9/11: The Obligatory Post

Another 9/11. Another year when I can't look at September 11 on the calendar without transportation to a different type. Another year where I see the numbers 9 and 11 completely independent of one another and yet still pair them together to the day I sat in Citizenship Issues and then math class and then the rest of school, clutching the hands of friends and my then-boyfriend, as the entire school shut down to watch burning buildings.

In every generation there is some moment that becomes the catalog point. Where were you when ...? And then a year later, the year after that, the first time you're near the location where it happened. We catalog our lives based on trauma.

Why is that?

I took this photo while on my first-ever trip to a big city, to New York City. It was frigid and we were on the ferry to Ellis Island. It was March 31, 2001. Less than six months later the skyline was changed. And the moment it happened, I went back to this picture and thought, "But we were just there." Every year on 9/11 I look at this picture, photoshopping little planes in my mind, adding audio of screams.

It's surreal. But this is one moment by which I catalog my life.

If you're looking for more, check out Jewish Responses to 9/11 over at Hirhurim, or maybe Un'Taneh Tokef Prayer and 9/11. But whatever you do, be wary when you Google "Judaism" and "9/11." Primarily, the results are riddled with tales of the Jewish conspiracy and how no Jews died on 9/11. This, folks, is false.

Where Were You on 9/11?

Everyone's doing it -- the obligatory "Where Were You on 9/11?" blog post. What were you thinking, feeling, eating, saying. Were you asleep? Standing up? Waiting in line at the grocery store? Maybe you were taking your kids to school or in the hospital mourning a passing relative. Were you burying someone? Were you giving birth? What were you doing? Who were you? Ten years have passed, and the defining moment of my generation is September 11, 2001. The moments when we found out are clear, and the rest of the day is a blur.

Essex County (NJ) 9/11 Memorial (My Photo)

I was in Citizenship Issues course -- the bane of all of our existences, it was a required course for all seniors to discuss and learn about our country and its branches of government, policies, and procedures. I can't remember how we found out, but the school immediately shut down academic operations and turned on emotional operations. TVs and radios were on in every classroom. We stopped learning and started watching, breathing, doing whatever was necessary to swallow reality without spitting it back up.

Then I went on to Calculus, where I grabbed the hand of my then-boyfriend Kevin and just stared at the TV screen, watching everything unfold. Kevin and I broke up less than a month later, shortly before my 18th birthday. I entered adulthood with images of falling bodies and ash.

In choir class, all we could say was, "We were just there." And we had been. My junior year, Concert Choir took a big trip to New York. It was my first time out of the midwest, my first time to a city bigger than Kansas City or Tulsa. We soaked everything up -- the food, the music, Broadway, the buildings. The buildings. In our pictures, there they are! Just months before, the Twin Towers, standing tall behind us. Did we know what they were? Did we care? Or did we just miss them when they were gone, a hole in the skyline, a gap in time.

The rest of the day was a blur. I don't remember classes or going home or what our parents must have tried to say to us to calm us down. My little brother was just a kid, I was almost an adult. We were so far away from it in Nebraska, but what most of this country doesn't know is that Middle America is called the Heartland for a reason -- we feel everything that happens in this country, and we feel it harder and louder. When any part of the U.S. bleeds, Middle America dies a little more.

The past 10 years have seen much in my life change.

• I have two degrees and am working on two more.
• I have lived in Nebraska, Colorado, Washington (D.C.), Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey.
• I have dated countless folk, become engaged, and married. 
• I have visited Israel four times.
• I have learned a new language (Hebrew).
• I have converted, twice, within Judaism.
• I have legally changed my name from Amanda Jo Edwards to Chaviva Jo Galatz.
• I have watched friends come and go and come and go.
• I have become the proud aunt of four boys.
• I have grown up.

Ten years has flown by. Just like August -- zip, and it's gone. Will we continue to remember? It's embedded in my early adulthood, it colored my senior year of high school in more ways than one. I won't forget, will you?

