Tomorrow morning, I imagine most of you remember exactly where you were twenty years ago. I was learning as a part of an independent study in my high school library when the librarian immediately turned on the TV. It was early, only 8 something, and I remember the billowing smoke that filled the big-screen TV. Admittedly, I didn’t really know what the twin towers were and I certainly didn’t understand their significance, but I knew that something catastrophic had happened. Slowly other adults came into the library, one of the only rooms with a TV, and I learned from their shocked faces and hand-covered mouths that this was momentous in the worst kind of way. And I remember the collective gasp when the first tower fell just before the hour, as if before its collapse there was hope, but as it fell to the ground all hope was shattered.
It’s hard to imagine that twenty years have passed, and at times it feels like it was a lifetime ago while at other moments the scent of smoke in downtown Manhattan still lingers. I have an impulse to look at these last twenty years and try to find some meaning. I ask myself what has changed since 9/11 and what remains the same. How have we grown as a nation? What have we learned? And of course, there is tremendous importance in asking these questions. It’s part of what we owe our history.
But today, I’m trying to resist that impulse to draw meaning from these two decades, from the tragedy of thousands of lives lost and the landscape of our country forever changed. I am trying to draw from the message of this Shabbat to situation myself in this anniversary. This Shabbat, the one between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of Return. Of course, the word Shuva (Return) is usually contextualized this time of year through the understanding of teshuvah, repentance, the particular type of return we engage in this season. Yet, sometimes a more simple understanding is the one that guides me. This Shabbat, I am called to return. Return to the memories and emotions, return to the mourning of a nation that endured so much loss, return to the profound generosity we saw between human beings. Return to the stories of the lives lost and the families forever affected.
This Shabbat, we are asked to return. And in that act of returning, we recommit ourselves. To our own story. To memory. To healing. To love.
Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Sarit
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