I was young. Young enough to believe that running toward disaster was simply the right thing to do. Young enough to not fully comprehend the depth of what was unfolding in front of me. Young enough to think that if I could just do something, maybe the world wouldn’t feel so terrifyingly out of control.
I had just returned from spending two years in Israel- and was half-block from the infamous Sbarro bombing. I had seen destruction before. I had witnessed what terrorism could do, how it could rip through an ordinary afternoon and leave a permanent scar. But somehow, when the first plane hit the Twin Towers, it didn’t occur to me that I was about to witness something even larger, something that would change not just a city, but the entire world.
In the chaos of that morning, I needed to be around people. To not feel alone at such a momentous, terrifying occasion. I made my way to a Jewish learning center, seeking comfort in something familiar, something grounding. But still, my body wouldn’t let me sit still. I went to donate blood. It was the only thing I could think of to help. The most tangible action I could take.
But when I arrived, they didn’t need my blood. Instead, they were calling for crisis workers, and before I could process what was happening, a girl standing next to me pointed directly at me and said, “She’s a social worker!” Suddenly, I was being pushed forward, pulled in by a Red Cross worker, and bombarded with rapid-fire questions to prove my credentials. I answered just quickly enough to be given an assignment. Before I even knew what I had signed up for, I was in.
I borrowed a FEMA-issued phone—because, of course, cell service was down—and called my mother. She panicked, like a stereotypical Jewish mother, begging me not to go. But my father? He simply gave over the famous words of Hillel:
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
And so, off I went. He told me as a Jew and a Social Worker- I am obligated to help whenever I can.
I was in the back of a Red Cross van when I saw the second tower collapse. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t feel it, not yet. There was no time for emotion. My body was in go mode, adrenaline surging, brain switching into pure action mode. There was work to do. The weight of it, the horror of it, the magnitude of it all—that would come later.
That first day, I was at Chelsea Piers, helping set up triage centers for the waves of survivors we assumed would be pouring in. But they never came.
We waited. And waited. And while we waited, I made sandwiches. Yes, that’s right. I made sandwiches. A friend of mine from Israel was there, and as she saw me just sitting, waiting, staring at those empty gurneys lined up in neat rows, she nudged me and said, “We need to make sandwiches for the people here who keep kosher.”
And so, that’s what we did. We must have made hundreds of sandwiches and handed them out to the Hatzalah volunteers, to first responders, to the exhausted workers who hadn’t eaten all day. And in those moments between the waiting and the unknown, we sat and bonded with a diverse, unexpected cross-section of New York City. We were from different backgrounds, different communities, different faiths, but we all had one thing in common—when the city was in pain, we ran in, we showed up, and we said “We are here to help.” And with that, we bonded.
In the days that followed, I worked around the clock, debriefing police officers, firefighters, and first responders—people who had seen things no human being should ever have to see. People who had dug through rubble with their bare hands, who had heard the final voicemails of strangers, who had run into the fire while everyone else ran away.
On that night, after being released at 3 AM, I had no way to get home. The subways weren’t running. The streets were deserted. The city that never sleeps was suddenly a ghost town. So, I hitched a ride in the back of a cop car. That’s one way to cross “riding in a police vehicle” off the bucket list.
On the way, the officer and I stopped in Times Square. We both just… stood there. Looking around. Silent. Still. Empty. It was eerie.
Have you ever seen Times Square without people? It felt unreal, like stepping onto the set of a dystopian movie. A few of the billboards still flashed, the neon lights still glowed, but there was no one there to see them. Just the two of us. Two strangers, caught in a moment of collective grief.
I spent days on end at Ground Zero, pushing off the start date of a new job to keep volunteering. In those days, we were all expecting another attack. We didn’t know if it was over. We didn’t know what would come next. Every moment felt fragile, like the entire city was holding its breath.
In the midst of it all, I ran into an old friend from high school. He was a police officer now, patrolling my hometown, but here he was, standing among the wreckage with me. For a brief moment, in the middle of a disaster, I felt comforted from the hug of someone from hometown. A few days in, my brother came with me- he wanted to do whatever he could as well. Proud moment for my mother, as we were given a ride in the paddy wagon – too bad this was before the age of selfies. My kids cant comprehend that phones didnt have cameras and there is no digital evidence of any of this.
And then there was the spirit of New York—this unbreakable, overwhelming camaraderie that lived in the air for weeks and months after. People were kinder. Gentler. We held doors for each other, looked each other in the eye. We were all grieving, and we all understood that no one had to carry it alone.
But still, I hadn’t fully felt it yet. I was running on adrenaline, too caught up in the moment, too deep in the crisis to stop and process. It wasn’t until weeks later that it hit me. I was at home, watching something on TV—footage I had already seen dozens of times, faces I had already memorized. But this time, for whatever reason, something cracked open inside of me. I sank into the bathtub and wept. Not quiet tears, but deep, body-shaking sobs.
I didn’t allow myself to feel it until the moment had passed. Until the crisis had settled. Until my brain and body, no longer in survival mode, could process the reality of what I had been a part of.
At the time, I didn’t understand how much this day would shape me. How each passing year would make the weight of it sit heavier. How I would think back to those first responders, those families, those empty gurneys, and feel a sadness that time could never fully dull.
I hadn’t quite learned about large-scale, active trauma- it wasnt covered in grad school, but I found myself living it. This was watching an entire city experience trauma together. We were all in it. Every single one of us was changed that day.
Twenty-two years later, I feel the magnitude of 9/11 in ways my younger self couldn’t comprehend. The world before it and the world after it are two different places. And while the memory of that day is sharp and painful, what remains with me most is the way New Yorkers became family to one another.
It’s easy to get caught up in the divisions of today, to forget what it felt like to be part of something greater than ourselves. But for those of us who were there, who lived it, who ran toward the disaster not knowing what would happen next, we remember. We remember what it meant to stand together. We remember the weight of history unfolding in front of us. We remember the ones we lost.
And we remember that even in the darkest moments, there is always light to be found in each other.
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