Finding God on September 11
Twenty years ago - brace yourself for this - I was 12 and in sixth grade. I went to school on a nice fall morning in the Philadelphia suburbs and was sitting in the computer lab when my teacher came over to me.
“Go to CNN.com,” he said. I went, but overloaded or being updated, it was blank. I kept hitting refresh but nothing. My teacher, Mr. Chou, left the room. Curious, I peered out. He stood in the doorway of the library quietly speaking with the principal and the librarian. I had the sense that something was wrong and returned to the computer and hit refresh again.
A picture appeared on the screen but I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Mr. Chou quickly returned and looked over my shoulder. On September 11, 2001, he was younger than I am now, guiding a class of twenty 12-year-olds through the most traumatic historical event of our lives. We didn’t have outdoor recess that day, due to the uncertainty and fear, and the day took on a quiet, eery feeling.
When Rabbi Aaron Bisno tried to make sense of the uncertainty of 9/11, he reflected on the tradition of kriah.
One of the traditional Jewish acts of mourning is the tearing of our clothes,” he wrote. “By ripping the fabric of a lapel, a pocket, a sleeve, or a black ribbon opposite our hearts, we acknowledge through a physical act of tearing, the emotional and psychic sundering death brings.
But what shall we do when it is the fabric of our society and world that is rent? What shall we do when it is the rending that is the cause of and not the response to our grief? What shall we do then? How shall we react when the way we understood the world and our place within it is rendered unrecognizable and we cannot go back to the way it ever was? What do we tear then? And how do we begin to make our world whole again?
There is a story of a young student who found a large map of the world in the newspaper. Curious, the student took the map to his teacher. Seeing an opportunity to challenge the student, the teacher took the map of the globe and tore it into many, many pieces. Fragments of paper fell to the floor at the student's feet. Handing over a roll of tape, the teacher challenged the student to reassemble the map of the world.
The student dropped to the floor and, in short order, completed the assignment by correctly taping together each of the pieces of the world. Where only minutes before the image of the world was torn asunder, strewn across the floor, now it was being offered up as an intact whole. When the teacher asked the student how it had been possible to reassemble the fragmented world so quickly, the response was short and to the point: "There was a picture of a person on the back side of the map. I repaired that one person and the whole world got fixed too."
This is our task on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, on Shabbat Shuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In the face of uncertainty, we turn to repair ourselves, to recharge ourselves, to assess the pieces of our lives and tape them back together.
This week's parsha is Vayeilech and details Moses preparing the Israelites for his death. Even though the event is predictable, life without him isn’t. He knows the uncertainty of losing their leader will be challenging. He tells them, “I know how defiant and stiffnecked you are while I am still alive. How much more, then, when I am dead!”
And I relate to the Israelites here, there is a rudderless feeling of being adrift at sea when we’re confronted with the predictable unknown, like in our parsha, let alone the unpredictable, like 9/11 or the pandemic. When we’re scared, when we don’t know what’s happening or feel out of control, it’s easy to spiral. The Torah’s antidote is to turn towards God.
I don’t know exactly what that means. Last week we read:
“This Instruction [these mitzvot/mitzvahs] are not too baffling for you, or beyond reach. [Lo bashamayim hi] They are not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us?” Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us?”
No, they’re very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart. (Deut 30:11-14)
I’m not sure what’s in your heart these days, but I do know that turning to God means something different for every person here even if we can reach it.
When I texted Mr. Chou today as I reflected on 9/11, he said, “I still marvel at how maturely you guys handled it! I forgot how really young I was. Not sure how I held it together that day.” And hold it together he did. I remember his calm. I remember feeling safe. I remember trusting his intuition on that day. When I look back, I feel, but only in retrospect, that God was in that place - Highland Elementary - and I did not know it. God was in Mr. Chou’s actions that day, in his love for his students, in the community of that little school.
Though we face so many uncertainties, though the world is on fire, though injustice rolls down mightier than justice in recent days, what I feel today in the opening hours of this new year, 5782, is that God is in this place, and I know it. God is here in these kids running around. God is here in the warmth of community and being together in person. God is in the work we do together to repair the world.
Lo Bashamayim Hi - God and God’s mitzvot are not in the heavens or across the sea. They’re here with us: in our actions, in our love, in our community.