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" 911"
*********************** Almost anything
said about yesterday's horrific events is an It's interesting to note that it was the Chofetz Chaim's yartzeit ! *********************** First of all, I’m sure
we all heard of dozens of people who for some *********************** What a neis! A man who worked at the WTC realized he had to repair his tefillen after he
finished davening in the morning. He decided to do it right away and show up
for work 2 hours later. See more stories like this in the forum or add your own! *********************** The date
of the attack: 9/11 - 9 + 1 + 1 = 11 *********************** *********************** With the Yamim
Noraim right around the corner I hope that this letter serves as a small bit of
chizuk and maybe even insightful to those who were fortunate enough not to have
to see what I have these past few days. Rav Donny Marcus tells a great story
every erev Rosh Hashana about his experience in Israel during the gulf war. He
tells of how during the air raids, they all "heard the shofar" and it
really have them a true awakening. Well, we at Reishit all have heard that story
many times. This week though, I truly discovered what he meant....... Sitting in my
dorm room at 9:00 in the morning getting ready to take a shower, a loud tone
came screaming over my hatzolah radio. Ok, so I was a little late for morning
seder. "Attention all units, we need ambulances from all neighborhoods to
start proceeding to lower Manhattan, we have reports that an airplane has just
hit the World Trade center." I have never put on clothes so fast in my
life. Half dressed, I flew down the stairs and outside to go to the YU Hatzolah
ambulance. There, 3 other members jumped on the ambulance, or bus as it will,
and we went speeding down the West Side Highway lights and sirens. Then another
shocking report comes over our radio. "We have reports that a second place
has just hit the Twin Towers." At this point, we knew what we were going to
be facing. Or so we thought. As we got closer to lower Manhattan we could see
the towers burning at the tops, but still standing tall in the sky. It was time
to work. We drove our bus to John street where! We jumped off and began to look for patients. We were at no loss for people to help. There, doctors, EMTs, paramedics, firemen, nurses, and anyone with any minute medical training hustled and bustled back and forth trying to find the most serious patients and get them to the hospital. We had only managed to get a few critical patients loaded and to the hospital when the worst part began. "Code one, code one, the scene is not safe, all units evacuate the area immediately, Tower One is coming down." But it was too late. The ground under us began to rumble. When I say rumble, I mean that I almost got knocked off my feet. It sounded like a subway car was about to ride right over our heads. That would have been a better option than what was about to occur. Everyone began to run in every which direction but there was no where to run. I froze. I didn't know where to go or what to do. I looked up in the sky and there it was coming straight at me. The malach hamaves himself might look happier. A massive storm of black soot and ash came hailing down on us at speeds that hurled people and cars out of its way. Tower One had come down in a mean way. I ran and baruch hashem I was able to dive into a tiny shoe store just as they were slamming the door shut. And that was the end of it. Myself and about 20 other crying victims were to be left to die in a shoe store in lower Manhattan. The small store began to fill with black soot and smoke and we all rushed up the stairs to the even smaller attic. But it was no use. The smoke joined us up the stairs and it was getting hard to breath. There was just no air. I frantically called for help on the radio and begged someone to come get us out. "H-Base, I am trapped inside a store at 1 John street with 20 patients, one of whom is an asthmatic. Smoke is filling the room and we cant breath." I called for help but I knew it wouldn't come. Everyone was trapped from the collapse of the Tower, and we were just another group of helpless victims. So I would love to
tell some story about how I said shema yisroel and jumped for joy to die al
kidush hashem, but that's just not how it went. I was scared. Really scared! I
think I may have gotten in a half of a shiur hamaalot but i couldn't finish it.
There was just too much going through my head. I was not in the mood to die of
smoke inhalation. Especially not before I had lunch. And then a neis happened.
Ok, maybe it was just a big firefighter, but I'll call him neis. He was able to
get the door open and told us all to just hold our breath and run as fast as we
could north. Let me tell you, north south, east west, I have no clue....I just
ran my tushy off. With no visual ability and with no air to breath I ran into
the black streets. It was totally min hashamayim that just as i couldn't hold my
breath any longer I ran right into the back of an ambulance. I banged on the
door and they let me in to get my first breath of fresh air. After a little
oxygen and a few seconds of rest I was able to come back to reality and realize I
wasn't going to die. I didn't believe it at first but I wasn't going to argue.
Riding with us was a doctor from Brooklyn, 6 hatzolah members and 5 patients. We
transported them all to NYU hospital and from there we restocked and went back
to help more people. And from there
on, the day was uneventful. NY was medically ready for thousands of patients.
