The most extraordinary thing I've seen or heard in re 9-11 was the PBS Frontline "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero," particularly the interview with Rabbi Irwin Kula. The interview with Reverend Joseph Griesedieck, an Episcopal priest in Manhattan who volunteered at Ground Zero is extraordinarily moving, as well.
Home page for "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"
The full text of Rev. Griesedieck's interwview
Short excerpt:
By this time, I had ash all over me. Then another rescue worker said to me, "Father, we need you over here." The time was flying by. Hours seemed like minutes. I went over to where the rescue worker called me, and he said, "We need you to bless the buckets." I didn't know what he was talking about until the first bucket was put under my nose.
As I looked into the bucket, I saw the unspeakable. I saw a forearm. It was clear to me that the whole of humanity was represented in that one bucket, because there were parts of various individuals together. It was much like a crude burial service. The only thing I could do was add some semblance of dignity to a rather undignified situation. So I made the sign of the cross over the buckets as they came to me, holding my breath, numb, but all the same trying to add some sense of dignity to a horrible situation. I asked one rescue worker, "That was a body part?" And he said, like a robot, "Yes, Father," and on he went to the next bucket. I realized then that I was in the right place. ...
Home page for "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"
The full text of Rabbi Kula's interview
Excerpts from the interview with Rabbi Kula:
When the president said, "This is not a religious issue," that's when I knew it actually was a religious issue. At the same time that Osama bin Laden and that group of people were claiming this was religious, we were claming it's not, but finishing every single sentence with "God bless America." I remember every seventh-inning stretch that had a "God bless America," and my body, literally... I felt like I was repulsed. I was repulsed that basically all we were doing is, everybody was trotting out their own God.
So we, in America, were trotting out our God -- that's the God of sports, that's the God who comes in and says everything's good. You'll score a touchdown, you'll score, and your army will win. God bless America.
And they were trotting out their God. What really was the difference? Three weeks earlier, everybody was saying it's all the same God. It's all the same God, these monotheist Gods. So if it's all the same God, how come one God kills and one God affirms? I said, "I will never teach about that God again, because that's what that God does."
It was as superficial to say "God bless America" at the end of the presidential speech, as it was dangerous to say, "Our God commanded us to fly into the buildings." I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that realization, in all honesty, because I can't even pray to that God any more.
When those planes went in, I had no idea who initially did it, and that didn't even come to mind. Within about 15, 20 minutes, the TV commentator said, "Islam ...We think this is Islamic terrorists," et cetera. I remember turning to a guy I was with, and I said, "You see. This is what religion is really about." It slipped out of my mouth, and this was [to] a person who's contributing to our organization. That's not good that that's sliding out of your mouth. "This is what religion really does."
Somehow, religion creates these boundaries. ... The experience of religion, or the experience behind religion -- for me, anyhow, that's why I got into this -- the experience was that there are no boundaries. The experience is that all those boundaries are an illusion. The experience is that even my life is very, very temporal. It's very, very insignificant in the larger drama, the cosmos…
... I didn't even know how to go into the organized community after that. I didn't speak in the community for a month. ... I actually spoke towards the end. ... I was invited. I had a speech that I was previously engaged to do. I went in and I said, "I can't teach what I was going to teach. So here's what I'm going to do."
I chanted the final phone conversations -- The New York Times recorded a lot of final phone conversations, because we have voice mail now, and there were some email conversations. I took a chant from the tradition that's done specifically regarding a piece of Scripture that we recite [about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem centuries ago] ... I took that chant, and I said, "Here's the Torah of the day" and I chanted them. They were very simple. "I love you." "I want you to always be happy." "Please say good-bye to our daughter." "Mommy, I want you to know I love you," by a 30-year-old woman.
And I recognized [that] here's where the real Torah is.
At that moment of confronting your death, the real Torah, the real wisdom, the real religious tradition, the real experience behind religion, is about love. It is about connection, and it is no more complicated than that. As a rabbi, my community of rabbis, and I think priests, ministers, monks – we've made it a lot more complicated than it is. When you make it more complicated than it is, you lose the experience. ...
There were about 150 people in the room. ... The weird thing was that, chanting that, in a very traditional melody, ... within 10 seconds of chanting it, we were all, including the cantor, weeping. So you recognized, you pushed through something. This is what the religious experience is about. Now let's go back and see, from this religion, what actually does that and what doesn't.
Let's go back and touch on something else, which is the dismantling for a lot of people – not everybody – of their own personal image of God, with the attributes they give God: the God who saves; the God who consoles; the God who intervenes in history; the imperial God; the weak God. I know that words are inadequate. ...
But before Sept. 11, what was your idea of God in the most personal way? How did you conceive of him or her?
Actually, nothing really changed between 9/11 and post-9/11 regarding how I felt about God. What changed is what I was willing to be courageous enough to teach. This is both incredibly disheartening in some ways, and also liberating. Before 9/11, already for many, many years, I did not believe in the popular voyeuristic God who watches what we do from outside. That died. That image died for me a long time ago.
