9/11 and me

Today, many of us are answering the question "Where were you when you heard of the 9/11 terror attacks?"

Like most others, news of the crash into the North Tower reached me without the slightest suspicion it was anything more than a horrific aviation catastrophe. I was seated in a grief therapist's office and after he saw the headline on his phone, we were shocked together.

We then proceeded with our conversation intended to help me grapple with another terror attack, one that had turned my life inside out just a month earlier: the August 9, 2001 massacre at the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria.

A newsagency photo of my daughter Malki's grave

on the day we buried her [Image Source]

My fifteen year old daughter Malki perished there that afternoon and the therapist was trying to comfort me. 

Without much success. 

I remember his references - about once in every session - to grieving wild animals who curl up and isolate from their herds or packs when they lose a child.

By the time I emerged onto the hot and sunny Jerusalem streets in the late afternoon, the news of the attacks in New York and Washington had crystalized. What I learned was they were being attributed to Islamic terrorists. 

I was struck at how the identical evil targeting Israel for the past year had now also reached America. New York is my birthplace and had been my home until the age of 22. 

The sense of helplessness before a powerful and merciless enemy was overwhelming.

Twenty years later, the grief, both personal and collective remains terribly raw. 

And that helplessness, mostly unchanged.