|
|
October 12, 2001/Tishri 25, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 5
Waving flags, dancing Torahs
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
You can still get a slice on Chambers and Broadway. Ray's Pizza is open, and business is brisk. Nearby, a steady stream of people wander into the local Starbucks and leave clutching hot grande lattes and tall cups of joe to ward off the autumn chill.
Between Chambers and Church, vendors sell American flag pins (99 cents, a real bargain) and baseball caps emblazoned with FDNY (Fire Department of New York) and NYPD (ditto for the men in blue), at five bucks a pop. Customers, mostly tourists interspersed with a few businessmen and students, wait patiently to make their purchases. The shop owners, most of whom do not speak English, pocket the bills and nod their thanks.
We're in New York for a family wedding, and a business meeting the following Monday takes my husband, Howard, down to Wall Street, near the World Trade Center. I tag along. I need to see for myself what happened, to make it real. The televised images remain surreal, even four weeks after the devastating attack.
We rode the subway from uptown to Chambers Street, then walked along Broadway toward the police barricades. It was mid-morning; the streets newly hosed, clean and slick. We walked a couple of blocks in the crisp fall air. Then it hit us, smoke and ashes, death and decay. We peered through the barricades at the blackened remains of surrounding buildings. We saw the huge cranes at the site where the recovery efforts continue, with the hope of retrieving victims to give grieving families the solace of surety.
A huge red, white and blue flag drapes the nearby Port Authority building, and at one checkpoint is a touching memorial of hand-lettered cards, colorful fall flowers and lighted candles. It is oddly, yet appropriately, quiet. Bystanders follow police instructions to stay back. They snap an occasional photo.
Just one month ago the roar of two giant airplanes disrupted the normal hum of the world financial center, as they struck and destroyed the two tall buildings. I think about the lives lost, fewer than 400 bodies recovered, perhaps 5,000 still missing, families desperately seeking closure. I think about the meaning of the passage of time. Sheloshim, the 30-day marker in Jewish mourning practice, constitutes the full mourning for relatives other than a mother and a father. It begins just after internment. When it ends, prohibitions such as attending parties, wearing new clothes and accepting gifts are lifted.
So perhaps it's fitting that the city's Jews readied to celebrate the last two days of Sukkot just before the 30th day after the attack. While the holiday's raucous hakafot (dancing with Torahs) that usually takes place in the streets on the upper West Side, took place indoors this year, acceding to the city's concerns for security, the celebration went on. As did the annual Columbus Day Parade, whose throngs of revelers were as anxious to affirm their patriotism as to affirm life itself. Even as American bombers reached their targets in Afghanistan.
In New York, the flags were waving and the Torahs were dancing. Life goes on.
|
