9/11/11: Monuments, Moments, Memories, and Memorials
Fri, September 9, 2011
On the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11: Monuments, Moments, Memories, and Memorials
Rabbi Amy R. Perlin, Temple B’nai Shalom 9/9/11
I spent most of the last month of my three-month sabbatical traveling. As I looked through my pictures to create my album, I was struck by how many of them included big buildings and how much of my recollection of the places we visited were about the history of those buildings:
Hagia Sofia, in Istanbul, Turkey- today a museum, formerly a mosque, originally built as a basilica in 532 C.E. … in its time a tour de force of domed architecture is a lasting reminder of architectural adaptation to historical circumstances and change. When our guide told us that the Statue of Liberty could fit in its center, I was in awe. But, as usual when you tour, little is known about the people who called this place a house of worship and so much more is known about the rulers who decided to let it stand rather than knock it down. Hagia Sophia tells the history of Istanbul better than any of its citizens.
Our favorite visit was another location in Turkey – Ephesus, the centerpiece of which is the reconstructed library of Celsus, built in 117 C.E as a magnificent library for a thriving community by its governor to house 12,000 scrolls and as his personal burial place. Devastated by earthquake and fire, its magnificent and massive façade stands tall thanks to archaeologists and those who financed them. We marveled at the history able to be told through the structures that still remained. Even the public toilets are there for all to see that people sat side-by-side… talk about community!
And then in a field in Olympia, Greece, we stood on the soil where the Olympics was born, and saw the modest stones where the Olympic flame is still lit. Earthquakes have leveled most of the structures, but the field remains untouched for all to see. The hoards of tourists are a reminder of a time long ago when Greek men and boys gathered to live their culture and cultivate their values of mind and body.
And how many tourists visit the Wall in Jerusalem each year, to touch the last remnant that remains of the outer wall of our Second Temple? How many tourists to Israel spend time visiting Roman ruins like Masada and Caesarea, in an effort to reclaim the history of a land we hold sacred? We needed to got the Holocaust Memorials in Rhodes and Corfu to feel that we had paid homage to those who lost their lives who lived on the soil we were visiting. Travelers learn history through the remains of what once was, or memorials to those who lived, as guides and guidebooks use those markers as opportunities to make yesterday come alive today.
At the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the treasury claims to have on display the staff of Moses and the sword of King David. I saw both of them. Who knows? One of the churches we visited has the diaper of Jesus locked away in a silver box. The tangible transports us in time and place.
The point is that we travel the world looking at natural wonder, or very often uncovering the history of days gone by through the stones and edifices that remain as vestiges of a society that once lived and thrived on this planet. History is shaped and retold and reclaimed in stones and buildings that remain, or have been reconstructed or in the rocks that cracked in half, still standing after earthquakes still remembered.
And so as 9/11 approaches on Sunday, we hear about the buildings and places: the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon… and the field in a remote, rural area near Shanksville, PA … for that is how history is retold, from tower to field, from generation to generation.
But, a decade is not a long time in history. None of us know how the story of 9/11 will be told a thousand years from now, or what will remain to assist tour guides in the telling of the tragic tale. Rabbi Nyer reminded me that none of our K-5 students were even alive when 9/11 took place. But, for many of us that day remains a vivid personal memory that has been woven into our collective national memory. For many, 9/11 is a fateful date numerically; a video played over and over; something that happened that makes us take off our shoes at airports, and an event that has made the phrases “the war on terror” and Homeland Security common place for our media and government.
There is a field in Pennsylvania. There is the Pentagon, repaired and back in business, there is a gaping hole with a new memorial rising in NY where two amazing towers once stood… all places tourists can visit where people can be remembered for time in memorial. History is told through the locations that were hit on that fateful day ten years ago.
Moments and memories happen to individual people, but are told in monuments and memorials for masses for posterity. We live in a city of monuments, and touring this city we tell our national history of Presidents, assassinations, revolution, emancipation, reconstruction, and a Great Depression. The impressive structures that house our government have at times elevated our leaders to comparable impressive status, while for much of our history they have been dwarfed and tarnished by civil strife and uncivil discord, and behavior that belies the magnificence of the structures created to house the lofty ideals embodied in our magnificent Constitution.
