I was ten years old on September 11, 2001. Growing up outside New York, I had always understood Manhattan as part of the landscape of my life, but that morning I was across the river in New Jersey when I heard an explosion in the distance and watched smoke begin to rise from the skyline. Like millions of others, I watched in disbelief as the towers burned and eventually fell – images that would become permanently etched into the memory of an entire generation.

At ten years old, I could not begin to comprehend the scale of what I was witnessing. I did not understand the geopolitical forces behind the attack or the full weight of thousands of lives lost. What I understood was simpler: something terrible had happened, and the world around me had suddenly changed.

Yet what has stayed with me just as strongly as the tragedy itself is what happened afterward. My father is a doctor, and in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, hospitals in New Jersey began receiving people connected to the disaster. My father went to help. There was no discussion about whether it was convenient or whether someone else would take responsibility. People needed care, and he had the ability to provide it.

I grew up in that kind of home. Service was never presented as an abstract ideal; it was demonstrated through action. When a community faced a crisis, the question was not simply what had gone........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)