Lower Manhattan Jews expect challenges when area shuts down for 9/11 memorial on eve of Rosh Hashanah

Rabbi Jonathan Glass had a moment of panic when he realized that the entire west side of lower Manhattan, where his Tribeca Synagogue is located, would be shut to traffic at 6 a.m. on Sept. 11, which is also the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

The Modern Orthodox synagogue is slated to host a large, festive Rosh Hashanah dinner on Friday night and to serve food throughout the two-day holidays on Saturday and Sunday. All of a sudden, he was unsure if delivery trucks would be able to get through police blockades.

“I’m going to have to let people know about this as soon as possible,” he told JNS. “It could be a problem.”

The rabbi said he hopes it’s not as hard to pass through checkpoints as it was 25 years ago, in 2001, in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many police officers assigned to check identification at each checkpoint near the former World Trade Center site had no idea what the Tribeca Synagogue was and inadvertently told people, who were trying to get to the synagogue, that it was closed when it was actually open, according to Glass.

The synagogue closed on Sept. 11, 2001 for the first time since 1938. No member of the community was killed in the terror attack, but many congregants, who then and now live close to the synagogue, had to be evacuated and were unable to return to their homes for three to six months, the rabbi said.

Toxic white ash and debris filled the air over and around the World Trade Center site after the buildings collapsed and hung over lower Manhattan and nearby parts of Brooklyn, just across the East River, for weeks after Sept. 11.

Thousands of people are expected at ceremonies on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, when 19 hijackers took over four planes and killed 2,977 people. The attackers flew two planes into the World Trade Center Towers, collapsing both towers, and one into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and one into a Shanksville, Pa., field after passengers wrested back control of the plane.

The first ceremony, on Friday morning, is only for families of those killed in the terror attack, and access is by invitation only. Each victim’s name will be read aloud at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, as it is at the annual ceremony every year. The site will be open to the public later in the day.

At a press conference on Sept. 9, New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that the entire west side of Manhattan south of Canal Street will be closed to traffic most of Friday, starting at 6 a.m.

A contraction of the “triangle below Canal Street,” Tribeca is today a very desirable and pricey neighborhood.

“There will be layers of security that are highly visible and others that the public will not see,” Tisch said at the press conference. “New Yorkers can expect to see uniformed officers throughout the area, along with members of our counterterrorism bureau, heavy weapons teams and other specialized resources deployed as part of the operation.”

Streets will re-open at 3 p.m., officials said.

For some, that is uncomfortably close to the start of Rosh Hashanah, which begins at a few minutes before 7 p.m. in New York City.

“It may be a little harder to get our brisket order from the butcher with the street closures,” Rabbi Nissi Eber, co-director of Chabad of FiDi, in Manhattan’s financial district, told JNS.

Most the 100 or so people that Eber expects to come to services and dinner at his synagogue live in the immediate vicinity and will walk.

He and his wife, Chaya Eber, came to the neighborhood to plant roots nine years ago, he told JNS. They began holding services two years ago at the center and just a year ago, last Rosh Hashanah, welcomed their first Torah scroll to the congregation.

Photos taken that day of the traditional Torah welcome parade show Eber and his congregants cradling the Torah as they walk with it down Fulton Street. In the background stands the Freedom Tower, also known as One World Trade Center, which stands at 1,776 feet tall including its spire to honor the year of the country’s independence.

It is built on a corner of the site that previously held the World Trade Center towers.

“We walked through the streets proud of our heritage, with the Freedom Tower in the background,” Eber told JNS.

On Sunday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Eber and his community will blow the shofar and do tashlich, the traditional “casting out of sins” rite at the South Street Seaport.

“We’ll have apples and honey, so that even the synagogue-averse can enjoy a taste of the holiday,” he said.

The 25th anniversary of 9/11, which coincides with the start of Rosh Hashanah, leads to “mixed feelings” for Eber.

“Rosh Hashanah is a holiday of introspection and reflection,” he told JNS. “Which is also how we New Yorkers view 9/11.”