From the Just Call Me Chaviva archives on 9/11:

• Mentions of 9/11 (of which there are quite a few, actually)
• 2006: On this day in History
• 2003 (from my retired LiveJournal): "Two years ago right now, I was done with lunch and sitting in CI, if I remember correctly. Or maybe I was in Science. I was at school. And regardless of where I was, every TV was on in Northeast High School with the station tuned in to the news showing the planes crashing, and crashing, and it was like a tape on repeat. And that, is where I was. Now, it's raining. I don't have a television to watch what's going on. I can't see what the news has to say in rememberance. I just know it's sunny in New York City, and it's cloudy here. And I don't mind. Give them all the sunshine they need. I had mine."

The Death of Evil: Osama bin Laden

I can't help it. I'm compelled to write something. Anything.

Osama bin Laden has been killed by U.S. troops. 

I know what you're thinking -- yes, we know, Chaviva. It's been everywhere. You'd have to be living in a bunker in Pakistan not to know (d'oh). But I have a few things to say about this.

First, I'm happy. I'm celebrating. But I'm not celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. No, despite the Purim story, it seems wrong to me. We're not meant to celebrate death. We're meant to celebrate justice, freedom, and the removal of fear of a deadly hand reaching out and destroying the world. Osama bin Laden wasn't a Muslim leader, as President Obama said. He was an enemy of Muslims. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. He was a murderer of everyone that got in his way. He was pure evil. We should all celebrate the freedom from that evil. 

Secondly, it's so weird to think that 10 years ago, I was back in Nebraska, dreaming of someday living in New York City and going to NYU. I wanted to be a New Yorker. During 9/11, that feeling never waned. And now, here I am, footsteps from New York, spending almost every day of the week in the Big Apple, and I am more than excited to be a part of a burgeoning city 10 years after the destruction of so many lives. The heart of the United States is a big, red, juicy apple. 

Thirdly, my view on the aftermath of all of this is that there will be some serious infighting among Al-Qaeda leaders, resulting in an implosion of sorts in the leadership, and it will have a demoralizing impact on the lower factions of Al-Qaeda. We'll see if that happens. 

Fourthly, nights like this, I really miss being a copy editor. Can you imagine sitting at the copy desk of a major daily at this hour? Ripping apart the front page, updating the article every five seconds, writing the most amazing headline on the planet? The rush of that feeling ... man I miss that. And with Obama glowing as he was, well, all I can think is ... this event is going to alter the news up until the 2012 election, for better or worse. We'll see how this goes, but I know he's proud of himself. 

With that, friends, celebrate our freedom from evil. 

"Your enemies shall perish;

all the wicked shall disintegrate.

I have seen the downfall of my foes;

I have seen the doom of my attackers."

~ Psalm 92

May we all know nothing but peace. 

Books and scales and things and stuff. Sushi!

I got the coolest book on the planet (okay, not really, but it's that initial new-book reaction) in the mail today. It took forever to get here and after lots of complaining and a reshipment, it made it here from Edward R. Hamilton Booksellers. The book? "Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, The Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament." Now, if you're not familiar, this place has books that are fairly fresh and are super, super cheap. It's like a book warehouse. This book arrived in mint condition for 10 bucks. The other book I'd ordered -- The Essential Talmud -- failed to arrive and I was refunded the $3.95 it was supposed to put me back. (I'm going to have to pick up "Essential Talmud" anyhow, because it looks like a stellar addition to my collection.) The "Women in Scripture" should be a helpful resource for those women who I spot in my study but know little to nothing about and where the commentary is nil. Anyhow, the New Testament information might not be as useful for what I'll be using it for, but wow! What a buy, eh? I also have "Constatine's Sword" in my corner, and I actually need to renew it from the library. It's quite a read, and I wish it weren't so clunky because I'd love to read it on the El, but it's awfully difficult. If only I could break it into sections! I am, however, going to hit the library before it closes to pick up Art Spiegelman's 9/11 book, "In the Shadow of No Towers" as well as Marjane Sartrapi's "Persepolis: The Story of Childhood," since it comes out here in Chicago in movie form fairly soon. Plus, I find graphic novels are pretty quick to get through. I really should spend more time reading them!

I also picked up a scale today. Yes, everyone does this on January 1 and 2, right? Well, I'm going to try to stick to the healthy eating and working out and hopefully can lose about 50 pounds this year. Here's hoping, and here's hoping G-d gives me the strength to actually stick with it for once in my short, yet fascinating life.

