RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #23 (9/17/2011): Ten Years
aired Sept. 17, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koxCrkPZuM8
Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon, with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of September 11th, 2011.
Boy, just hearing that date gets you in the kishkes, doesn’t it? September 11th 2011. Somehow that just sounds more meaningful than September 11th 2009 or September 11th 2003 – even though more time has passed. I suppose a ten-year anniversary makes you realize that, no matter what, life goes on, years pass; while at the same time, you recall how much younger you were a decade ago, and what an impact the event had on your life.
Ten years ago, Wall Street was destroyed, not by corruption from within – that came later – but by evil from without. Arabs, in airplanes, with box-cutters. How these scumpuppets were able to circumvent the FAA, the Air Force, the civil defense and any air-traffic controller with eyes remains a mystery greater than how Drakes gets that crème filling into Yodels. I mean, it’s all rolled up; how the hell do they do that?
Anyway, this week we’re hearing a lot of talk about closure. Ten years – it’s almost another generation. The world moves forward, the dead are not coming back, and, of course, we got Bin Laden. When the bullet sailed through his forehead, it made a satisfying parallel to those planes pushing through the buildings. As I mentioned in a previous Reflection, Osama’s death was a wonderful thing, but killing him kills him, not Jihad, not terrorism, not the memories.
As we all know, grief does not follow a time-table. Time heals wounds, but you never know when a scab will come off and start bleeding again. Looking at downtown Manhattan, remembering the 3000 victims, watching any movie that opens with a shot of that old New York City skyline – it all kicks up a sandstorm of memories.
And much as we all want mental therapy and ways to feel better about 9/11, let’s not go overboard making believe something good came out of the attacks. Nothing good came out of that. It was a nightmare; we suffered emotionally, financially, physically. Don’t be looking for feel-good post-mortems because how could there be a silver lining from such a thing? Well, maybe if one of those airplanes had the Kardashian family on it, but it would have to be the whole family, including Bruce Jenner, you know what I’m saying?
Seriously, though, at least there has finally been some progress rebuilding Ground Zero, and it is already possible to foresee a time when our children will think of 9/11 as “mom and dad’s Pearl Harbor Day,” rather than that day. Whether or not we fudged the endgame in Afghanistan, I’m glad we killed a lot of people there. Iraq may have been a blunder, but I’m glad we killed a lot of people there, too. God, I sound like a homicidal Andy Rooney.
On the other hand, they’re saying pretty soon we can once again go through airports keeping the shoes on our feet. Why? Because those feet kicked some ass.
Somewhere, in hell, there’s a dozen Arabs being mocked and brutalized by 72 appallingly ugly virgins, all of them holding box cutters in one hand and Moslem shmeckels in the other. Happy goddamn anniversary.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches.
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