|
Jewish World Review Nov. 21, 2001/ 6 Kislev 5762
The New Search
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
FOR Vered Sharon, it started with a
lecture on venture capitalism at a
mid-Manhattan Jewish outreach
center the week before Black
Tuesday. Attracted by a rabbi's
comments on fulfilling one's
potential, she returned to the center
the day after Sept. 11 and has
begun a return to traditional
Judaism.
For Elissa Folkman and Sarah
Redelheim, it was a search for
meaning. They both had fast-track
jobs that seemed less important
after Sept. 11. Today, both are
becoming teachers.
For Hunter Atkins, it was a
conversation with a schoolmate.
Approaching bar mitzvah age, he had
no intention to have a bar mitzvah.
Hunter spoke with a friend a few
days after Sept. 11, and is now a bar
mitzvah student.
There are other examples,
uncounted ones. The terrorist
attacks that rocked America had an obvious physical effect
- buildings were destroyed,
thousands of live were lost, many
thousands more were left displaced
or unemployed.
But the spiritual ripples of Sept. 11
are more subtle. How do you
measure shattered goals, lost faith?
For some, the answer is tangible changes. They have invigorated their
religious practice, initiated a modest religious affiliation, decided to
begin new careers.
The changes are nationwide.
"I've never been a really religious person," Jeff Halpern said, "but I just
think given what's going on in the world I owe it to a lot of people to
take this day off."
"There's a lot of soul searching, a reorientation of priorities," says
Rabbi Arthur Schneier of Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side.
"What seemed important before Sept. 11 is irrelevant."
Similarly, he says, a generation of Holocaust survivors dedicated
themselves to the Jewish community, becoming rabbis, teachers and
activists, "to make the world a better place in return for surviving."
"There was a tremendous sense of mortality, mortality of what our
ideals are, what our values are," says Rabbi Daniel Green of the
Jewish Enrichment Center here. "People are really searching to
connect with something beyond themselves."
Much of the evidence is anecdotal, but many of the people who have
already made life-altering changes are young, especially women in
their 20s and 30s.
"Younger people are more open to change, to re-examining their
lives," Rabbi Green says. "They have the freedom to do it."
Folkman, 23, was working as an assistant buyer in the men's
fragrances department of a Miami department store when the
terrorists struck. One phrase she heard over and over on television -
"The person had really made a difference." - "really affected me," she
tells New York Jewish Week.
"What am I doing?" Folkman asked herself. "What am I doing to help
people?"
At work the next day it was business as usual. "They didn't care," she
says.
So Folkman is becoming an elementary school teacher.
"I had never, ever before thought about being a teacher," Folkman
says. But "a light went on" after Sept. 11. "I like children a lot. I want
to do something socially gratifying … to give back to my community."
Don't teachers earn less than department store buyers?
"For sure. But I'd rather be happy than have a lot of money," says
Folkman, who attended a Jewish day school in her native Philadelphia
until sixth grade.
"Life is real short," she adds. "You don't know when it's going to end."
The lesson was not lost on a group of preteen students during a lunch
break last week at the Park East Day School. A visitor asked how Sept.
11 changed them, what they were doing differently.
One student said he keeps in touch more with his parents when he
leaves his house. Another spends more time with a sibling who has
"some problems."
Then Quila Israelson, 12, raised her hand.
"When I go to my grandparents' home," Quila said quietly, "I never
forget to say 'goodbye' or 'I love you,' in case there's no tomorrow."
On the Wednesday before Black Tuesday, Vered Sharon went for the
first time to the Jewish Enrichment Center, an educational outreach
program a block from the Empire State Building. That evening was a
panel discussion that included venture capitalists and high-tech
veterans. Sharon, a "young, single, professional," has worked in the
field for a decade.
"Somebody dragged me there by the hair to get me to a
religious-sponsored business event," she says. "On purpose, I stood
by the door because I was going to leave."
But she stayed in the packed room the whole time, more than an hour.
After the yuppies spoke, Rabbi Daniel Green, president of the Jewish
Enrichment Center, talked to the twentysomething crowd.
"I didn't understand what a bearded rabbi could add to a well done
but secular business discussion," Sharon thought. Then Rabbi Green,
in a "relevant" business context, told the story of the Chassidic rebbe, Reb Zusha, who instructed his disciples on his deathbed that G-d
wouldn't ask him in the next world why he hadn't become Moses.
"Why weren't you Zusha?" - why didn't you become all you were
capable of becoming, G-d would ask.
"It got me," Sharon says. She took the rabbi's words as a personal
challenge. Afterward, she went up to him. "Hi, rabbi," she said. "My
name is Zusha."
