If You Don't Cry, Who Will? *

 

* Chezi Goldberg z"l, a 42-year-old father of seven originally from Toronto, was killed in a Jerusalem bus bombing on January 29, 2004. Two years earlier, he had written these words.

 

.... "Didn't you hear?"

"Hear about what?"

"Didn't you HEAR?"

I understood that he was talking about last night's terror attack.... I assumed that he obviously intended that someone we knew was hurt or killed.

"About who?"

He looked at me as if I had landed from another planet. "About who? About everyone who was attacked last night."

I nodded, "Yes, I heard."

"Then why aren't you crying?"

His words shot through me like a spear piercing my heart. Our Sages teach that "words that come from the heart enter the heart." He was right. Why wasn't I crying?

I could not answer. I had nothing to say.

He pointed around the shul. "Why aren't all my friends crying?"

I could not answer. I had nothing to say.

"Shouldn't we all be crying?"

He was right. What has happened to all of us? -- myself included. We have turned to stone. Some would call it numbness. Some would call it collective national shock. Some would say that we all have suffered never-ending trauma and it has affected our senses.

The excuses are worthless. All the reasons in the world don't justify our distance from the pain that is burning in our midst.

When an attack happens, in the heat of the moment, we frantically check to see if someone we know has been hurt or killed. And then, if we find out that "our friends and family are safe," we breathe a deep sigh of relief, grunt and grumble about the latest tragic event and then, continue with our robotic motions and go on with our lives.

We have not lost our minds, my friends. We have lost our hearts.

And that is why we keep on losing our lives.

 

* * *  

What we in America did not learn from news accounts of the First Intifada (1987-1992) - or the Second, which began in 2000 - we learned for ourselves, or should have learned, in 2001 ... on 9/11.

How could anyone have believed that the bloodthirsty quest of Islamic terrorism was going to stop with the Jews? I don't know how many times I have thought, said and written that if the nations of the world had reacted appropriately to the suicide bombings in Israel years ago, when they were incinerating Jews by the busload, if the world had reacted with "proportionate" revulsion and determination, we might have had a chance to stop this savagery at the get-go. (BtB, 17 April 2013)

 

The following was first posted at BtB on September 11th, 2006. Edited just slightly here, I always remember... and I always cry.

Dear Jeff Nussbaum,

I have a confession to make. I fumbled the ball on your tribute.  After hearing so much about this 2,996 Project (an effort assigning bloggers to write tributes to those who died ... on 9/11) I finally thought I should sign up, late in the game. But when I entered my name, a response came up that my blog already had an assignment!  I was mortified; I didn’t remember doing that. As it turns out, I had been among the earlier ones to sign on.

I had to go to the list to see who it was I had been “randomly” assigned.  It’s such a long, long list. In the widely published and always alphabetical version, you are just after Jose R. Nunez and right before James A. Oakley.  And so I found you... that is, us, you and me brought together by this project of remembrance (all the more ironic since I had forgotten that I signed up). Seeing your picture shocked me into realizing how close I had come to letting you down, not remembering, not showing up.

This letter is my attempt to turn that fumble into a save. I am hoping that you’ll understand. Your sister Melissa has said that you were good with any kind of ball…  “basketball, baseball, tennis, golf.”  She said it sickened your friends:) but to me it's reassuring; you know what it is to fumble the ball, regain it, and score in the end.

In 2004, with the third anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Melissa wrote that she had another boy on the way, and that you would be thrilled if you knew:

When I look into my son's baby blue eyes, I am saddened that they will never look into Uncle Jeff's big blue eyes again. My older brother would be thrilled to know that another boy is on the way. I hope that my two sons will laugh as loudly together as only Craig and Jeff did. When my 4-year-old sings, dances, swims and plays ball, I am reminded of Jeff and his love of being (in) the center of the action.

Your mom, Arline, was much in the news when you were killed; the story of your last conversations with her have been repeated throughout the world,  quoted in sermons - both Jewish and Christian - and in English, German, French and Spanish.