So that's that. Lots of books and healthy things in the future for Chaviva, v.2008.

On this day in History

So we sat down to remember, today, the tragedy that befell the world's greatest civilized, industrial nation five years ago. The tears, the fear, the injustice of the destruction of human life -- free, intelligent, American human life. The life of dreams and picket fences. The life of corporate suites, elevators, bathrooms with automatic sensors. THE dream. The one, and the only. Everybody wants it, and we have it. And "never again," we say, will such destruction befall we, the people of the United States of America, who love peace, justice and liberty for all. Who demand it, who breathe it. Never. Again.

I have mixed feelings about 9/11. I feel guilty about it and wonder why I can't seem to smile and nod at the truckload of unanswered and unaswerable questions that haunt the skeptics. "You know, saying it was a conspiracy is like those people who said the Holocaust never happened," someone said to me today. But it isn't the same thing. Not at all. Not in the slightest. I never DENY that those thousands died on 9/11/01. Rather, I deny the why and how they died that is given, fed, pumped into each of us. And I'll leave it at that.

On this day in history, which we all know will be a turning point in history books and civics lessons worldwide, there were other important things. Of course, these things I'll mention have a mighty Jewish flavor, but I don't want to forget thoese things. So here they are:

1) Sept. 11, 1941: Charles Lindbergh makes an infamous speech called "Who are the War Agitators?" in Des Moines, Iowa, where he states that the Jewish "prowar" machine is responsible for promoting entrance into the war. He refers to the "Jewish race" and how unfortunate it is for the troubles they face, but that it is no reason to enter the war.

Said Lindbergh: "If any one of these groups -- the British, the Jewish, or the administration -- stops agitating for war, I believe there will be little danger of our involvement."

He went on to say that the Jews, in running most major industries of communication, had the capabilities to promote their ideas and that this was a great threat to "our interests" -- meaning nonJewish interests.

Said Lindbergh: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."

He clearly painted a picture of "us versus them." Don't worry, we put his happy face on a stamp.

2) Sept. 11, 1921: Nahalal, the first moshav in Israel, is settled. A moshav is a collective of farms, in a community, very similar to kibbutzim. Interestingly, starting in the 1970s and 80s, most moshav relied largely on outside Arab labor, as many of the folks living on the moshavs took jobs outside the community. I'd like to think there's been a return to the community-mindedness, but who knows. It's weird to think a settlement similar to kibbutzim became known largely as exurban or suburban.

3) Sept. 11, 1962: You know that boy band from Britainland that took the world by surprise? Yes, the Beatles recorded their first debut single, "Love me Do." What happened to that happy, Britpop that the world loved so much? The BSB and N'Sync don't really compare. And as much as I hate to say it, neither did the New Kids on the Block (bites her tongue).

4) Sept. 11, 1978: Peace talks. Yes, peace talks. It was Carter, Begin and Sadat and they sat down at Camp David to talk PEACE between Israel and Egypt, as well as the greater Middle East. I'm glad Egypt and Israel got their skeletons packed away, but what about everything else?

5) Sept. 11, 3 BCE: This one sort of shocked me. After my known interesting Sept. 11 facts ran out, I turned to wikipedia, which says that this date is the second day of Rosh HaShana in the Julian calendar. My response: Que?

6) Sept. 11, 2005: Almost forgot this one, can't believe I did. This time last year, Israel shocked the world and those living in Gaza settlements by announcing the removal of settlers from Gaza after 38 years. I don't know that it had amazingly immediate results, but I will say that in the long run, it was a good step, the best of steps. You have to start somewhere, and with the amount of compromise Israel has tossed in the peace-building pot, this doesn't surprise me in the least. Now if we can just get a Palestinian leader who cares more about his people than ridding the world of the Jews and Israel.

And there we are. There's your history lesson. Don't forget that also in 1941, ground was broken on the Pentagon or that in 1978 the final victim of smallpox kicked the bucket or that John Ritter died on Sept. 11 and so did Johnny Unitis. Or that several thousand people died for reasons that we may never know or understand.

Give it 20 minutes, it'll be a new day and anniversaries will seem trite and insincere. I promise.