A Still, Small Voice
By Janet R. Kirchheimer
“Listen to the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the Torah of your mother"
(Proverbs 1:8). I tried to keep this in mind during the events and aftermath of the
bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11th.
When I got to work that morning, I turned on my radio and heard that a plane had
crashed into the World Trade Center. A short time later, the second tower was hit. I
called my friend Stephanie who works nearby to make sure she was okay and she told
me that she had not heard from her husband, Elia, who was working there. About a
half an hour later, she called to say he was okay and that she told him to come to the
CLAL office. When I saw Elia coming down the hall, I took his face in my hands, gave
him a big hug and brought him to my office. He was in shock, and I did my best to
comfort him, as did other people. We provided him with a refuge. We let him talk; he
told us what happened, what he saw, what he was feeling.
He and his wife couldn’t get back home that night and stayed at my apartment in
Manhattan. We all talked about what had happened that day, of what might happen in
the coming days, and tried to help him cope as best we could. The next morning his
wife was required to go to work, and Elia and I stayed in my apartment and talked.
He told me he was grateful to God to be alive, but was struggling with the trauma of the
event. I told him that I knew that recovering from this experience would not be easy, but
I promised him that he would come through it. He would have good days, and he would
have bad days. The painful memories would eventually begin to fade, and the trauma
would be integrated into the person he would become. He would no longer be who he
was before the attack.
A little while later, I called another friend whose brother works at the World Trade
Center. She told me that he was injured from falling debris as he escaped from his
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building and was staying with her. I told Elia what had happened, and shared "the
Torah of my mother" with him. Three years ago my father suffered a ruptured
aneurysm. When the doctor told us that my father would not only survive but recover,
my mother said that we needed to do a mitzvah. We left the intensive care unit and
went to visit a dear friend of hers who was dying of cancer on another ward. Elia and I
went out to the grocery store to buy food and toiletry items and brought them to my
friend’s apartment.
That afternoon Elia and his wife were able to get back to their home, and I began to
speak to my other friends about their experiences. One friend said she could not
understand how someone could blow up the Trade Center, how people could do
something like that to other people. I told her I wasn’t shocked or surprised. My
parents are Holocaust survivors, and I’ve known that the world contains evil people
since I was very young. Like everyone else, I am trying to make some sense of this, but
I know that there are people who are capable of great hatred and evil, of hatred so deep
that human life becomes inconsequential.
A week to the day after the attack on the World Trade Center, it was Rosh HaShanah,
and I was sitting in my parents’ shul in Connecticut. I was finding it difficult to
concentrate and to feel hopeful for the New Year. But as I recited the U’netanah Tokef
prayer, I began to feel some hope. The author of this prayer speaks of what takes place
on Rosh HaShanah: each person’s record is brought before God by an angel, each
individual is judged for the New Year and this judgment is sealed on Yom Kippur. A
great shofar is said to sound and then a still, small voice is heard. The prayer then lists
what could happen – who shall live and who shall die, who by fire, who by water, who
by sword and who by beast, who by hunger and who by thirst, who shall have rest and
who shall have no rest, etc. And as I came to the phrase that ends this prayer – the
phrase declaring that teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer), and tzedakah (acts of
charity) "ma’avi’rin" the evil of the decree -- I began to hear that still, small voice.
The word “ma’avi’rin” is usually translated as annul or mitigate. It also means to pass
over or through, to traverse, to go beyond. I do not believe that if you repent, pray, and
give charity that the evil decree will magically be taken away. Rather, I think this prayer
is trying to give us a way to cope. Though we cannot evade life’s tragedies, teshuvah,
tefillah, and tzedakah can help us to pass over, to traverse (and surmount) the trauma
that we suffer as a result.
Traumas get mingled and mixed into our lives. There are times when my father’s illness
and difficult recovery seem so far away, and times when the pain returns so fresh that it
leaves me in tears and afraid. And I’ve come to accept that these feelings of pain will
never go away. They have become part of me, and I have been changed.
In that moment, I saw that I would be able work through the trauma of the past week as
well and make it through the difficult times to come, and be changed in the
process. Perhaps this is why we Jews are called "Ivrim" or "those who cross
over." Our tradition has given us a wonderful gift -- teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah -2
tools that can help us to cross over and through, tools that give us the ability to keep
going.
As the words of the U’netanah Tokef reverberated in me, I began to feel more confident
about returning to New York and reclaiming my life, and about my ability to help my
friends who were more directly affected by the attack on the World Trade Center. That
still, small voice that had crept its way into my head and then into the rest of me was
telling me that there was hope, that life would be sweet again, even at an hour when
such hope seemed rather naïve. And as my parents brought me to the train station the
morning after Rosh HaShanah, I listened attentively to the words of my father. He
passed on to me what his father had passed on to him: "Keep your head high, even
though it is difficult."
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