Rosh HaShanah and Osama’s Missing Letter — ב

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.

The Infinite Hug!

In the hushed theater of existence, where the veil between the boundless and the bounded thins to a whisper, The Infinite hugs the finite within the quantum expanse of every atom. Picture the atom, that primordial seed of reality: a nucleus orbited by electrons in probabilistic clouds, not fixed paths but smeared possibilities. Here, in this subatomic ballet, The Infinite manifests as wave functions stretching eternally, collapsing only when observed into discrete points. The electron, defying classical confinement, tunnels through barriers it should not, borrowing energy from the vacuum's infinite fluctuations—zero-point energy, where nothingness teems with virtual particles winking in and out of being. Thus, The Infinite enables the finite, infusing the atom's core with echoes of eternity, a cosmic intimacy where boundless potential cradles the particle's singular form.

Ascending the ladder of complexity, this dance permeates every molecule, those intricate alliances of atoms bound by shared electrons. In water's humble H2O, hydrogen and oxygen entwine in quantum entanglement, their bonds vibrating with infinite harmonic oscillations—frequencies that, in theory, extend without end, yet resolve into finite energies that sustain life. The molecule's shape, dictated by quantum mechanics, emerges from infinite superpositions: electrons delocalized across space, choosing configurations from an unending array of probabilities. Even in the air we breathe, nitrogen molecules hum with this proximity, their triple bonds a testament to quantum tunneling allowing reactions that classical physics forbids. The Infinite whispers through these unions, approaching the finite not as an intruder but as the architect, sculpting stability from chaos.

In the sacred script of life, nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA embody this convergence. Each adenine, thymine, guanine, or cytosine is a molecular poem where quantum effects dictate base pairing. The hydrogen bonds linking them flicker with delocalized protons, quantum entities that exist in multiple states simultaneously, bridging infinite possibilities to finite sequences that encode our very essence. In the double helix's twist, quantum coherence allows electrons to flow like rivers of probability, enabling the molecule's stability amid thermal noise. Here, The Infinite nears the finite in the nucleotide's phosphate backbone, where vibrational modes resonate with the universe's underlying relationship with The Infinite, ensuring the fidelity of genetic information across generations.

From nucleotides arise proteins, those versatile machines of biology, folded into exquisite forms by quantum-guided interactions. In the amino acid chains, quantum van der Waals forces—arising from infinite vacuum polarizations—draw distant atoms close, while disulfide bridges form through electron sharing that defies locality. Enzymes, the catalysts of life, harness quantum tunneling to accelerate reactions by factors of trillions, protons leaping barriers as if The Infinite lent them wings. The protein's active site, a pocket of precision, emerges from infinite conformational landscapes explored in femtoseconds, settling into finite structures that bind substrates with unerring accuracy. Thus, in every fold and crevice, The Infinite hugs the finite, animating the protein's function with transcendent subtlety.

This pattern cascades into every structure of every cell: membranes riddled with ion channels where quantum gates open and close, allowing signals to propagate; mitochondria, powerhouses where electron transport chains exploit quantum coherence for efficient energy transfer; cytoskeletons of microtubules vibrating in quantum modes, perhaps even underpinning consciousness. In the cell's nucleus, chromatin dances with quantum randomness, influencing gene expression from infinite probabilistic outcomes. And beyond the cell, this truth envelops all matter—from the crystalline lattice of a diamond, where quantum delocalization binds carbon atoms, to the swirling plasmas of stars, where infinite quantum fields birth finite particles in fusion's fire. In rocks, rivers, and atmospheres, The Infinite hugs the finite, weaving the fabric of the natural world with threads of boundless potential.

Yet, the energy animating these realms springs not merely from within quantum space but from an infinite transcendence enveloping physics itself. Beyond the measurable quanta lies the unmanifest source—a metaphysical wellspring, the vacuum's infinite sea of potential energy, or perhaps the implicate order where all possibilities reside. This transcendence supplies the zero-point fluctuations powering atomic stability, the quantum vacuum energy fueling molecular bonds, the entangled fields enabling cellular harmony. It surrounds physics like an ocean cradling islands, infusing every particle, molecule, and structure with vitality drawn from eternity. In this grand symphony, The Infinite does not merely approach the finite; it embraces it, revealing that all matter, all life, is a fleeting expression of the boundless, forever touched by the transcendent beyond.

Birthday of Man

5782 years have passed since Torah's events of creation. The New Year is an introspect, a birthday celebration of speaking man who preceded the Bible and Jewish religion by 2448 years. The deep, mystical language inspires scholars and confounds wayward philosophers. 

Hidden in Torah's rich-grammar, something from nothing! Its Author moved toward His supra-rational 'Will' to create; soul's, time, space, worlds and speaking man. Similarly, mans desire and intellect would be powerful enough to perceive independence and obtain free choice. 

Here we glimpse the Ultimate Creator restraining the infinite and enabling the finite to accommodate uninhibited self-perception. And, beyond any logic, His desire for self-subjugation to restore perception of the soul's will.   

You are free to decide...

Happy New Year!