But they didn't come. There were minimal amounts of people who were found at
this point. We remained until midnight treating a few firefighters and other rescue
workers but almost no people from the buildings themselves. It was a sad day for
all of us. The next day I took the train back down town and hopped a ride with a
police car to ground 0. It was not to be believed. I stood most of the day a few
feet from the tower, which was now on the west side highway, digging through
rubble to find bodies and maybe even trapped people. Standing there on top of
these innocent peoples lives just made me cringe. Me and my friend dug up shoes,
business cards, fans, pants, you name it. It was all there scattered at our
feet. We treated some rescue workers throughout the day until we were evacuated
by a police boat out of the area for fear that more buildings were going to be
falling. The rest of the days events are unimportant. So what should be
taken from all this? Well I don't know, and at 3:00 in the morning I don't have
many insightful thoughts. I can tell you though that I'm changed from it. I
thought my life was over and that's a hard feeling to forget. But looking back I
know one thing. Hakadosh Baruch Hu was behind this from start to finish. We don't
know why and we cant even try to explain it. This was the most terrible thing I
have ever seen with my own eyes. But we must be michazeck ourselves in this
terrible time of pain and suffering to use our sorrows to enable us to really
have kavanah when we daven this Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I think that the
davening should have new meaning to all of us and our kavanah should be that
much greater. And though this, I hope that through our teffilah, teshuva and
tzedaka, we are maavir this terrible roah hagezierah and are zocheh to the coming
of moshiach bimheirah beyameinu. My tefillos and tehillim are with all those who
still have loved ones and friends that are missing and hope that everyone has a
refuah sheleima min hashamayim. ***********************
My experience at the WTC As we were
dispatched to the Twin Towers for a fire, not knowing what we were getting
in to, I rode in the Hatzoloh ambulance to Manhattan. We were able to clearly
see the upper portion of the towers on fire from the Prospect Expway on the way
into the Battery Tunnel. I was getting
out of breathe and knew I had to get into a building. I ran into an alley way
and stopped running. It was getting very hard to breathe and I was
breathing very fast, from running. I sat myself down and thought to
myself that this was probably going to be the end! I figured if I keep running I
will definitely not survive. I will need too much oxygen and there wasn't much.
The nissim
that we all experienced as individuals and as a group of Chevra Hatzoloh
are indescribable. the chesed we all saw from the Ribbon Shel Olam is boundless.
B"H all Hatzoloh members are accounted for, some with broken limbs
and scratches and bruises - NONTHELESS ALIVE! *taken from www.frumteens.com, thanks to the moderator WHAT WE
SHOUD THINK IN RESPONSE TO THE TERROR It’s true – and this everyone knows already – that when suffering befalls us, we are obligated to take stock in our actions and do teshuva, because, as Chazal say, “There is no suffering without sin, and no pain without transgression”. The Rambam writes that it is cruelty (achzorius) to allow suffering to happen without attributing it to our sins. It’s like when a father slaps a kid in the face, and the kid says, “I trust my father that her must have had a reason to slap me, but I am not capable of figuring out why”. The purpose of the slap is to teach a lesson, and if the kid refuses to learn, then I guess another punishment is necessary, r”l. OUR RESPONSE: IMPROVEMENT VS. CHANGE So the first, most basic response is Teshuva, but it has to be accompanied by ruthless objectivity. Meaning, I am certain that everyone will say in response to this, “We have to speak less loshon horah, respect each other more, do more chesed and learn more torah”. People love to look at themselves and say, “We can improve”. But they do not like to say, “We have to CHANGE”. There is a big difference. Improvement means you have a certain value that you are striving toward, but you have to strive harder, more, better. Of course, regardless of how hard you strive there is always room for improvement. People are willing to commit to improve, but of course since there’s always room for improvement and always will be, the determination of whether they actually did as much as they could do to improve is impossible to make. Then there is “change”. As opposed to improvement, where you have to try harder to do what you already are doing, or at least want to do, change, in this context, means to wake up and to realize that there are many aveiros that people are not trying to work on at all, but merely live our life accepting them as part of our lifestyle. People don’t want to think about these aveiros because responding to them means not only some vague commitment to “try harder” but to measurably and visibly make changes in your lifestyle. That is why if someone says, “Jews are being killed in Israel. It’s because we talk loshon horah, we don’t respect each other enough, and don’t pray with enough kavanah”, people will accept that. But if someone says, “Jews are being killed in Israel. It’s because married women do not cover their hair, because people go mixed swimming, because boys and girls mix in ways they should not, because people read and watch and log on to places they should not”, people will get mad offended. Why would we accept only certain aveiros as capable of causing death and not others? Is it because we are reluctant to admit that our very