Tuesday 23 September 2008

9-11 Ramblings

Question: How Come I am posting TODAY? 9-11 was weeks ago?
Answer: Today is the HEBREW Yahrzeit of 9-11 the 23rd of Ellul.

Several Disjointed Ramblings
  • In the USA 911 is the Emergency Phone Number. The date indicated the emergency indeed. { a Friend pointed this out to me the day it happened.]

  • In Israel/Europe/Canada the date is 11/9. If you use this to make a flip-flop into Hebrew then the 11th month is Av and 11-9 could indicate Tisha B'av. Kinda weird!

  • When my shul COS was still standing, 2 survivors came to shul to bench gomel. One was a Fire Department EMT from Chinatown which is the 2nd closest station to the World Trade Center. I asked him to address the shul on that Shabbos - the one AFTER 9-11 and preceding Rosh Hashana. {as in 2008, 9/11 was a Tuesday and so was RH] H related the horrors because he saw the first tower minutes after it was hit and he was there in person when the 2nd tower was hit as well as when both towers fell. Although he benched Gomel on that Shabbas but once, he related that he said Sh'ma Yisrael 3 times that morning.

  • Another scary thought. In the viduy of Yom Kippur the 4 methods of capital punishment are listed. Sqilah Sreifa etc. There is a machloqet [a dispute] which is the more sever form of death s'qilah or s'reifa. Concerning 9/11, we were discussing the horror when it occurred to one of us that the victimes were faced with this very morbid choice. I.E. to jump would be death by s'qilah [those executed by s'qilah were eushed off a cliff before they were stoned!] and to remain in the burning inferno was to suffer death by s'reifa. From a Traditional Jewish perspective This brought a very horrific, extreme, morbidity to the nature of the deaths involved. I.E. all those who perished did so by the most extreme forms of death in our lore.

  • Some of the far-sighted victims tried to call their spouses by cell phone before dying in order to prevent their spouses from becoming Agunot. How poignant that must have been!

  • Moreover, those who came late to work that morning due to saying S'lichot were saved. How weird is THAT?
Shana Tova
RRW

2 comments:

micha said...

Meanwhile, those who got to work on time because they said selichos with a minyan kevasikin were not.

THAT is far weirder.

-micha

Anonymous said...

Don't mention the selichos thing. Many anti-Semitic groups including those of Middle-eastern origin have already figured out that lots of Jews were late for work that day and have announced that this is proof that the Jews blew the buildings up.