(My pre-Rosh Hashana pre-9/11 to Shulamith High School for Girls)

Tomorrow is September 11.

Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 people went to work in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania and never came home.

For my generation, September 11 is something we remember.

I remember that day very clearly.

At the time, I was a young attorney living in Passaic, New Jersey, and working on Wall Street. My normal commute was to take a bus into Newark and then take the PATH train into the World Trade Center.

On September 11, I got on the bus as I normally did. But when I got to Newark, the PATH wasn’t running.

At first, I didn’t really understand why.

Then I began hearing what had happened.

And very quickly, everything changed.

The place where I normally went to work was the center of a national tragedy.

And there was another part of September 11 that was particularly personal for me.

About a year earlier, I had interviewed for a job at Cantor Fitzgerald.

I didn’t get the job.

Cantor Fitzgerald occupied many of the upper floors of the North Tower. On September 11, 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees were killed.

And I remember thinking:

What if I had gotten that job?

What if I had been sitting in that building that morning?

Of course, I will never know.

But it taught me something that I still think about.

We rarely understand the significance of a decision while we are making it.

At the time, interviewing for a job was simply an interview. Getting the job or not getting the job seemed like one of those ordinary decisions that we make all the time.

But sometimes an ordinary decision can change the direction of your entire life.

For your generation, September 11 is different.

You learned about it in school.

You have seen the pictures.

You have heard stories from your parents.

You may have visited the 9/11 Memorial.

But you did not experience it.

And yet tomorrow, twenty-five years later, we will remember again.

Why?

Why do we continue to remember something that happened before many of you were born?

Because remembering is not simply about the past.

And that is actually a very Jewish idea.

Judaism does not simply tell us to remember history.

Jewish memory creates obligation.

Think about one of the most famous lines in the Haggadah:

“בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים.”

“In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he personally left Egypt.”

Notice what Chazal are asking us to do.

They are not simply telling us to remember that the Exodus happened.

We already know the history.

They are asking us to see ourselves in the story.

To experience the past as something that has meaning for us today.

That is a very different kind of memory.

It is not simply:

This happened.

It is:

This happened, and therefore I have an obligation now.

We remember Yetziat Mitzrayim because it tells us something about who we are and how we are supposed to live.

We remember the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash because memory should lead us to think about what caused that destruction and what we need to repair.

We remember Amalek because remembering evil creates a responsibility to stand against it.

And that is what makes Rosh Hashanah so interesting.

Rosh Hashanah is fundamentally a day of remembering.

But what are we remembering?

The Torah uses a fascinating phrase.

In Vayikra, Rosh Hashanah is called “Zichron Teruah,” a remembrance of teruah.

And in Bamidbar, it is called “Yom Teruah,” a day of teruah.

The Torah does not simply describe Rosh Hashanah as a day when we perform a particular action.

It describes it as a day of remembering.

A day of awakening.

A day when something is supposed to happen inside of us.

And there is another fascinating point.

The Torah itself never explicitly says, “Blow a shofar on Rosh Hashanah.”

It calls the day Yom Teruah and Zichron Teruah.

The explicit command to blow a shofar appears in the Torah in the context of Yovel, the Jubilee year:

“V’ha’avarta shofar teruah… baYom HaKippurim ta’aviru shofar b’chol artz’chem.”

You shall sound a shofar blast throughout the land.

Chazal connect the shofar of Rosh Hashanah to the shofar of Yovel because of the shared language of teruah.

And that creates a fascinating question:

Why is the shofar of Rosh Hashanah connected to the shofar of Yovel?

What does freedom have to do with Rosh Hashanah?

We’ll come back to that.

But first, we need to understand what Zichron Teruah means.

The Ramban explains that the shofar serves as a zikaron, a remembrance before Hashem. The sound of the shofar evokes the Akeidah, the devotion of Avraham and Yitzchak, and the merit of our ancestors.

But perhaps the shofar is asking us to remember something else as well.

To remember ourselves.

To remember where we have been.

To remember the choices we have made.

To remember the people we have become.

Because one of the greatest dangers in life is simply getting used to things.

You get used to being angry.

You get used to holding a grudge.

You get used to treating someone a certain way.

You get used to doing things that you know are not right.

And eventually, something that once bothered you becomes normal.

That is why the Rambam, in Hilchot Teshuvah, explains the message of the shofar with the words:

“Uru yesheinim misheinatchem.”

Wake up, those who are sleeping, from your sleep.

The shofar is an alarm clock.

And an alarm clock is not designed to give you new information.

