Northbrook Rabbi Prayed for 9/11 Victims at Ground Zero 1 Day After Attack

NORTHBROOK, IL - As the nation remembers 9/11 on its 15th anniversary, members of Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook have a special connection to the moment our country stood still.

Their Rabbi, Aaron Melman, was in New York City on 9/11 completing his final year of Rabbinical school. The day after the attacks, he stood at the World Trade Center site among the bodies of the fallen during what was still considered a rescue mission and prayed.

“As we made our way from Midtown Manhattan to Ground Zero, the sky kept getting darker and the feeling became more eerie by the minute,” said Melman, who has been the Northbrook Fire Chaplain since shortly after moving to the village from New York in 2002. “The TV cameras couldn’t do the picture justice. Until you are standing there...where the towers were just one day earlier... You can’t fully grasp what happened.”

He remembers the bodies that were still being pulled from the rubble. The surreal feeling of one of the city’s busiest areas being covered in dust. The tragic irony of saying a prayer in a high-end clothing store that turned into a makeshift morgue.

Melman and Joseph Potasnik, the Jewish Fire Chaplain for the Fire Department of New York in 2001, made their way into a Brooks Brothers store near the site of the Twin Towers.

“There we had an expensive men’s clothing store, a symbol of having done well in America. But here it was reduced to a home for those who perished during the attack,” he said. “We said personal prayers for those who did not survive. They were the most powerful prayers I’ve said in my entire life.”

When arriving in the area to pray for the victims on September 12, Melman could feel the “enormity” and “magnitude” of the situation that couldn’t be felt while watching the events unfold on television the day before.

“It was unlike anything you could ever imagine,” he said. “Like a movie set, where you are waiting for the director to call ‘action.’ But there was no director. This was all real.”

It was still considered a rescue effort for emergency responders as Melman and Potasnik walked through the buildings, the desks, the papers.

“We realized we were also standing on human remains, and at that moment knew this area needs to be considered a holy ground. It was effectively a cemetery,” Melman said, noting the strong sense of appreciation they received from people of all faiths for their peaceful presence.

“We were there bringing God to people at a very difficult time,” he said. “It was important to provide a small sense of comfort to people in a very difficult and chaotic environment.”

The event brought out a sense of humanism in everyone.

Melman was a resident of New York from 1996-2002, and saw a strike difference in the attitudes of other city dwellers after the attack.

“A few days after 9/11, I was on the Subway and an interaction struck me as how much things had changed. One person gave up their seat to another, and a third person made a comment about how different things are now. New Yorkers came together, were there for one another and comforted and supported one another. It made me realize things, at least for awhile, were different.”

Photo courtesy of Congregation Beth Shalom