What I believed in is the experiences that we name "God." Those experiences were the experience of love and experience of connection and the experience of caring and the experience of feeling both small and large. The experiences of connection, fundamentally. Those experiences, I recognize, are what I call "God." I want as many of those experiences -- I'm hungry for those experiences, I'm even greedy for those experiences -- because they make me a better human being.
There will be people in your congregation who would say you're an atheist.
Right. ... I mean, it's funny you should say that, because actually I've been called an atheist quite a few times in the last 10 weeks. You have to develop some pat responses to "atheist." What I say to people is, "I have an atheism, but it beams with holiness."
But atheism is the greatest cleanser. Atheism may be the most religious posture in a moment in which either most people think they have to believe in something they don't believe in, or, the people that actually believe in that God are doing so much damage. So maybe atheism is the great corrective right now, and is actually the most religious response.
Anyway, from my tradition's perspective, God was always invisible. God, you never used words for. Whatever words you used for God never adequately described that God. So for me, that's actually, I think, a return to the truest, most genuine understanding of our tradition. We had a God you couldn't see. We had a God you couldn't name.
For me, that there's something "out there" and that I'm here no longer meant anything, because every time I thought there was something out there, it turns into inevitably something opposed to me. Something I have to define myself against, whether that's God, or whether that's a Christian, or whether that's a Muslim, or whether that's a Buddhist. And that's not my experience.
My genuine experience of life is that there is nothing "out there." This is all there is. And when you see the seamlessness of it all, that's what I mean by "God." Every tradition has that. Every morning, three times a day since I'm five or six years old, I've been saying, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." Right? It's one of our few creedal statements, the Shema. Three times a day, since I'm six years old.
If you ask what 9/11 really did, it made me understand the truth of that. The truth of that, "Everything is one." Not that there's some guy hanging out there who has it all together, who we call "One," but that it is all one. We all know it deep down. We've all had those experiences. whether it's looking at our child in a crib or whether it's looking at our lover or looking at a mountaintop, or looking at a sunset. Right? We've all had those experiences. And we recognize, "Whoa. I'm much more connected here."
That's what those firemen had. They recognized; they didn't have time to think about it, right? Because actually, if you think about it, you begin to create separations. They didn't think about it. All they knew is we're absolutely connected. We're absolutely connectedto the 86th floor. Well, that's where God is. That's not where God is. God isn't anywhere. That's what we mean when we say God.
Could you just indulge me? ... I would love to hear you sing that particular Torah of the last words. ...
These are final conversations that were recorded on cell phones, recorded on voice mail. They seem to me to be incredible texts, because they were at the moment of confronting life or death. They're so pure about the expression of love between husband and wife, between mother and child. ... When I read them, I just felt they were texts as sacred as the text that we end up having recorded, that we transmit from generation to generation.
I read these every single morning now, or most mornings, because they remind me that whatever my tradition is about; it's about this. It's about being able to express love. It's about being able to understand, taking care of our children. It's about being in real, genuine friendships. They just seem so real to me. ...
I know all these chants, because my father is a cantor. He transmitted all these ancient Jewish chants to me, so they almost naturally came out in chant. I realized, "My God, the chant that we use to read one of the Scriptures that tells the story of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the burning down of that temple, those chants fit this perfectly," although that's not how I thought about it. The chant came and then I said the chant worked, which, of course, is the way a good tradition works. The chant has made them even more alive to me and then links these new texts to my traditional text, even though I don't know these people. But the fact is, we all knew these people in our own way. ...
[Singing]:
"Honey. Something terrible is happening. I don't think I'm going to make it. I love you. Take care of the children."
"Hey, Jules. It's Brian. I'm on the plane and it's hijacked and it doesn't look good. I just wanted to let you know that I love you, and I hope to see you again. If I don't, please have fun in life, and live life the best you can. Know that I love you, and no matter what, I'll see you again."
"Mommy. The building is on fire. There's smoke coming through the walls. I can't breathe. I love you, Mommy. Good-bye."
"I love you a thousand times over and over. I love and need whatever decisions you make in your lives. I need you to be happy, and I will respect any decisions you make."
When I chant these, there's this mix of real sadness, because I think how many of these people probably, like me, didn't say some of these things prior to that moment. Then the second thing I think is how -- I get goosebumps, actually -- when you chant a text from the Torah, you have to get it just right, because it's holy. Getting it just right means you have to take it seriously. So when I chant this, I think about, "Well, what it would mean to actually make sure I feel this and say this?" post-chanting it. ...
It's incredibly life-affirming, because it's knowledge from the Ground Zero. It's knowledge from real experience, and that's what religion always was about to me, [and] I think I got away from that. That was from the head; 9/11 is about being from the heart.
9:00:55 AM 
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