On September 11, 2001, the world changed. For those who lived through that day, the memories remain seared into the soul: the towers collapsing, the sky darkened with ash, the stunned silence of city streets, the sound of sirens that seemed never to cease. Yet alongside the grief and the fury there emerged something unexpected, something almost transcendent: unity. In the days and weeks that followed, America was, perhaps for the last time in our generation, a nation bound together. Strangers looked one another in the eye, neighbors checked on neighbors, flags appeared on porches and balconies, and even in the midst of terror, there was a profound awareness that we belonged to one another.
Judaism insists that memory is not nostalgia. Zakhor—remember—is not a suggestion but a mitzvah, a command. To remember is not simply to call something to mind, but to draw it forward into the present as a summons for the future. The Torah demands that we remember both calamity and blessing: Amalek’s cruelty, Sinai’s revelation, Shabbat’s holiness, the Exodus from Egypt. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik explained that Jewish memory is not psychological but covenantal; to remember is to re-enter responsibility. In this light, the anniversary of 9/11 cannot remain a date marked by obligatory silence before the news cycle moves on. It must become zekher, a remembrance that shapes action. Just as Yizkor is not only an act of grief but also of reaffirming life, so too the remembrance of 9/11 must not only mourn nearly 3,000 lives lost but also recommit us to the sense of covenantal unity that, for a brief season, illumined the nation.
The Talmud in Ta’anit teaches that when the community is in distress, one must not say, “I will go to my house, eat, and drink, and peace be upon me.” To withdraw into private life when the community suffers is to betray the bond of peoplehood. Conversely, the Psalmist insists: “Imo anokhi b’tzarah”—“I am with him in distress” (Psalm 91:15). God, too, suffers alongside us. After 9/11, America seemed to embody these teachings. Firefighters climbed the stairs of burning towers for strangers they would never meet again. Volunteers formed bucket brigades of debris and supplies. Synagogues, churches, and mosques overflowed with mourners who had never before prayed together. In Jewish language, this was arevut, shared responsibility, the covenant of being bound one to another.
Our sages insisted that arevut applies not only within Israel but also toward the vulnerable of all nations. The Midrash Tanchuma on Mishpatim teaches that the treatment of the stranger, widow, and orphan is the true measure of humanity. After 9/11, that sense of responsibility spread beyond the narrow circle of family or tribe. For a fleeting moment, we glimpsed the possibility of solidarity on the scale of a nation and even of the world, born out of shared vulnerability and shared hope.
Jewish history is scarred by ruptures that felt like the end of the world. Jeremiah cried out as Jerusalem burned: “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain…the sound of the shofar I hear, the cry of battle.” On Tisha b’Av we sit upon the ground as our ancestors once did, grieving for Temples destroyed, for walls breached, for centers that did not hold. 9/11 entered into that catalogue of sacred rupture. Like Tisha b’Av, it marked the collapse of an illusion of security, the unmasking of our fragility. Yet in Jewish life, rupture is never final. The rabbis dared to teach that the Messiah will be born on Tisha b’Av itself, that even in the ashes of destruction a seed of redemption germinates. After 9/11, that seed was visible in the unity that arose. From tragedy emerged not only grief but covenant.
And yet that covenant has frayed. Two decades later, we live in a nation where polarization is sharper than memory. The neighborliness of September 2001 has yielded to suspicion. The unity of mourning has given way to mutual contempt. The memory of 9/11 risks becoming mere nostalgia, a photograph fading in the national album rather than a summons to live differently.
Jewish tradition warns of this danger. The rabbis taught that the Second Temple was destroyed not only by Rome but by sinat chinam—baseless hatred among Jews themselves. Internal division was more fatal than any external enemy. We in America should tremble before that warning. When fellow citizens become enemies in our eyes, when public discourse descends into scorn and vilification, we imperil the very foundation of the republic. And yet our tradition also points to the antidote. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook insisted that if we were destroyed by baseless hatred, then we can only be rebuilt by ahavat chinam—baseless love. The unity of 9/11 was born of crisis. The unity we need today must be born of choice. We cannot wait for catastrophe to force us back together. We must choose covenant over contract, solidarity over suspicion, responsibility over withdrawal.
The Jewish calendar provides a model for how to live this out. Pesach, Sukkot, Shabbat—each is an act of memory that reshapes the present. To remember the Exodus is to welcome the stranger. To remember Sinai is to accept anew the burden of Torah. To remember Shabbat is to sanctify time. In the same way, to remember 9/11 must be to live as a people who refuse sinat chinam, who embrace responsibility for one another, who honor the fallen not with words alone but with lives of service and love.
The Mishnah in Pirkei Avot cautions: “Do not separate yourself from the community.” To retreat into cynicism or tribalism is to abdicate responsibility. In the wake of 9/11, we refused to be separate. We stood together at vigils, in donation lines, at the ruins themselves with buckets in hand. Our charge now is to recover that spirit, not through tragedy but through conscious covenant. The twenty-fourth anniversary may not carry the weight of the twentieth or the spectacle of the twenty-fifth. Yet perhaps this quiet commemoration is the truest test: will we remember even when the cameras are absent, even when unity requires effort rather than instinct?
On 9/11, America became a country unified. Not because we were of one mind, but because we remembered, however briefly, that we are of one destiny. The Jewish tradition insists that such belonging is not a luxury but a sacred command. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. All Israel, and by extension all humanity, are bound one to another. Twenty-four years later, to remember is to recommit. To remember is to resist hatred and choose love. To remember is to hold sacred the covenant of citizenship, and to live as though each life lost summons us to cherish one another more deeply.
May the memory of that day never fade into sentimentality but rise as a call to justice, compassion, and unity. May we prove worthy of the covenant of memory entrusted to us. And may God bless this amazing country that has given us so much.