September 11th is a day that is firmly imprinted in each of our minds. We’ve all heard the facts. We’ve listened to reports of the death toll and intently watched President Bush, awaiting information. However, we are not often given an opportunity to discuss how we feel and think about the situation at hand. The following statements/expressions were written by your peers in NFTY.

I wrote the following on September 11, 2001:
…and thou shall love the lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And all these words which I command you on this day shall be upon thy heart. And thou shall teach them diligently onto thy children. And thou shall speak of them when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shall bind them for a sign upon thy hand. And they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shall write them on the doorposts of your house and upon thy gates. That ye may remember and do all of my commandments. And be holy unto your God. All my life I have been taught to love God. But then I see what happened on September 11th and ask why? Why does a God that I’ve been taught to love allow the things I’ve been taught are bad?

~Harry Sklar. Harry, a sixteen-year-old NFTYite, lives in Mequon, Wisconsin. He belongs to Congregation Shalom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Harry is the regional religious and cultural vice president of NFTY’s Northern Region. He attended Kutz during the summer of 2001.

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As we sat, glued to our televisions, classmates surrounded me in silence. None of us had ever experienced anything of this sort. As if none of us had a friend in the world, we swayed back and forth. The soft whimpers that escaped our fist-covered mouths seemed too sincere and too afraid. Tears moistened our cheeks as we cried.

The stations called it A Day of Terror. A Nation Under Attack, the headlines read. But for one timid generation, September 11 meant a day of loss; loss of life, loss of innocence, and a loss of hope all accompanied September 11. Those tears were shed not for each of the boys and girls in that classroom, but for a nation condemned to forget its own history. Those tears were for each and every one of us.

I sat there with the notion that this could not be. A country as strong as ours could never allow such an atrocity to occur. My eldest sister, living in Pentagon City, consumed my mind. She was a journalist who passed the Pentagon everyday. She could see the structure perfectly from her desk window. Then, wait, all of my family and friends in New York City. There were so many to be accounted for – how could they possibly all be safe? At my first opportunity, I left the gates of my school and fled into the arms of my parents, who had been waiting endlessly for a reason – reason for the horror, reason for the pain, reason for the suffering, simply a reason.

I ask you now, brothers, sisters, friends, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, and grandfathers, where were you? Where were you to stop this? Where were you not to be on those planes, persuading those terrorists with the smile in your eye? Where were you to shout out to the world and to scream out the pain and agony? Where were you when I needed you most? Where were you, as I realized that our nation had lost something so dear to us?

It has been nearly sixty years since December 7, 1941 – sixty years since our parents and grandparents had experienced the likes of what we did that day. Yet somehow we have managed to leave ourselves open to the same deliberate attack, which shocked the nation into World War II. It seems that never-ending prayer for peace within our hearts may have been in vain. President George W. Bush has vowed that we will hunt these cowardly terrorists to the end of time.

I leave you with this, we as a youth movement, need to pull together and be united. There is no time or reason for any of us to single out one another. This is a time where we must see past diversity and accept each other for who we are. We STAND UNITED. The world as we know it has been changed forever.

~ Jon Umansky. Jon Umansky, a seventeen-year-old NFTYite, belongs to NFTY’s Missouri Valley region. He currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Kutz during the summer of 2001.

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September 11 is a day that we are reminded of on a daily basis. At first, I was shocked that something such as that could even occur in this country. Now, I feel that we as a society need to get back to how things were before it happened. Yes. We need to make sure that this never happens again, but we also need to go on with our lives.

~ Mike Behmoiras. Mike Behmoiras, a sixteen-year-old NFTYite, belongs to NFTY’s Southern Tropical Region. He currently lives in Miami, Florida and attended Kutz during the summer of 2001.

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September 11th was probably the scariest day of my life. I go to Stuyvesant High School, which is about four blocks away from the towers. I heard the first plane and saw the second plane’s explosion. It was horrible. I could see people running and one waving a cloth from one of the top windows. Then it stopped.

I then saw all of these things that looked kind of like papers falling out of the building. I realized, after about three or four of them fell, that they weren’t papers, but actually people. The school tried to keep us going like normal because they were assured by the FBI that the buildings wouldn’t fall down. I didn’t know what to do. Completely randomly, I had the Gates of Grey (the gender sensitive Gates of Prayer) with me and decided to pray. The buildings came down across the street from my school and then they decided to evacuate us. My dad was down there waiting for my sister and me and we walked uptown and then got a ride home. That was what happened to me September 11th.