It is designed to wake you up to information you already have.

You already know there are things you need to work on.

You already know there are choices you wish you had made differently.

You already know there are relationships you need to repair.

The question is whether you are awake enough to do something about them.

Because Jewish memory is not passive.

Memory creates obligation.

When I remember something honestly, I am being asked:

What am I going to do about it now?

And once we wake up and remember, we face the next question.

If I recognize where I have been, am I stuck there?

If my past contains mistakes, does that mean I am destined to repeat them?

If other people have certain expectations of me, do I have to live according to them?

If I have already become a certain kind of person, is that who I have to remain?

And that brings us to the second message:

Be Free

We usually think about freedom in connection with Pesach.

We were slaves in Egypt.

Hashem took us out.

We became a free people.

But Judaism has another major celebration of freedom, and it is connected directly to the shofar.

Yovel.

Every fifty years, the Torah commands:

“U’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha.”

Proclaim freedom throughout the land to all of its inhabitants.

And how is that freedom proclaimed?

With a shofar.

That is the shofar of Yovel.

And Chazal connect that shofar to the shofar of Rosh Hashanah.

Why?

What does freedom have to do with Rosh Hashanah?

I think the answer begins with understanding what Yovel actually means by freedom.

The Torah continues:

“V’shavtem ish el achuzato, v’ish el mishpachto tashuvu.”

Each person shall return to his ancestral holding.

Each person shall return to his family.

That is a surprising definition of freedom.

We might have expected the Torah to say:

You are free.

You have no master.

Nobody controls you.

Instead, the Torah says:

Return.

Return to your land.

Return to your family.

Return to who you are supposed to be.

Because Jewish freedom is not only freedom from something.

It is freedom for something.

You are not free simply so that nobody can tell you what to do.

You are free so that you can choose who you are going to be.

And that is exactly what makes the shofar of Rosh Hashanah a symbol of freedom.

Because Rosh Hashanah reminds us that we have the ability to choose.

There is a beautiful story about the Baal Shem Tov.

One day, the Baal Shem Tov came across a water-carrier who was passing by, with a pole across his back and a pail of water tied at each end.

“Feivel, how are you doing today, my friend?” the Baal Shem Tov asked. “How is your health and how is your parnassah?”

“Thank God, I’m fine,” replied the water-carrier.

But then he sighed unhappily.

He complained about how difficult it was to carry such heavy pails all day, and yet he barely made enough money to survive. Not only that, but the local children teased him, and sometimes even tipped over his pails.

The Baal Shem Tov responded with a few words of sympathy and gave him a blessing before they parted.

The next day, the Baal Shem Tov saw the same water-carrier pass by.

As soon as he spotted him, the Baal Shem Tov asked, “Nu, Feivel, how are things today?”

“Thank God, I can’t complain,” answered the water-carrier cheerfully. “I have steady business. After all, everyone needs water. I’m not rich, but I get by. The pails are heavy, but praise God, I have a strong back.”

“And what about the children who bother you?” the Baal Shem Tov persisted.

“Children!” laughed the water-carrier. “God bless them! Children are supposed to be mischievous, aren’t they? Besides, I can always buy them off with a bit of candy.”

The water-carrier continued on his way with a wave, and the Baal Shem Tov was puzzled.

The same water-carrier.

The same job.

The same heavy buckets.

The same children.

The same parnassah.

But one day he was miserable, and the next day he was happy.

And at that moment, the Baal Shem Tov understood something profound.

There are certain things in life that we cannot change.

We may always be a water-carrier.

We may not be able to control our circumstances.

But we can always change the way we respond to those circumstances.

That is a freedom that each one of us has.

The Rambam expresses this idea in one of the most powerful statements about human freedom in the Torah tradition:

“Reshut l’chol adam netunah.”

Every person is given the ability to choose.

You are not completely controlled by your past.

You are not completely controlled by your circumstances.

You are not completely controlled by what other people think about you.

You have the ability to choose.

That does not mean every choice is easy.

Our emotions, experiences, insecurities, and mistakes affect us.

But they do not have to have the final word.

That matters enormously when you are in high school.

You may feel pressure to fit in.

You may feel pressure to be accepted.

You may feel pressure to go along with everyone else.

But the shofar reminds you:

You are free.

You can include the person who is standing alone.

You can put down the phone before sending the angry message.

You can say no when everyone else is saying yes.

You can choose what kind of person you want to be.

And once you realize that you are free to choose, another question becomes unavoidable:

What am I going to choose?

That brings us to the third message:

Become

One of the hardest things about being a teenager is that you are still figuring out who you are.

