A Day Like No Other

It seemed in so many ways to be a day just like any other. Here in the Midwest, September 11, 2001, began as a crisp, clear, perfect day — the sort of day that signals that summer is drawing to a close and autumn is just around the corner. The streets of Chicago that morning were filled with people headed to work, children on their way to school — the ordinary sights and sounds of a big city stirring.

But it was, of course, a day like no other. When first one, then two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, another into the Pentagon in suburban Washington, D.C., and reports began to surface of an unexplained plane crash in rural Pennsylvania, word spread quickly through the nation and the world.

Gradually, it became clear that the U.S. was victim of a terror attack the scale and audacity of which we could scarcely imagine. Offices in Chicago's Loop, where The Fellowship is headquartered, began to close, and people flooded the streets. As The Fellowship called a quick meeting before sending home our employees, I recall telling staff that Americans could now understand why Israelis, who live daily with the possibility of terrorist attacks, carry cell phones with them at all times (such a thing was far less common ten years ago than it is today) — they never know when they may need to call a friend or relative to ask, "Are you alright?"

9/11 was a national tragedy for the U.S., but it also was personal, and not just for those who lost loved ones in the attacks. One Fellowship staff member recently recalled where he was on that day. Preparing to take his then one-year-old daughter to the doctor, he watched on television as the second airliner slammed into the World Trade Center, and heard the horror in the voices of the commentators as it dawned on them that this could not have been an accident.

"I knew we would be late for our appointment," he told me, "but I took my daughter, held her closely, and kneeled down right there in the living room and prayed. I had just witnessed the death of hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and was seeing thousands more struggling to survive in the chaos. I can't forget that moment — it's no exaggeration to say that it changed the way I look at the world, and I knew it would change the world my daughter grew up in."

In fact, 9/11 was, for many Americans, a transforming day. It wakened us to the terrible reality of Islamist terrorism — a reality that Israel knows all too well. It taught us that, though we are insulated from some of the dangers faced by much of the rest of the world, we are not beyond their reach. This Sunday, as we remember those who perished in the 9/11 attacks, let us again resolve to confront those dangers, and to fight tirelessly against Islamist terror, which threatens not just the U.S. and Israel, but the entire free world. And, through it all, let us never forget to pray, trusting, like the Psalmist, that "The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth" (Psalm 145:18).

With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein