Angeles in Business Class when his plane, American Airlines Flight 77, was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon.  He was 48 years old and is survived by my cousin Rena and their three daughters.

A few months later, in January 2002, I visited my grandmother ah who lived on the Upper West Side (near the junction between West 94th and West End Avenue).  As is my custom in New York, I went for a long walk downtown and came across a temporary photographic exhibition at Grand Central Station titled ‘Faces of Ground Zero’.  It consisted of numerous life-sized portraits of the heroes who saved lives on that fateful day, many of whom were firefighters who had lost their comrades.  I encountered one of these incredible individuals and he kindly agreed to have his photo taken next to the portrait of him in his FDNY uniform.  We spoke but there was very little he could say and to be honest, I didn’t know what to ask.  It was truly one of the most humbling moments of my life and one that I will never forget.

And then there was the most heartbreaking scene, which brought the scale of the disaster clearly into focus: the thousands of photographs of people who had been missing since that day, posted by their relatives and loved ones.

At the centre of this section of the station, the following was displayed:

“This wall has been erected for the sole purpose of those wishing to post pictures and/or descriptions of loved ones missing at the Twin Towers disaster scene.  Our hearts and prayers go out to you and your loved ones.  The employees of the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority)/Metro North.”

A quarter of a century ago yesterday.

You may recall that during this time, Israel was experiencing a wave of almost daily terrorist attacks at the height of the second intifada.  Buses and coffee shops were destroyed by suicide (or to use the most accurate term, homicide) bombers and it felt as if simply being on a street anywhere in Israel was tantamount to putting your life in danger.  Close to 1,100 Israelis died during that hellish campaign orchestrated and conducted by six different Palestinian terrorist factions.

In Manhattan, following 9/11, there was a palpable feeling of unity between the residents of the city and the citizens of Medinat Yisrael.  I felt it with every step I took on the streets of that battered, bruised and traumatised city.  I had visited before but this felt nothing like the New York I knew and loved.  It had lost its ‘joie de vivre’, ‘mojo’, soul.  This was a metropolis submerged in a state of deep mourning.

Twenty-five years later, things are very different and especially since the events of our own version of 9/11 on Simchat Torah, 7th October, nearly three years ago, when, as we know, around 1,200 people were murdered and 251 were taken hostage into Gaza.

Back to New York.

What struck me then, four months following that day, was the feeling that the resilient New Yorkers (of whom my father zl was a perfect example) refused to be cowed or brow-beaten despite the trauma they had experienced.  There was a palpable sense of turning inwards and asking how this could have happened and why anyone would want to crash aeroplanes into the beautiful monuments that they cherished, that stood at the heart of everything it meant to be a proud American. 

The Twin Towers were New York.

The Pentagon is the shield that protects America and had they succeeded, the terrorists who took over United 93 would have flown it directly into either the Capitol, the seat of American democracy, or the White House which is of course the beating heart of the President of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet.

Manhattan was effectively an island of people who were engaged in the process of inner reckoning or alternatively the first step towards Teshuvah.

Today, as we know, is Rosh Hashanah, Yom Hadin – the Day of Judgement when Gd judges every living creature on earth.

It is a day when we ask ourselves how and why the year that has ended turned out the way it did and how we can try to ensure that this New Year will be so very different to the one that we bade farewell to as we lit our Yom Tov candles last night.  We also ask why the last twelve months were so challenging for Klal Yisrael.

Many of us believe that the focus of Rosh Hashanah is on Teshuvah or asking for forgiveness for our ‘crimes and misdemeanours’ (quoting Woody Allen’s famous 1989 film) over the previous year.  After all, we stridently declare that we will do Teshuvah (repentance), Tefilla (prayer) and Tzedakah (giving charity) in order to survive the decree that Gd may have decided to enact upon us during the course of this brand-new year.

However, this is not the case.  Rosh Hashanah is about looking forward, not back.  We have the rest of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah (the Ten Days of Penitence) and the whole of Yom Kippur to ask for Selicha and Mechila (different stages of forgiveness) from our fellow human beings and ultimately from Gd Himself.  Rosh Hashanah is about looking forward.

Hoping that the 9/11/2001, 7/7/2005, 10/7/2023, 10/2/2025, 12/14/2025 (using the American format now that I am a fully-fledged passport-carrying citizen of the United States of America as of last December) can and will never take place again.

In 2001, we were all New Yorkers.

 Last year, we were Mancunians and Sydneysiders.

Since 2023, we have all been October 8^th Jews – irrespective of where we stand along the religious spectrum.

We know why they hate us because they always have.  That’s not something we can change in a day.  Our job is to work out how we can continue to hold our heads high as proud Jews, despite the hate and face 5787 with renewed vigour and self-belief in the knowledge that Gd Himself will never abandon us.  Never has.  Never will.

And that’s why Rosh Hashanah is so important.

We do not know why bad things happen to good people and such a question is beyond the scope of this Drasha. I refer you to an excellent article by Rabbi Sacks ztl which you can read at https://rabbisacks.org/archive/why-does-god-allow-terrible-things-to-happen-to-his-people/ and a video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rW1znjmPFE

Today as it is Shabbat, the shofar has been silenced but our voices are strong as they always have been and we must use them to speak from the depths of our hearts to Gd in Heaven and beseech him to ensure that the miracles we witnessed in the last few years (think about Israel’s stunning victories against our enemies) continue to protect our people and by extension the world.

We can do it.  You can do it.

May Hashem grant us a year of good health and peace and may we ultimately see the fruits of our labour over these auspicious days. May He answer all of our prayers.

Ketivah VeChatima Tovah, Shana Tova Umetukah and Shabbat Shalom.