Jews and Their Deep Memory
July, 2019
My very first column, in the inaugural Ami Magazine, opened as follows:
“At 9:20pm, on Thursday February 12, 2009, Continental flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo crashed into a residential home in Clarence New York, a suburb of Buffalo. A total of 50 people were killed including the occupant of the home into which it crashed.
“At 6:30am on February 13, oblivious to the crash, I started my car to go to Shul. As serendipity would have it, the night before I installed my wife’s birthday present – a satellite radio, as I do a lot of traveling and this would allow me from time to time to listen quickly to commercial free international news.
“Assuming I would hear Fox News reporting on international and national events I was surprised that morning to hear the radio discussing something – it was unclear what – about streets and places near my home. Thinking my new radio was ill-installed and that I was listening to local radio I turned off the car and reinstalled the radio. I cranked the engine and listened: again local news. As I drove to shul I realized that indeed this was Fox News but on this fateful erev Shabbos Buffalo was the national story.
“When I arrived in Shul members and guests alike besieged me. “Were any Jews on this flight from New York?” It was, and still is, quite common for Torontonians to fly to Buffalo from NY whose flight-cost is about half of a direct flight to Toronto.
“I did not know the answer.
“I was about to put on my teffillin when I thought I should call the airline. I asked if any rabbi was on file in Buffalo for emergencies such as these. The kind woman explained that there was no rabbi on file but there is a minster. I gave her my contact info. Pressed further she then explained that the names have not been released and she had no idea if Jews were on this flight. In hindsight it was a mistake to then Daven. Clearly osek b’mitzva patur min hamitzva applied here (one’s involvement in one mitzvah relieves one from duties in all other positive commandments). In my defense, there was little to do at that juncture…”
That column, and the next, went on to discuss what was and still is the hardest days I have experienced in the rabbinate.
But there is one story from that event that I have not yet shared, nor even thought about, in years.
What reminded me of the events I am about to share was in thinking about what to say before yizkar this past Pesach. Not only was it my to be my 60th yizkar drasha to give, it would be audience’s untold to have to sit through. What more was there to say? How could the same words of yizkar be given new meaning, yet again?
That is when this story came back to mind.
The following events affected me deeply, and perhaps its lessons will hit home for the reader as well.
A few weeks after the crash, I was driving in my car with the news on. The city was still recovering from the tragedy and the station was taking calls from listeners so that they can air their concerns and thoughts.
Now, many have had moments where they catch themselves yelling back at the radio, say after a biased report. But I never had to pull over in anger…until now.
One caller began by making a very valid point. He explained the human nature is to forget. It is only a matter of time that this national story will become eclipsed by a bigger event and it would, then, only be talked about here in Buffalo. And then, in another a few years, people here would forget about this event. When reminded they will say, “Oh, right! I forgot about that.” Several more years go by and the memory becomes even more faded. And so on.
The host, impressed with the caller’s mature point, asked, “Well, what would you suggest we do to prevent that?”
What the caller said next was so foolish I shall never forget it. He suggested naming something after the flight that went down, something that would be around for a long time. This way if in one hundred years someone asks why it is so named it would be explained, and the memory would be kept alive.
So far, so good.
He continued with his suggestion. “McKinley Parkway is a major artery of the city, why not rename it the 3407 Parkway, in honor of the flight? This way could never forget it”
I literally had to pull over to catch my breath.
To understand the sheer absurdity of this suggestion, let me take the reader back in time once more, this time to the turn of the last century.
It was 1901 and Buffalo was hosting their six-month long Pan-American Exposition (this was at a time that Buffalo was one of the five largest cities in the union).
President William McKinley was a year into his second term and desired to visit the fair. Refusing security detail – and the advice of his senior staff who feared an assassination attempt –he arrived in Buffalo on September 4. On September 5th he gave what would be his final speech. And on September 6th he was assassinated at a public event made in his honor. McKinley Parkway was named in his memory…so that people should never forget that inceident!
This man on the radio was disproving his own point. McKinley Parkway was so named so as to keep the memory of the horror of a local presidential assassination alive for generations to come. Yet, never having even thought of why the Parkway was named so, this caller suggested that in order to remember Flight 3407 we should re-name McKinley Parkway!
There is a powerful lesson here.
We are all heirs to history. Few people in the world truly understand how they came to be, how their way of life was formed.
Klal Yisroel, with the benefit of halacha, never forgets, partly because we never change how we remember.
We still remember and pantomime yetzias mitzraim the same way for 3500 years, we will always light a licht for the same neshamos, and when and if the world stops marking the holocaust yearly, we will still be saying the Bobover Rebbe’s and Rav Schwab’s haunting kinnos on tisha b’av.
There is a danger, always, of trying new things, new ways to celebrate and remember the old. Rather, by staying true to how we have done things in the past we secure the memory of important events and people for the future.
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