We live in a scary and unpredictable world. We never really know what tomorrow, or today, will bring.
One unremarkable morning during graduate school, my friend and I rode the Long Island Railroad from my parents’ house in Great Neck, NY into Manhattan. As it was a few days before Rosh Hashana, I used the 25-minute ride to recite selichot. When we arrived at Penn Station, my friend asked if she could borrow my selichot book and return it to me that night in Washington Heights. I happily agreed.
By the time we met up 10 hours later, the entire world had changed. It was almost impossible to comprehend what had transpired in those few hours between our passing of the selichot book back and forth.
The date was Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
I remember walking through the streets of Manhattan that clear, sunny morning, without a cloud in the sky and thinking about how calm everything was. And then less than a half-hour later, the first plane hit. And then the second. Within a few hours, thousands of innocent lives had been taken, and countless more were altered forever. And the world was a different place.
