September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, reaches Devorah first as a break in routine: a strangely silent street, an unexplained early dismissal, and a newspaper Zeidy would not ordinarily bring into the house. Only later does the family learn that a plane struck the World Trade Center Twin Towers that morning. The attacks unsettle the household not only as a national catastrophe but as a possible threat to Jews, refracted through Bubby’s enduring fear that persecution could begin again.

An Ordinary School Day Breaks

On Tuesday, September 11, Devorah is late to school. At 10:15 in the morning, she walks the three blocks to the high school at a fast pace. As she rounds the corner onto Harrison Avenue, the sky looks gray and heavy. The air seems murky, as if filled with construction dust, but the weather does not feel like an approaching rainstorm. Inside the school, open windows usually admit the noise of the street: drilling, honking, and trucks crossing metal plates. That day, the street is eerily quiet, and Devorah hears only sparrows.

At one o’clock, the secretary uses the school’s rarely activated, ancient intercom to announce that all the girls are being dismissed. The instruction is to pack their things, leave in orderly lines, and take buses if they live far away; the school will say when classes resume. The announcement gives no explanation. Devorah knows that school is normally canceled only for a fire or another emergency, yet there are no alarms. Her classmates are pleased to go home and giggle as they line up, while she is the one trying to understand why they have been sent away.

Walking home, Devorah worries that Zeidy may think she is making up an excuse to miss school. The school’s abrupt dismissal seems so implausible that she is unsure how to explain it. The gap between what has happened beyond her immediate surroundings and what she knows is central to the episode: the disruption reaches her before its cause does.

The News Arrives at Home

When Devorah enters the house, Zeidy is not in his office. Upstairs, Bubby is kneading challah dough, her apron marked with sticky residue, while holding the telephone to her ear. She says little, responding mainly with brief questions. Zeidy arrives carrying a folded newspaper. He does not usually bring secular newspapers into the house; if he wants the business section of The Wall Street Journal, he sometimes reads it at a Mexican bodega across Broadway. His decision to bring this paper inside signals that the news is different from what he ordinarily permits into the household.

Zeidy spreads the newspaper on the flour-covered table and points out a photograph of the Twin Towers burning. Devorah does not at first understand what she is seeing. Zeidy tells her that a terrorist attack has happened that morning and that a plane flew into the towers. She asks when it happened: it is already 2:15 in the afternoon, and the family has not heard about a plane hitting a building. Zeidy gives the approximate time as sometime after eight and says he will buy a radio so they can listen to the news.

The radio is itself a breach of routine: Zeidy never lets the family listen to one. Its presence makes the seriousness of the event unmistakable. For the rest of the afternoon, the family huddles beside the small radio in the kitchen and hears the same report repeated. The broadcast identifies the first crash at 8:46 that morning. The family’s understanding is assembled through a newspaper image, Zeidy’s explanation, and a repeated broadcast, rather than through a single immediate account.

Fear of Antisemitism and Another Holocaust

As the family listens, Zeidy worries that Jews will be blamed for the attacks. Bubby distinguishes between Israel and Jews, suggesting that Israel may be blamed but not Jews; Zeidy replies that people who make such accusations treat the two as the same. Their exchange turns the public crisis into a question about Jewish vulnerability and how outsiders may interpret Jewish identity.

Bubby fears that another Holocaust may follow. She imagines riots and Americans trying to drive Jews out, and says she has always known that it would happen again. Her response draws on the expectation that catastrophe can return, even in a place that has not yet become dangerous to the family. She urges Devorah to repent before Yom Kippur, warning that the world can be overturned in an instant. In her interpretation, the attacks are not only a political emergency but also a reason to examine religious conduct and prepare for sudden upheaval.

The episode does not confirm Bubby’s prediction. Instead, it records the force of her fear and the way historical trauma shapes her reading of current events. While the radio supplies a time and a description of the attacks, it cannot reassure her that Jews in America will remain safe. The family’s immediate response therefore contains both an effort to learn what happened and an older dread that the consequences may extend far beyond the attack itself.

Rumor, Warning, and the Community’s Response

The account then places the attacks alongside reports circulating about the New Square talking carp. According to the story, a carp being prepared by Moshe the fishmonger for the holiday opened its mouth and spoke just as he was about to bring down a cleaver. Workers in the fish market, both Jewish and gentile, were said to have witnessed it. The fish reportedly identified itself as a messenger sent to warn the Jewish people that God was watching and would punish their misdeeds unless they sought forgiveness. The account presents this as a rumor surrounded by panic, not as an independently established event.

The carp story echoes Bubby’s appeal to repent and her fear of destruction, giving the day’s news a second, religiously charged register. The newspaper and radio convey the attacks as events that have already happened; the reported fish delivers a warning about what may follow. Together, these scenes show how the catastrophe is received in Devorah’s household through both public information and communal narratives of judgment. The date’s significance in the memoir lies not only in the attack itself, but in the sudden collision between an ordinarily protected household, a frighteningly uncertain present, and memories that make the possibility of renewed persecution feel immediate.