You are becoming.

And sometimes that uncertainty can feel frustrating.

But it is actually one of the greatest opportunities you have.

Because you are not finished.

Your character is not finished.

Your relationships are not finished.

Your spiritual life is not finished.

Your story is not finished.

And the person you become is being shaped by the choices you make right now.

Not just the dramatic choices.

The ordinary ones.

How you respond when someone annoys you.

Whether you tell the truth when it is uncomfortable.

Whether you make time for Torah.

Whether you stand up for someone when there is a social cost.

Whether you notice someone who is being left out.

Whether you choose kindness when nobody is forcing you to be kind.

Those choices may feel small.

But repeated choices become habits.

Habits become character.

And character becomes who we are.

There is a remarkable story that makes this point.

On September 11, 2001, a 24-year-old man named Welles Crowther was working on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

He had been a volunteer firefighter since he was sixteen.

When the building was hit, he helped people escape.

He went down the stairs with people.

He helped them get out.

And then, instead of continuing toward safety, he went back upstairs.

Again.

And again.

He kept returning to help other people.

Eventually, the South Tower collapsed, and he died.

For weeks, survivors remembered a young man who had helped them.

They did not know his name.

They remembered that he wore a red bandana over his face to protect himself from the smoke.

Eventually, his mother realized that the mysterious man people were describing was her son.

Welles Crowther did not suddenly become courageous on September 11.

He had been becoming that person for years.

At sixteen, he became a volunteer firefighter.

He practiced responsibility.

He practiced courage.

He practiced helping other people.

And when the defining moment of his life arrived, he was ready to act like the person he had spent years becoming.

None of us knows what our defining moments will be.

Hopefully, none of us will ever face anything like what Welles Crowther faced.

But we all have moments that test who we are.

And we prepare for those moments through the choices we make every day.

That is why your choices now matter.

Because every choice is helping answer a much bigger question:

Who am I becoming?

And this brings us back to September 11.

There is another reason September 11 is worth remembering, especially twenty-five years later.

We should remember not only the evil that was done, but the goodness that emerged.

We remember firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and ordinary people who ran toward danger while everyone else was running away.

We remember people who helped complete strangers.

We remember people who opened their homes and donated blood.

And we remember a country that, for a moment, stopped focusing on everything that divided us and came together.

September 11 showed us something important about America.

In a moment of unimaginable tragedy, people were capable of extraordinary courage, generosity, and unity.

That is worth remembering.

Because we sometimes become cynical.

We can begin to think that people are selfish, that people only care about themselves, that there is not much goodness left in the world.

September 11 reminds us that human beings are capable of something else.

We are capable of running toward someone who needs help.

We are capable of putting someone else’s needs ahead of our own.

We are capable of coming together.

And that is not only a lesson about September 11.

It is a lesson about the person each of us can become.

We do not know when someone will need us.

But we can practice becoming the kind of person who notices.

Who includes.

Who helps.

Who does the right thing even when nobody is watching.

Looking Back

There is one more question that can help us think about becoming.

Rabbi Shagar, quoting an idea from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, speaks about imagining yourself looking back on a decision from the future.

Instead of asking only:

“What do I want right now?”

Ask:

“How will I feel about this decision years from now?”

Imagine the future version of yourself looking back.

Will I be proud of the way I treated that person?

Will I be proud that I stood up when it would have been easier to stay quiet?

Will I be glad that I did not compromise something important simply because I wanted to fit in?

Will I be grateful that I invested in Torah, in my relationships, and in becoming a better person?

Sometimes the question is not simply:

“What do I feel like doing right now?”

The question is:

“Will future me be glad that I made this choice?”

And maybe one day you will look back and say:

Hayah kedai.

It was worth it.

One Choice

You do not need to change your entire life this Rosh Hashanah.

Choose one thing.

One relationship.

One habit.

One area of Torah.

One character trait.

One decision you want to make differently.

Because you are still becoming.

And that means you are not stuck.

Tomorrow, when you hear the shofar, remember what kind of day this is.

It is Yom Teruah.

It is Zichron Teruah.

It is a day that wakes us up.

It reminds us that the past matters.

But Jewish memory is not simply about knowing what happened.

Memory creates obligation.

The shofar reminds us where we have been.

It reminds us that we are free to choose what happens next.

And it challenges us to become.

So when you hear the shofar, let it ask you three questions:

What do I need to remember?

What do I need to free myself from?

Who am I becoming?

May Hashem give us the honesty to remember, the freedom to choose, and the courage to become.

Shanah tovah.