Write To Life     by Elana Horwitz

Our History’s Most Tragic Event

Elana Horwitz

originally published in Kollel Kaleidoscope


“The building is on fire!” The horrific truth is spread by people’s anguished screams. I sink to the ground in shock. Eventually the whole world is stunned. My entire Nation mourns. The damage is so great that I envision many harrowing years of sorrow ahead. Perhaps generations. We will put on a face of coping, but for what seems like forever, our lives will be out of sync, off kilter, unnatural. We will continue to feel vulnerable. We will continue to experience shame at our loss of grandeur.

Imagine a catastrophe of this proportion occurring to our exalted Nation! And the loss of life! So many are gone, men, women, children - the victims of indefinable torture at the hands of a ruthless enemy.

How chastised we feel now, knowing that there were informed experts who warned us that calamity could occur, but we chose to belittle their dire predictions. We chose complacency over preventive actions.

Such a distinguished edifice it was! The world in all its years had never seen another structure quite like it. I recall with painful yearning all of the important activities that took place there each and every day. It was the heart of our Nation; it defined our Nation.

It was a symbol of our strength and unity. We felt as if it would be around forever. How could such a building fall?

Yet it was possible, for it was made of sticks. It was made of stones.

We are not crying today simply over sticks and stones.

The thing we are missing most is not the outer facade of our marvelous edifice. We lament the loss of so many people. We contemplate our uncomfortable state of exposure to suffering. Most intensely of all we mourn the closeness we once shared with the One who dwelled within. For our magnificent Beit Hamikdash, burned so disastrously to the ground and destroyed, was the very own house of Hashem.

We grieve deeply over this appalling loss - and to the degree that we grieve, so we will find comfort.

The sticks and stones that came tumbling down on that most severe of days, Tisha B’Av, will surely be established once again, in Yerushalayim, the holy city.

On that day we will be reunited with the Father we love, the Father who loves us and cries with us in our exile from Him.

That day, we can find it advantageous to bear in mind, may arrive more speedily as a direct result of our actions: our responsiveness to that caring Father, and relationships among us human beings that He so desires.

It is up to our great People to rebuild.



We pray that in the merit of our Torah learning and good deeds, the neshamot of our fellow Jews lost in the World Trade Center tragedy will rise closer to the Shechina, including the neshama of Gabriela Waisman, who was in Elana Horwitz’s high school class.