A Jewish memorial to WTC victims

It was the troubling current state of world affairs that prompted Rabbi Irwin Kula to post online this past Wednesday a recording he made back in 2002, on the first anniversary of 9/11. The recording is of Kula chanting an excerpt from a transcript of final voicemail messages left by victims of the terrorist attacks. He uses the cantillation trop for the biblical Book of Lamentations (Eicha), which Jews traditionally recite annually on Tisha B’Av to mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Kula, president of CLAL – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, had chanted the voicemail messages publicly on a number of occasions in the years since September 11, 2001, but this time he decided to post it on a popular blog he co-writes with his colleague Rabbi Brad Hirschfield.

“Here we are 12 years later and there is violence and war. The world is not any safer today,” lamented Kula in a phone interview with The Times of Israel. “The world is far more destabilized.”

“And as a rabbi, I look at Eicha as a response to destruction. It is an expression of mourning, but it is also reflective question. Eicha is Hebrew for ‘how’ – how has this happened?” Kula said. “We did not ask that question. We just responded, and now we are worse off.”

According to Kula, a national tragedy that should have been made a public cultural experience was turned in to something political. “We barely mourned. 9/11 was exploited politically.”

The rabbi felt that, whatever one’s political orientation in relation to what is happening now in Syria, it was important — for at least one day — for people to connect again with how they felt on 9/11.

“We seem to have no capacity to distinguish between cause and justification,” Kula claimed. “We don’t seem to realize that how we deal with tragedy, destruction and other people’s anger defines us.”

He pointed out that, like the words of Eicha, the voicemail messages were the exact opposite of an automatic lashing out against the perpetrators. “Not one of them said anything in anger, no one told anyone to ‘make sure to get the bastards.’”

What the victims did say in their last moments was:

“Honey, something terrible is happening. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I love you. Take care of the children”;

“Mommy, the building’s on fire. There’s smoke coming through the wall. I can’t breathe. I love you, Mommy. Goodbye”; and

“Elizabeth, I love you a thousand times over and over, and over again. Please tell Emmie I love her, and take good care of her. Whatever decisions you make in your life, I need you to be happy, and I will respect any decisions that you will make. I will always love you.”

It was shared widely on social media, prompting heartfelt responses such as, “Rabbi Kula, there are no words to convey to you the great gift your chanting has given me… and will to everyone who listens… As time passes, the solemnity, the horror, of what happen gets lost in politics. Bless you for sharing this on almost the eve of Yom Kippur.”