Reflections on Absence: On the Twenty-First Anniversary of September 11th
It has been twenty-one years since the devastating attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a plane that was brought down in Pennsylvania. September 11th, now a day of memorial, marking loss, and remembering heroism in the face of evil. The site that the Towers stood nearly a generation ago now feature two major structures - the Freedom Tower designed to be 1776 feet tall and standing as a defiant response to those who destroyed so much on that day and a pair of pools with cascading waterfalls occupying the original footprints of the towers and, as the name of the memorial expresses, reflecting absence.
Perhaps it is just my own sense, but this year, September 11th feels much more distant. The world and its preoccupations have gotten that much more intense and everything from the ongoing carnage in Ukraine, political toxicity, to the timing of the death of the Queen of England seem to have predominated the coverage. This year does mark the beginning of a third decade since the attacks. The tear in the fabric of that impossible blue sky has, somehow, been sewn up by time. We have moved from mourning to memory.
This year September 11th bridges two different weekly Torah readings dealing with the power of Remembering. The first, read the day before, marks a devastating attack on the children of Israel at the hands of a vicious enemy called Amalek who pounced upon the most vulnerable and unprotected. The passage begins with the word “Remember” and enjoins the Israelites to never forget the evil aggressors and set upon annihilating every trace of this tribe for all time. The second passage, read this coming week begins “My father was a wandering Aramean” forms an expression of the core story of the Israelite experience of becoming enslaved in Egypt and the gratitude of having been redeemed which is the basis of the Passover story.
These memories are fundamentally different. Amalek, no longer a people but an idea, is the prototype for the implacable cruelty manifest by Crusaders, and Inquisitors, Nazis, Stalinists and terrorists acting in the name of radical Islamism. We must never forget so that we never lose sight that evil exists and must be met with resolve and without compromise. The Wandering Aramean passage is a more complicated legacy. The Israelite nation, the Jewish people learns from oppression in Egypt not an ethic of revenge against enslavers but commitment to the justice and compassion and liberation that we were denied.
How will we move through this transition regarding September 11th? The day itself will spur a return to “Never Forget”, national ceremonies and recognition at public events will remind us of Amalek and the resolve called for to honor the memories of those murdered. Like the defiant Freedom Tower we will continue to build and rebuild in the face of destruction. Yet there will also be the “Reflection of Absence” where the story that is told and the names recited are the best of who we are and a guide to our own legacy as a nation that strives to do what is right and treat with respect all of our citizens. This story is even more resonant and more called for when we need to be reminded of the principles upon which our democratic republic is built. Principles that, like our wandering ancestors, have never been completely realized or planted, but remind us not only to look backward but forward reflecting on the America that will be.