lifestyle needs to be changed? Or that we only want to accept responsibility for something that we can always say, “We’re trying”, or “There’s ALWAYS room for improvement?” Whatever. Our first response to tragedy is to ruthlessly audit our actions and admit to ourselves that our sins – not only loshon horah and disrespect for each other – is causing Jews to die all over the world. When Achan sinned by talking from the spoils of Yericho, Jews were killed, and that was one person, one sin. Everyone knows what their own sins are, and Hashem is showing us the possible consequences of them. And better he should show us in Olam hazeh…. At least now we are getting a warning. Sins are the most destructive thing in the universe. THE CHURBAN OF OUR SINS The World Trade Center was probably the most monumental structures in the whole world. I’ve been in many countries, and I have never seen anything like them in terms of overwhelming hugeness. Watching it be blown away shakes us up, and we are shocked at the sight of something so big being obliterated like that. The reality is, though, that what we watched this week is nothing compared to what our sins do in Shamayim. This world is nothing. It’s a puny, little spec compared to the universe at large. And the universe itself is less than a puny spec compared to the Olamos HaElyonim, the majestic upper worlds that are closer to Hashem. This entire universe is a little joke compared to the universe upstairs. And the damage that a few planes can do down here is nothing compared to the utter destruction what sins can do up there. Up there is a world that lasts forever, is built of the goodness of our Mitzvos, and is beautiful and majestic beyond our comprehension. When we do a sin, it is like atom bombing the most majestic city in the world. All the suffering, the screaming, the destruction, the horror and the ugliness, happens in Shamayim. Its hard to envision what such a thing looks like, but last week’s destruction of something so big and majestic that horrified and shocked so, is a small miniscule Moshol of what we do to Hashems world, to our own eternal Gan Eden world, and to this small world too, when we sin. After 120 years, we will live forever and ever, for millions and millions of years until eternity, in a world that we make. Our Mitzvos build towers. Our aveiros tear them down. The horror and the shock of seeing the WTC torn down is nothing compared to our shock and horror of seeing the towers built by our Mitzvos torn down by our own actions. We are all going to have to relive the experience of the world trade center destruction in the next world. It will be not the death of others, but our own death over and over being experienced then, the pain and anguish will not be watched but intimately felt. It wont be some business offices that will be destroyed but our own homes, built by the sweat of our brows. That we will see crashing down around us, where we will be trapped between vaporizing heat waves and jumping to a crashing death. Our deaths, our homes, our horror, and our tragedy – it will all be so personal and up close. Taking place in the deepest part of our souls. We will see it happen, experience it, feel it in the most painful way. And we will think about those beautiful towers and the city that we built with our mitzvos and get sickened by what was and what could have been if not for the destruction taking place before our eyes. And we will wonder at the evil of the terrorists and what kind of animal would destroy such an infinitely beautiful city created out of the stuff of Mitzvos, and torture such beautiful peaceful souls created in the Image of G-d. We will watch, helplessly as the most beautiful and majestic structures go down in smoke and ashes, destroyed by suicide hijackers. We will watch and not be able to stop them, and we will wonder how Hashem could allow such beauty to be destroyed – beauty that was created by a Jewish soul – a chelek elokah mima’al – a part of Hashem Himself. Infinite beauty and majesty. How could Hashem allow it? We will scream out at the injustice and the evil of the perpetrators, the death and destruction they are causing. The sorrow, the horror. The lives snuffed out at their hands, and we will demand justice. We will scream to hashem to reveal the identities of the cowardly pilots and bring the criminals to justice. And we will demand to know, how such pain and horror could exist in the Olam HaEmes. And Hashem will then answer us. And all the horror and pain that we saw until then will pale in comparison to the horror and pain and shock that we will realize that we didn’t grow much from when we lived in the Olam HaSheker, that just like we had eyes but refused to see Hashem’s justice in this world, we still are blind in the next world, too blind and deaf and dumb to understand the justice and ways of hashem, because at that moment, when we scream in pain and horror at the destruction of the infinite beauty created by our mitzvos, Hashem will allow us to see the entire picture. And when see that whole picture, we will then know the horror and pain of Gehennom itself, worse then experiencing our own deaths thousands and thousands of times over, and being helpless to stop it. Because we will then see that the pilots, the terrorists, the masterminds behind this destruction… … is us. We did the aveiros, we knew what they would do, we were warned, and we destroyed our own world. And one avairah is like dropping ten thousand suicide planes on G-d’s world. On our world, that we created with our mitzvos. But it will be too late, then. “Today is the time to do them [the Mitzvos], tomorrow is the time to reap their reward.” We have a choice. Let’s make it before it’s too late. Let’s learn from the