"Not Born That Way" Rosh Hashanah Sermon on 9/11's 25th Anniversary

Below is the text and video of Rabbi Holtz's 9/11 25th anniversary sermon, "Not Born That Way," delivered on Erev Rosh Hashanah 5787. As the country marked twenty-five years since September 11th on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Rabbi Holtz reflects on what that day revealed about human nature — and what Rosh Hashanah has to say about the choices we make with whatever the world hands us.

It’s been 25 years since 9/11.  I don’t know if that’s hard to believe because it’s so little time, or so much.  I still remember the day, and its aftermath so clearly, but the world is also so very different.  I was a freshman at Syracuse University, at the time.  People who are old enough to remember, and especially old enough to have recognized the significance of the day on the day itself, remember clearly.  

Here’s one of the things that really struck me in the days, weeks and months that followed - how very different people could be from one another.  The most extreme examples were the hijackers who were ready to die so that they could  murder other people that they had never met before, and then the firefighters that raced towards the towers, towards the danger to do the opposite - to save people that they had never met before.  The stark contrast between villain and hero is rarely made so cleanly as on that day.  

Outside of those two extremes, we also saw a huge, wide array of responses.  Some people saw the terror, and it brought out the best of them.  So many people donated blood that much of it went unused and had to be discarded.  A lot of money was donated - to help the families of those hurt or killed, to support the first responders and their families. A lot of people signed up to serve in the military.  And a lot of people were motivated to learn more.  I said before, I was a Syracuse undergrad.  Within a year, I’d declare a second major - international relations with a focus on the Middle East.  Now, for me, it wasn’t 9/11 that motivated that - I wanted to study abroad in Israel and learn a lot of Hebrew, and that major with that regional focus was the easiest way for me to do so.  But let me tell you, a lot of people switched their majors to international relations.  World affairs very quickly became dominated by 9/11 and plenty of students wanted to engage with it.  For some people though, it brought out the worst, as they turned to suspicion and hate.  And some, then and even now, perhaps more now - used the day to advance their conspiracy theories, either because of hate or opportunism.  

What makes people decide to act the way they do?  To look around at a world on fire and decide to either help put it out or to pour gasoline on it? Some say, circumstances.  And there may be something to it.   Our parents, our teachers, our family, our friends, our culture, the major events in our lives that shape us - these all of course have a huge impact on us.  Were we raised in a loving, nurturing home and community or something else?  There’s a rabbinic phrase - maase avot siman l’banim, the deeds of parents are a sign to their children.  

Or perhaps it’s nature.  Now, Aristotle hated the idea that people behave the way they do because it’s in their nature.  He taught that we’re nothing by nature.  At best, the things that we’re habituated to do are like second nature to us.  But nobody is born hateful or loving, generous or not.  Aristotle won a lot of people over with his arguments, including a lot of rabbis over the centuries.  Maimonides, who lived 800 years ago and was the greatest Jewish philosopher perhaps of all time, quotes him almost verbatim.  At the same time, as the proud loving dad of two kids who were raised in the same house, by the same parents, who go to the same school - they’re different.  The only way I can explain their differences is that it’s in their nature.  But nature is only doing so much.  I can also say, both as a dad and as a teacher, that people learn as they go.  I’m not just talking about the sort of learning they do in class.  They make choices and they see how those choices play out and then they adjust.

In our Jewish tradition, we call this “free will,” that hard as it may be, we get to make choices.  One of the most powerful writers in the modern times about free will is Viktor Frankl.  If you’ve never read his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” put it on your list.  Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz, and he was also a psychiatrist and neurologist.  He saw humanity at its extreme.  One of the quotes from his book is, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  But his book is about so much more than us having the ability to choose, at the very least, our attitude.  In one of my favorite passages, he writes, ““Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”  Meaning, we can’t ask what the meaning of life is.  Rather, we’re the ones that are asked.  What’s the meaning of your life?  And what we do with our lives, the choices we make, that’s what gives our lives meaning, if any.  

Viktor Frankl died in 1997, four years before 9/11, so he never saw it.  But I imagine he would say that the firefighters weren’t born heroes. It was a choice, and that choice they made is part of what gave their life meaning. And those who gave blood or money or time, they too made a choice that with their lives, they’d contribute, they’d help.

And it’s not just how we behave, or what our attitude is, at these extreme times - in the camps are on 9/11.  Jewish tradition teaches that attitude is something we choose daily.  One of my favorite teachings is from Shammai.  Now, Shammai is mostly remembered by Jewish tradition for his severity and impatience. Yet, one of Shammai’s beautiful teachings is to smile.  He said, “Greet each person with a smile and a good attitude.”  The Rabbi of Vorki explained, “ Sometimes you may not be pleased at meeting someone.  In fact, the encounter may even be irritating to you.  Nevertheless, try to show an attitude of pleasantness.  It is a mitzvah to make people feel good.”  That’s beautiful.  And it’s also a reminder that we can choose to make something better, solely through our attitudes and even our simple actions, like smiling when greeting someone.  And the fact that this came from Shammai, who was not naturally inclined to smile, but chose to anyway, makes it all the more powerful.

When I think of 9/11, my mind often goes to Rabbi Menachem Creditor.  At the time he was in his fifth year of rabbinic school in New York City.  He wrote about what it was like living there at the time, how others responded, and how he responded.  He wrote, “ I remember the shock and disbelief, the paralysis that argued with the urgent need to act…Amid terror, something extraordinary surfaced. Strangers became neighbors, neighbors became family. We didn’t ask for political affiliations or theological positions. We asked the only question that mattered: “Are you okay?” The violence of hatred met the stubborn insistence of care. That memory, the insistence of kindness, became a seed in me. It grew into the song that poured out of me in the months that followed, “Olam Chesed Yibaneh,” a promise to our children that we would build and rebuild a world from love.”  Olam chesed yibaneh could be translated a few ways.  One is that God’s love will stand forever.  Another is, “The world shall be built from love.”  Rabbi Menachem Creditor understood it the second way, and as a choice.  If we build this world from love, then God too will partner with us to build a world from love.  It’s both a choice and a promise.  

As we mark both the New Year of 5787 and the 25th anniversary of September 11th, we remember but we also are called upon to choose.  Who will we be in the year ahead?  How will we meet whatever comes our way?  Whatever it, whatever challenge or whatever chance happens, may we work to build this world from love.  We join together with Olam Chesed Yibaneh.