(My pre-Rosh Hashana pre-9/11 to Shulamith High School for Girls)

Tomorrow is September 11.

Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 people went to work in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania and never came home.

For my generation, September 11 is something we remember.

I remember that day very clearly.

At the time, I was a young attorney living in Passaic, New Jersey, and working on Wall Street. My normal commute was to take a bus into Newark and then take the PATH train into the World Trade Center.

On September 11, I got on the bus as I normally did. But when I got to Newark, the PATH wasn’t running.

At first, I didn’t really understand why.

Then I began hearing what had happened.

And very quickly, everything changed.

The place where I normally went to work was the center of a national tragedy.

And there was another part of September 11 that was particularly personal for me.

About a year earlier, I had interviewed for a job at Cantor Fitzgerald.

I didn’t get the job.

Cantor Fitzgerald occupied many of the upper floors of the North Tower. On September 11, 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees were killed.

And I remember thinking:

What if I had gotten that job?

What if I had been sitting in that building that morning?

Of course, I will never know.

But it taught me something that I still think about.

We rarely understand the significance of a decision while we are making it.

At the time, interviewing for a job was simply an interview. Getting the job or not getting the job seemed like one of those ordinary decisions that we make all the time.

But sometimes an ordinary decision can change the direction of your entire life.

For your generation, September 11 is different.

You learned about it in school.

You have seen the pictures.

You have heard stories from your parents.

You may have visited the 9/11 Memorial.

But you did not experience it.

And yet tomorrow, twenty-five years later, we will remember again.

Why do we continue to remember something that happened before many of you were born?

Because remembering is not simply about the past.

And that is actually a very Jewish idea.

Judaism does not simply tell us to remember history.

Jewish memory creates obligation.

Think about one of the most famous lines in the Haggadah:

“בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים.”

“In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he personally left Egypt.”

Notice what Chazal are asking us to do.

They are not simply telling us to remember that the Exodus happened.

We already know the history.

They are asking us to see ourselves in the story.

To experience the past as something that has meaning for us today.

That is a very different kind of memory.

This happened, and therefore I have an obligation now.

We remember Yetziat Mitzrayim because it tells us something about who we are and how we are supposed to live.

We remember the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash because memory should lead us to think about what caused that destruction and what we need to repair.

We remember Amalek because remembering evil creates a responsibility to stand against it.

And that is what makes Rosh Hashanah so interesting.

Rosh Hashanah is fundamentally a day of remembering.

But what are we remembering?

The Torah uses a fascinating phrase.

In Vayikra, Rosh Hashanah is called “Zichron Teruah,” a remembrance of teruah.

And in Bamidbar, it is called “Yom Teruah,” a day of teruah.

The Torah does not simply describe Rosh Hashanah as a day when we perform a particular action.

It describes it as a day of remembering.

A day when something is supposed to happen inside of us.

And there is another fascinating point.

The Torah itself never explicitly says, “Blow a shofar on Rosh Hashanah.”

It calls the day Yom Teruah and Zichron Teruah.

The explicit command to blow a shofar appears in the Torah in the context of Yovel, the Jubilee year:

“V’ha’avarta shofar teruah… baYom HaKippurim ta’aviru shofar b’chol artz’chem.”

You........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)