It's going to be difficult. Nothing will satisfy us. The commemorations will be over the top, not enough, shmaltzy, analytical, wallowing in grief, warmongering, too hard on militant Islam, not hard enough on militant Islam, treasonous, flag-waving...whatever happens, someone will object. And perhaps rightly. In truth, the only genuine response is silence. But we don't live in a culture that values silence, we need to surround ourselves with words, images, sounds, analysis, wisdom, gibberish...anything to keep silence at bay.
Several Jewish writers have been thinking about what our traditions - which have nurtured a civilization through centuries of adversity - may have to offer an individualistic, secular society faced with the anniversary of a devastating communal wound. And they have some good suggestions.
Richard Goldstein addresses Bruce's desire for silent commemoration:
. . . Yom Kippur allows people to remember the dead, stripping away the defenses against lasting grief that are such a specialty in this society. And sorrow is the true measure of 9-11. It teaches the temporality of not just life but buildings, even skylines. If they are mortal, these structures are also animate—alive with meaning and memory. . . . Yom Kippur exhorts us to confront the inevitability of sin and death; to cast out the former (with bread on the water) and plead for a reprieve from the latter . . . .
Consider the decision to suspend Broadway shows, and the impulse to curtail flying on that day. Both are practical responses that also resonate with Jewish tradition. . . . What if everything stopped on 9-11, just as it did during the attack? What if we took the day as an occasion to stroll the streets, to be with our families, to reflect or pray?
That last sounds a bit like Yom Ha-Zikkaron. When the air-raid sirens sound to memorialize Israel's dead, everyone stops what they are doing and observes a few minutes of silence. Not a bad idea.
The Jewish Week has a supplement on New York Jewish responses to 9-11, filled with painfully poignant essays by doctors, rabbis, medical examiners, firemen, relatives of those lost. Read the whole thing. It includes this suggestion for a commemoration based on the Passover seder:
. . . . In part because of the prohibition against idol worship, Judaism has a distinctly modern attitude to memorials. Objects do not represent the past; rather, they are used to conduct passage to it. In my view, the most successful memorial ever constructed is the Passover meal. At the seder, for example, the physical items on the seder plate are conduits to experiences and ideas thousands of years old. With the Passover ritual we root the present into the past. For eight days we change our routines and do not eat bread.
Every year, the ritual items for the seder plate have to be made anew. These symbolic objects — the shank bone, the matzah — cannot be preserved or inherited. The seder is itself a conversation, scheduled annually to “refresh” the present by pulling depth from the past. Dynamic questions without fixed answers make these conversations iterative; in some cases, the record of important conversations becomes a permanent part of the seder.
In some ways Thanksgiving is the American version of the Passover seder. (There is some evidence that the settlers at Plymouth Rock were influenced by Jewish scripture when they created their feast.) Could a similar family holiday dinner ritual be established for September 11th? Could rituals commemorating 9-11 be added to a Thanksgiving dinner? What would it look like? Michael Lerner has proposed a secular American Fourth of July seder using symbols of American tolerance and freedom, and that also could incorporate a commemoration of 9-11.
Although we all have different ideas about what and how we should celebrate or mourn, ritualizing the day with family time, conversation, silence, and concrete objects which evoke the values we want to preserve, seems like a good way to remember what happened here. (If your curiosity is piqued and you want to learn more about Jewish ritual, this is a great resource.)
<< Home