terrible destruction that we just saw. Rosh HaShanah is coming. Let’s do teshuva. * * * PART III - Questions People are asking how Hashem could allow this to happen, and why evil people are allowed to cause so much damage. There is a great debate in the Seforim about this, but for now, we are going to follow the position of the Chovos Halevovos, who says that nobody can do any harm to you at all, unless there was a decree by Hashem that such harm should befall you. But first, one other note: The only time people question Hashem's place in a tragedy, it is invariably when the tragedy was committed by people. When volcanoes erupt and kill thousands of natives, or when epidemics happen and wipe out thousands of men women and children, people do not ask How could G-d allow this? In such cases, people know that Hashem runs the world, and He has His reasons for how He runs the world. People die every day of heart attacks - how many, throughout the world? - would over 10,000 be an unreasonable estimate? Not at all. Each and every day, all over the globe, hundreds of thousands of people die and suffer from various causes, but people do not question, Why? When so-called "natural" tragedies occur, people accept that is it G-d, running His world in mysterious ways. But when something happens due to "unnatural causes" - such as the WTC bombing or the holocaust or the like - people are all over the place asking, sometimes even demanding (!) explanations of how G-d can allow it. The truth is, however, that floods famines and terrorists are equally acts of G-d according to the Chovos Halevovos. When someone is killed by a flood, it is because that person's time was up; and when someone is killed by a terrorist, it is because that person's time was up. The terrorist does not control life or death any more than the water does. It is Hashem making the decision of "mi yichyeh umi yamus". But there is a big difference between the terrorist and the flood. The terrorist has Bechirah. The way Bechirah works is, a person has the ability to choose to do good or evil. That choice, however, is where his Bechirah ends. Whether the choice is carried out or not, is in the hands of Hashem, not the person. Peopel can just choose what to do; it is up to Hashem to decide if they in fact do it. Actions are determined by Hashem. Decisions, however, are human. The difference between an evil person and a righteous person is, the evil person chooses to be evil, and the righteous person chooses to be righteous. If Hashem does not have rachmonus on the evil person, if Hashem wants to display his evil to the world, He will allow him opportunity to show the world how evil he is. But he cannot actually harm anyone. What Hashem does is, He arranges circumstances so that a person who is supposed to die is in a certain place at a certain time, and so is the murderer. Hashem gives the murderer all opportunity to bring to fruition his choice to kill the victim. So the murderer is a murderer because he chose to murder. The victim is not really a victim of the murderer. His time was up anyway. The murderer "accomplished" nothing, except to be evil. In order for the holocaust to have happened, Hashem had to give Hitler the opportunity to carry it out. He had to have been born in the right time period, in the right place, with millions of other circumstances combining to create an opportunity to kill 6,000,000 Jews. These Jews, too, had to be in a certain place at a certain time with certain circumstances. Everything was organized and manipulated by Hashem of course, but Hitler only harmed himself, because the ability to become evil to the point of killing 6,000,000 innocents is in his hands, but the ability to acutely kill 6,000,000 people is not in his hands. Hashem has to align 6,000,000 whose time is up then and there, and allow Hitler to become a murderer, meaning, someone who chooses to murder. For every single person that was killed or hurt in the WTC bombing, a separate "cheshbon" from up high had to be made. Mi yichyeh, mi yamus; mi yanuach, umi yanuah. No terrorist decides these things. Hashem does. But Hashem could have had these 10,000 unfortunate souls pass away far from each other, or in ways that nobody would have noticed. But there is a "cheshbon" to everything. Osama Bin Laden ys"v (or whoever did it) made a choice to be unspeakably evil. To kill thousads upon thousands of people. That itself makes him evil. If Hashem would have had rachmonus on him, he would not have given him the opportunity to carry out his plans. But Hashem chose to allow the evil of the terrorist to show itself, and to bring "results" in the world, at least as far as the eye can see. Hashem wanted to show how evil this man is, to teach us whatever lessons and mussar there is to learn from this, and millions of other cheshbonos that we finite beings cannot fathom. But Hashem decided that these people, whose time was up, should pass in this particular way. Bin Laden did not harm them. He cannot. There is no power in this world except Hashem. Reshaim can merely choose to be Reshaim. But they cannot effect the world. *********************** In Lesson #1 Rebbe Nachman
teaches that a Jew is responsible to consider the Divine wisdom contained in all
things and in every facet of life. Once he has discovered the Divine wisdom
contained therein, he has to use that thing (tangible or intangible) to draw
closer to Hashem (God). President Bush was quoted in asking the nation to pray for the families of the victims and quoted the Book of Psalms, ''And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages in Psalm 23. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me.'' ***********************
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