His first phone call to me was before 9 o'clock. I had just heard on the radio about the plane when the phone rang. “Are you okay?'' I asked. “No, call 911. We can't breathe. The rooms are filling up with smoke, and the sprinkler systems have gone off.''

He told me they're knee deep in water and there's black smoke -- they can hardly see and they're having difficulty breathing. “Call 911,” he told me. Then he hung up.

I called the 911 here in Long Island, and they put me through to the NYC 911, and I told her where people were alive, and this was what my son was saying to me.

In the second phone call, he told me they were 45 of them together. He said they're overlooking the river. He said,  “We broke the windows, so at least we could breathe.'' I heard men yelling. I did not hear any of the girls' voices. I know one of the girls was a very good friend, and they were like brother and sister, and I am sure they would have stayed close.

He asked,  “What's taking the F.D. so long to get here?''

The fellows in the background were giving me telephone numbers to call. Then he says, “I'm hanging up, I've got to call 911 again.”

His third phone call came just after the first tower went down. He said, “Mom, what was that explosion?''

I said, “The other tower just went down.''

He said, “Oh, my God. I love you,'' and the phone went dead.

She has a record of each and every call.

"He called his brother [Craig] at 8:49 and left a message on his machine," she said.

 "The first call to me was 8:56.

At 9:03, he called 911.

At 9:06 he called 911.

Then he called me back at 9:12.

At 9:55, he called 911.

9:57, 911.

"His third phone call to me is not on here," Nussbaum continued. "I don't know whether he called me at 10 o'clock or 10:05, and that's when I told him. . .the other tower went down" and that the Pentagon had been attacked. Finally, he understood.

Everyone knows you let Andy Friedman use your cell phone – an act of kindness - so he could speak to his wife, Lisa:

My husband had been working there for two weeks. He was starting an equities desk. He called me at 9:16. Actually, someone else placed this call, and said,  “Is this Mrs. Friedman? I have Andrew for you.''

I could hear coughing in the background. He sounded totally calm. He said, “Lis, we're in a room together, we have plenty of air.''

I said, “I love you.'' That was pretty much the whole conversation.

You see, what happened was… a plane – American Airlines Flight 11 – struck the building you were in, the north tower, hitting from the 93rd floor all the way up to the 98th.  You were on the 92nd floor, just below the crash.  No one survived on your floor.

On the north tower's 92nd floor, one floor below the crash, 69 employees from Carr Futures found themselves trapped. Most, perhaps all, survived the crash [itself]. But, in phone calls to loved ones, the employees reported that the stairwells were impassable.

They crowded together in corner rooms as the floor filled with smoke. People appear to have lived until the building fell. By phone, a mother told her son that the south tower had collapsed.

One account says that you and your colleagues in the Carr Futures offices didn’t realize that you were “on the wrong side of the rubble.”

Your building was the first hit, but the south tower - struck 16 minutes later - was first to collapse.  That’s what your mom had seen on television that last time you spoke with her.

It wasn’t until 10:28 that your building collapsed.  If I were your loved one - your mom, your big brother or your little sister - it would be those last 20, 25, minutes that would haunt me.  No one knows exactly what that was like for you.

Carr [Futures] was .. below the impact, and everyone there had survived it; yet they could not get out. "Between 10:05 and 10:25, videos show, fire spread westward across the 92nd floor's north face, bearing down on their western refuge.

 

But your mom held out hope for the longest time.

 

 
 

More than a week after 9/11, she was interviewed in Newsday:

.... Reason tells Nussbaum that her son has most likely perished. Yet she hopes. It is why she has so far declined a request for a visit from her rabbi.

"I'm hoping he's laying in a hospital in a coma [or] with amnesia... He's there as a John Doe," she said of her son. "But if the rabbi came, it means my son is 100 percent dead, and I can't think that way."

