30 Tammuz

This is a post I have been working on in the hopes it never gets published...

Somewhere in the back of my mind I always felt it was a question of “when” not “if.”

Despite the fact that I had witnessed 9/11, despite the fact that I had ridden the New York City subway on the very day that her London counterpart exploded in three places, despite the fact that I often think of my cousin's narrow escape from a bus-bombing in Jerusalem—despite it all, I never allowed my imagination to wander too far down the "what if?" path of a cold, cruel reality.

That it could happen to us. Not just here in New York, but to us here. And now my imagination doesn't have to wander. It's focused. The pain is palpable. Wrath, grief, regret all swim around in a hodgepodge of confusion. It happened. It actually happened.

Now, alongside 9/11 in the United States, alongside 7/7 in England, we add 30/Tamuz, using the Hebrew date to signify the uniquely Jewish aspect of the tragedy.

The terrorists were obviously planning this for some time. How could they not be? Brooklyn is as multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-religious as it gets. People of all shapes and colors pass through her daily, people from all walks of life, in all modes of dress. No one would have ever noticed, let alone suspected, a young man riding the D-Train, reading intently from a dog-eared Koran that sat atop the bulging knapsack on his lap.

It all makes perfect sense.

Where else would Palestinian sympathists—furious over the treatment of their co-religionists overseas, furious at the Zionist-American government for supporting the oppressors of their bretheren, furious at their Jewish neighbors here in America who feel closer to the Jewish settler six thousand miles away than to the non-Jew living next door—find such a deserving target? Brooklyn. Plety of Jews, plenty of Jew-haters.

These kids watch the news. They see it every day on television; see how the martyrs are honored; see how their own families and communities react with hidden admiration. Did we really believe not one would step forward. They found twenty willing to climb on a plane, why not one to hop a subway?

One youth, valiant or disgruntled—take your pick. Someone not afraid to die and not afraid to kill. A kid like so many others in the world—except this one lives on our side of the Atlantic. How did we actually fool ourselves into thinking that not one such teenager existed? How did we fool ourselves into thinking that, with all their efforts in spreading radical Islam, they would fail to find one recruit to drop the bomb?

One young man (or woman) to climb on a subway with a knapsack full of explosives, promises of Paradise ringing in his ears. One young man to tuck the Koran in his pocket, sling the knapsack over one shoulder, get off the train, and walk leisurely toward a kosher deli in Boro Park. One young man, who looks like your average Middle Eastern Jew, to order his last meal: a burger, fries and coke, before taking a seat in the middle of the crowded restaurant and waiting. Waiting for the place to fill up.

What hurts the most is how easy it was.

Nearly one hundred people died in the explosion, most of them under the age of eighteen. The two shops adjacent were destroyed as well. So were the windows of many of the stores across the street. The cars on Thirteenth Avenue were ripped open like tuna fish cans.

Hatzalah trucks came wailing nearly immediately, their sirens pouring out the emotion of a whole community. The Post photographer captured the image of a fourteen-year Hatzoloh veteran, sitting on the sidewalk, weeping. Hatzoloh members, recently trained in Israel by Zaka, were spending more time picking body parts from the debris than administering CPR. There were so few left to save.

The helplessness that gripped me on September 12 rushed back full force as I entered shul that evening, Rosh Chodesh Av. What could we do? What could we have done? What could I have done?

And then I remembered.

I remembered how I had left the same shul that very morning in such a hurry. I had walked out before the shliach tzibbur was finished. Oh yes, he had finished the traditional prayers, but afterward he began to recite some Tehillim. Our shul had been doing that now for years. Ever since the Intifada erupted, many congregations had added the recitation of just two or three chapters of Psalms at the end of the service. An extra five minutes, tops.

Initially, we all pronounced these additional words with great deliberation and feeling, imploring the Good L-rd to watch over and protect us and "Acheinu, kol Beis Yisrael—Our brothers, the entire Congregation of Israel." But the fervor didn't last. As the advent of homicide bombers abated, so did our concentration, and then our interest. After a while it was rote. The chazzan would rush through those Psalms while the congregation began to discuss the upcoming day: How did the market look? Was rain in the forecast? Were the Yankees at home or in Boston?

By evening the bloody boom from the bowels of Brooklyn cleared those thoughts. The market is down, the weather is dreary, and the Yankees do not exist.

But the Good L-rd still does.

And while those poor families are mourning, making arrangements for funerals and shiva; while the pundits are pontificating, second-guessing homeland security and analyzing religious divides; while the terrorists are celebrating, toasting their latest martyr and seeking their next one; I will be back in the synagogue, saying those Psalms. Only this time I will recite them as I should have in the past, slowly, with feeling, trying to grasp their meaning and depth. I will listen to the words leaving my mouth.

I pray He does too.