I have been reading articles this week begging us to look forward and to learn from this recent history. In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Lynne Schofield, assistant professor of statistics at Swarthmore, and a daughter who lost her mother when American Airlines Flight 77 was flown into the Pentagon, asks us to stop making her relive her mother’s funeral each year. She asks a question she believes her mother, the therapist, would have asked, “When will we move to the final stage of grief, toward acceptance and renewal?” Her most profound question: “What if we spent time building not another structure in memorial but, instead, building our relationships with others? Or raising money for our favorite charity? She asks us to transform our 9/11 reflections into a reality of positive action.
E.J. Dionne, in his op ed piece in yesterday’s Post, quoting Lincoln after the Civil War, also calls on us to look forward. He has a point. In looking back on the fallout of 9/11 this past decade, we don’t see a nation united. We have become plagued by a divided nation, led by strident, often ineffective, partisan leaders and plagued by extremists, as have many nations around the world. The fear did not breed the sense of oneness and community we had hoped for ten years ago. Instead, it has bred intolerance toward all Muslims, xenophobia, growing discrimination toward immigrants and “the other” in our society. This week’s Torah portion commands us, “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger… Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.” We have yet to figure out how to protect and keep safe the rights of each citizen, as we seek to protect all citizens and our beloved country form attack.
On September 12, 2001, we filled this sanctuary with kids, teens, members who all wanted one thing… to feel connected and safe. Services were packed on Friday night. People sought refuge in our sanctuary and we wondered how long it would last. I can tell you, “Not too long.” In an emergency, people often seek God, and faith, and connection in community.
But, we live in a world with an Internet attention span. Loyalties and connection are as fleeting as the last click of your mouse. The fallout of 9/11 is not marked by an unprecedented rise in our membership or a continued overflow attendance, but the fact that our little synagogue in the woods has had to spend over a quarter of a million dollars for private police protection, in the past ten years, to protect ourselves during services and religious school, from as our prayerbook says, “forces that would have destroyed us.”
In Jewish life, the very end of this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy is famous: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt. How, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear… you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”
Amalek attacked the women, elderly and children in a most cowardly attack on our people during those 40 years of wandering. That moment has no stone memorial, no façade to visit, no edifice to tell its history, other than the one we carve into the hearts of every Jew. Haman and Hitler are said to be descendents of Amalek. We are taught to abhor cowardly attacks on innocents. And most of all we are COMMANDED to never forget the attack, that happened over 3300 years ago, and we never have. Just the word Amalek strikes fear and contempt in the hearts of a knowledgeable Jew. We are a people who have learned to remember the moments and legacy of individuals with names long forgotten, without the benefit of magnificent structures to tell our communal story. The Torah is our reminder, in a world where other cultures have Parthenons and palaces. And we are the tourists, visiting the Torah each week, relearning the history of human evil and good, through her divine lens.
The memorials that have come to be in the past decade are important, for that is how we humans create long-term memories of historical record to be visited by millions over centuries. But, we are Jews. First and foremost, we remember the lives and the potential lost. The parents who will never watch their children grow up, the children who died before their time, the heroes who lost their lives trying to save life, every man, woman, and child – precious, loved, and lost to us forever.
As the High Holy Days approach, we are cognizant of the fact that the command to never forget is not a lesson for Amalek alone. It is a lesson for all time. And it is not a lesson in forgiveness, either. We have never forgiven Amalek. And we never will. Jews don’t talk about reconciliation in the way they do in South Africa. We do not forget, nor do we forgive those who perpetrate the most heinous crimes. Instead of wasting our time on forgiving perpetrators of horrific acts, we dedicate our lives “for giving” to others, to those who are worthy, and to repairing a world that is horribly broken, l’dor vador, from generation to generation.
9/11 is not about forgiving Al-Qaeda. It is about never forgetting those who died on that fateful day, and pledging to create monuments of memory in our hearts, and edifices of memory in our society, in the hope that such an event will never happen again. This Shabbat before the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is aboutheeding the Torah’s command: “Do not forget!” as we struggle individually and collectively to find a way to move forward to a Promised Land we have yet to see.