Eventually she had to “think that way.” I hope the rabbi did come then, and I hope he was able to comfort and strengthen her.  You’ll be glad to know that friends of yours, people she didn’t know, “called and offered assistance in innumerable ways and … consoled her with tales of [your] caring nature.”  It’s no wonder; since you seem to have been so incredibly warm and outgoing:

Arline Nussbaum, who shared a home with her son, described him as a friendly, gregarious man, the sort who drew people to him. "If he went into a club and there were 350 people, 300 of them came over to say, 'Hi, Jeff.' By the time he left he knew the other 50," she said, allowing a bit of joy to creep into her voice.

Did you know they called you “The Mayor of the Hamptons”? 

 Jeffrey Nussbaum's friends called him the Mayor of the Hamptons. After 10 or 12 summers there, he knew more people than many meet in a lifetime. "If there were 300 people in a bar," said Arline Nussbaum, his mother, "he knew 200." Friends say he liked to get one group together with another — and then introduce the combined group to a third. Given another 10 or 15 years, he might well have managed to introduce one half of the Hamptons to the other.

Your sister Melissa was quoted in the New York Times:

"He was really, really social," said Mrs. Brunschwig. "We were shopping together in Secaucus. We went to two stores and he met people he knew in each. Everywhere he went — everywhere — he knew people. And if he didn't, he'd meet them."

It’s so odd, I didn’t know you, but now I will never forget you.  I’ll always know that you were “a big man – 6 foot-4, 230 pounds,” a “die-hard New Yorker,” that you worked as a senior currency trader for Carr Futures and lived in Oceanside, NY.

I will always know that you were 37 years old when you were killed.

This scant tribute cannot possibly do justice to your life. Nevertheless, I have set it to post automatically on ... September 11th, at 10:28 a.m., the moment the north tower collapsed, the moment beyond which you could not have survived.  

[That day] I will say kaddish for you...  I will think of your mom Aline, your sister Melissa and your brother Craig, and the little nephew you never got to meet. 

I’ll think of the city whose life was intertwined with yours ...

 copyright Nathaniel Lieberman

and the beach towns, not far away, where you were "mayor."

 

I will remember you.

When Jews die, their family and friends often pray that their souls be bound to the eternal bond of life. I know that for you, that prayer has been answered.  You are remembered by the people who knew and loved you well and by countless strangers -including myself- who didn’t know you at all. And beyond even that, you are remembered as part of the history of our great nation.

For all of us, your memory is a blessing.

"Everywhere he went — everywhere — he knew people.

And if he didn't, he'd meet them."

 

G-d willing, I will meet you too -in Gan Eden- when the time comes.

Yael

 

 

Addendum, 2012-2013:

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

I feel guilty, Yael, about adding this mundane comment to your profoundly moving post ... but it may shed some light on the predicament that we -- the American people -- confront at this moment. I watched some of the 9/11 observances on FOX News this morning and was both startled and depressed to hear Jennifer Griffin, reporting, if I'm not mistaken, from the ceremony at the Pentagon, that there were very few news crews from competing networks covering the event. She'd looked around, she said, for the cameras and microphones she'd seen in previous years -- but they just weren't there. Could it be that many in the media now consider 9/11 ancient history -- something that deserves about as much attention as we pay, say, to the War of 1812? If our major organs of communication decide it's time to consign 9/11 to that bottomless black hole into which we dump so many troublesome or inconvenient memories, then we -- I'm referring again to the American people -- are truly goners.

[Elan]

Caroline Glick, writing ten years ago, on September 30, 2003: "The truth is that the heroism of Israelis -- from our soldiers in the field to Egged bus drivers who have personally thrown bombers from their buses, to waiters who have wrestled bombers to the ground and border policemen who have sacrificed their lives to keep suicide bombers away from civilians at a bus stop -- is unmatched by that of any nation in the world. The problem isn't our resilience; it is our lack of outrage. We have gotten used to being killed." We learned to accept rockets on civilians, the murder of an ambassador, the whirr of centrifuges, and an inept commander-in-chief golfing through the apocalypse. Thank you, Yael, for reminding us what we must recover.