New York — Last September, it was very hard to believe in anything.
Like many people, I had been looking forward to the High Holy Days, desperately seeking answers and spiritual consolation. And like many, I was disappointed that the liturgy and sermons I encountered, to a large degree, provided neither.
As we put away the Torah last Rosh HaShanah, I saw the words “Da lifnei mi ata omed” blazing in gold over the ark. “Know before whom you stand,” the letters implored me. I had no idea before whom I stood. But I sang anyway, “hadesh yameinu kekedem,” restore our days to what they were before.
The service continued; we said “U’netane Tokef,” the prayer that capsulizes the theme of the season: “On Rosh HaShanah, they shall be written [in the Book of Life]; on Yom Kippur, they shall be sealed…. Who by fire, who by water, who in his proper time and who before his time, who shall be humbled and who shall be exalted.”
As we chanted the words, I closed my eyes and saw the towers of the World Trade Center, forever on fire and collapsing, repeating in a slo-mo CNN loop in my mind. My head and heart were pounding, my eyes suddenly streaming. For one terrifying second, I imagined myself inside at the time of impact. I looked to my spirituality for solace and found none.
From a very early age, I was taught the meaning of the season through this central concept: our penitence during Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur would determine whether our inscription for the coming year would be for good or for bad. When I was younger, I bought it. As I matured, I began to develop doubts. But last year, I just couldn’t accept it.
My religion, my God, would not want me to believe that the people who died in the attacks and in the subsequent rescue attempts did so as a result of an unsatisfactory grade on their High Holy Days report card. The oft-reiterated Psalmaic sentiment that we should not trust in mankind, only in God, was another difficult message for Americans to accept; we saw brave men and women run voluntarily into chaos, becoming heroes who would never return, while God remained silent.
The rest of Rosh HaShanah passed by in a blur of services and gefilte fish. But as I dined with different people, we all discussed the same subject. A doctor who had treated the scene’s injured described the devotion of fire and police personnel in their search for fallen and missing comrades.
A friend who would have been in one of the towers had she not stayed home to practice her music before work cried during dinner. Another woman’s roommate was on the endless list of the missing. The Book of Life in my mind was filling up with faces.
Good yields life
Now with a year of perspective, I find myself at Rosh HaShanah again. Back to the image of God’s ledger. In my mind’s eye, I keep seeing the Book of Life’s pages filled with indecipherable scrawls, names of people I will never meet, but whose faces I see everywhere, like a bound compendium of last September’s “missing” and “have you seen” posters.
In my yeshiva days, I learned the phrase “hakol nidun v’hareshut netuna.” God is omniscient and omnipotent. God knows the whole course of human events. But humankind is still given the gift of free will: our choices, good or bad, even within the structure of a pre-ordained destiny, can affect the future.
Perhaps the same conceit holds true for the framework of the Book of Life. Our deeds may influence God to seal our names in it, but the actions of individuals exercising free will can alter that record. Individuals who follow evil paths can negatively affect a positive inscription, yielding tragedy. Individuals who follow righteous paths can positively affect a negative inscription, yielding life.
Last September, evil had its hour and the world cried. But a groundswell of good will has bound New Yorkers together as we embrace our wounded and grieving city. We still weep at the senseless loss of life and the destruction of our innocence.
But the intervening 12 months have granted us a cautious perspective. In the face of national and communal trauma, good has persisted, and love is seeing us through. Depravity is base and ephemeral. Good is basic and eternal. Had firefighters and police officers not responded, had the community not rallied in crisis, had we been bereft of leadership, more people would be dead, the city would have remained divided, anarchy would have won the day and, perhaps, the future.
This month will be filled with memorials. As we experience each commemorative event, we will become even more aware that healing is a long and ongoing process. So is the process of repentance. We do what we can to make progress every day, and there are days each year dedicated to reflection and self-assessment. For synagogue-going Jews, those days are here.
As Americans, we struggle to carry the weight of our trauma and our memories. As Jews, we struggle with the weight of our repentance and grapple with the choices before us as individuals. The combined burden is as heavy as the Book of Life itself must be. But as a community of like souls, struggling together, it somehow seems more manageable.
Esther D. Kustanowitz is publications director at the Jewish Theological Seminary and lives in Manhattan.