Sharon went home that night. Reb Zusha stayed on her mind. Then
Sept. 11 came.
Like most New Yorkers, Sharon was shocked. "I have friends who lost
more friends than they can count.
"I needed some kind of spirituality," says Sharon, an Israel native who
grew up in the United States and had drifted from the religious
observance of her youth. "I didn't know where to go."
The next evening she attended another program at the Jewish
Enrichment Center, "making sense of the tragedy," throwing her
spiritual questions at Rabbi Green and other center leaders. "I walked
out of there in tears."
Sharon spent that Friday night at the JEC Shabbaton, praying at the
Madison Avenue headquarters, eating with the rabbi's family. To avoid
desecrating the Sabbath, she took a cab from her apartment in lower
Manhattan before sundown and left her gifts for the Greens - a plant
and a bottle of Israeli wine - with their doorman.
After dinner, she walked home.
For the first time in years, Sharon observed the Sabbath.
Sarah Redelheim originally thought about becoming a teacher. By
college she had become interested in public relations; she was
working in direct marketing for a Fortune 500 company on Sept. 11. By
the next week, she was a former direct marketer.
Redelheim, 23, quit her job and is supporting herself as a waitress.
She will return to college next semester for a degree in teaching. The
Philadelphian wants to become an elementary school teacher, or a
high school English teacher. "That would be my dream come true," she
says.
She had had second thoughts about her career in marketing, but "I
don't think I would have made a rash decision" to follow her childhood
desire were it not for the terrorist attacks. "I realized I didn't want to
bother people," calling strangers or ringing their doorbells.
A friend escaped the World Trade Center. And a cousin who
works in the Pentagon is safe. "It made me realize how precious life
is," Redelheim says.
"I think I take things a lot more to heart than most people I know,"
she says. Redelheim considered her decision in synagogue on Rosh
HaShanah, "teary eyed," like everyone.
Her decision is "100 percent."
"I might not have forever to be a teacher," she says. "I always
remember those teachers who had an impact on my life. I want kids to
be able to remember me as a teacher."
Hunter Atkins turns 13 in December, and he wasn't planning to become
bar mitzvah.
"Absolutely not," says his mother, Elizabeth Hajt. "We were totally
non-observant. He didn't want to do the work."
Hunter has now started private lessons for his bar mitzvah. It was
his idea.
The Friday after Sept. 11, he came to his Upper East Side home from
his private school and said he wanted to have a bar mitzvah. He
added, a few days later, "I want to do it in Hebrew. I don't care how
long it takes me."
"It was a combination of Sept. 11 affecting him deeply and his being
open to friendly persuasion," Hajt says. A Jewish classmate convinced
him how important a bar mitzvah is.
Hajt arranged for Rabbi Meir Fund, a Flatbush, Brooklyn, pulpit rabbi
and teacher whom she has known for years as a freelance writer for
The New York Times, to tutor Hunter. The ceremony will take place
sometime next spring, when Hunter feels himself prepared, at the
Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Rabbi Avi Weiss opened the
congregation to the bar mitzvah, although Hunter and his parents are
not members.
"I'm trying to learn Hebrew with Hunter," Hajt says. She says Hunter's
father, Robert Atkins, is "very supportive" of the bar mitzvah.
Hunter, uncharacteristically, asked to go to temple on Rosh HaShanah.
"I have a different child" since Sept. 11 - "180 degrees different," Hajt
says. "I really like it."
"This is the beginning of a long-term commitment," Rabbi Fund told
Hunter. Hajt isn't so sure. First, the bar mitzvah.
"I'm looking forward to having Rabbi Fund in my house talking about
Torah," she says. "I could see us thinking more about the larger
questions."
Since her first post-tragedy Sabbath with the Jewish Enrichment
Center, Vered Sharon has gone to synagogue nearly every Saturday.
She has started to pray Shacharis weekday mornings, enrolled in
online yeshiva classes and gotten rid of some non-kosher dishes. And
she has decided that intermarriage is out.
"I want to marry an Orthodox man," Sharon says.
"It's definitely connected to Sept. 11," she says. Sharon says she
always felt at home in the traditional Judaism she learned as a child.
"Sept. 11 reminded me. Sept. 11 made me question myself, why am I
here?"
"I don't feel I was being true to myself" - before Sept. 11, she says.
"My friends," Sharon says, "call me Zusha.
"I want to be like Zusha," the Jewish symbol of fulfilled potential, she
says. "I want to be Vered. I need to be Vered. Questioning brought me
to Reb
for Meaning
Jews taking life-changing steps as part of spiritual seismic shift after Sept.
11.
By Steve Lipman
Steve Lipman is a staff writer at
The New York Jewish Week. Send your comments to him by clicking here.