9/11, Rosh Hashanah and our home on earth
Osama bin Laden’s assault on September 11 brought down buildings and shattered homes far beyond Manhattan. Behind every person murdered stood a family, relationships, hopes and obligations. Twenty-five years later, the destruction still confronts us with a spiritual question: what becomes of religious conviction when it authorises the destruction of the lives through which holiness must enter the world?
An unusual numerical relationship in the Torah’s opening word offers a way to examine that question.
The Torah begins with בראשית — B’reishit, “In the beginning.” In gematria, the calculation of Hebrew letters’ numerical values, this word totals 913. Remove its opening letter, ב — beit, whose value is two, and the remaining ראשית — reishit, “beginning,” totals 911.
The resemblance to the American notation for September 11 supplies a metaphor for reflection; it does not establish why bin Laden chose that date. Its significance lies in what has been removed. The letter’s name, written בית, also spells bayit: a house or home. Symbolically, removing the beit takes the home out of creation’s beginning.
That missing home brings us to the spiritual failure embodied by 9/11.
In Chassidic teaching, creation has a purpose: to make this physical world a dwelling for G-d. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi develops this idea in Tanya, chapter 36. Our world, with its concealment, difficulty and moral freedom, is where divine purpose must be realised. Human action matters because holiness must become present here. (Tanya, chapter 36)
A home gives that teaching concrete meaning. It is where another can belong, where strength creates security and responsibility sustains life. Making a home for G-d requires us to examine what our convictions produce in the lives of others. Learning, charity, justice, restraint and the protection of life give belief its earthly expression.
Rosh Hashanah brings this responsibility back to humanity’s beginning. The first of Tishrei commemorates the creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth day of Creation, entering a world prepared to sustain them. Each year, we acknowledge G-d’s sovereignty and answer for the lives we lead within His creation. Earth is our home, entrusted to us to become a dwelling for His presence. (Rosh Hashanah and Creation)
The letters of בראשית — B’reishit can also be rearranged as א׳ בתשרי — the first of Tishrei. The Torah’s opening word thus offers another symbolic connection between creation, Rosh Hashanah and the beit, our home. This year, that connection is especially poignant: Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on September 11, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks. A day of mourning gives way to a renewed reckoning with the purpose of human life. (2026 dates)
That reckoning must begin with the people who were killed. The attacks murdered 2,977 people in New York, at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Each death reached into a home whose future was changed forever. The scale of the crime must never obscure the individual human beings within it. (9/11 Memorial & Museum)
Bin Laden’s project can be judged precisely here. Whatever religious authority he claimed, the method he authorised made human beings instruments of terror. His followers used their own deaths to inflict death on strangers, turning conviction into permission to destroy. The language of sacred purpose could not make those acts holy.
The missing beit therefore represents a profound religious distortion: claiming to serve the Creator while treating His creatures as expendable. Rosh Hashanah places the believer under judgment; fanaticism grants the believer authority to dispose of others. One demands accountability for our conduct. The other exempts its violence from moral scrutiny.
The response that morning revealed another use of conviction. Rescuers entered danger to bring people out. Colleagues helped one another escape. Strangers assumed responsibility for lives to which they had no previous connection. In the language of this interpretation, their actions expressed the beit: preserving a place for another human being in the world.
Remembering 9/11 carries that responsibility forward. It means defending people against those who would repeat it, supporting families who still carry its losses, and teaching a moral clarity that refuses to confuse religious intensity with holiness. Every claim made in G-d’s name remains answerable for what it asks people to do.
The numerical movement from 911 to 913 restores one letter. The human task it symbolises asks us to restore belonging, security and the possibility of a future wherever terror has broken them.
Osama’s missing letter was beit, the home. As remembrance of 9/11 meets Rosh Hashanah, we return to the work his violence violated: protecting life, rebuilding what hatred destroys, and making our home on earth worthy of the divine presence we ask to dwell among us.
