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There are coincidences on the calendar that invite us to stop and think. September 11, 2026, is one of them. Today America marks exactly twenty-five years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Nearly 3,000 innocent people were murdered that morning in New York, at the Pentagon, and aboard Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. Twenty-five years later, families still carry their absence, first responders continue to bear the consequences, and a generation has now grown up knowing 9/11 only as history. But tonight, as the sun goes down, something remarkable happens. September 11 becomes September 12: Rosh Hashanah begins. At sunset this evening, Jewish communities throughout the world enter Rosh Hashanah 5787, the Jewish New Year, observed this year from sunset September 11 through nightfall September 13. One day remembers terrible destruction. The same evening announces a new beginning. Perhaps that is precisely the message our troubled world needs to hear.

The terrorists wanted an ending

On September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists turned passenger airplanes into weapons. Their purpose was larger than destroying buildings. Terrorism seeks to destroy something inside human beings: our confidence that we can live together, our willingness to trust one another, and ultimately our hope for the future. They wanted Americans to wake up to fear. They wanted civilization to retreat before violence. They wanted hatred to reproduce hatred. And for a moment, watching those enormous towers collapse into clouds of dust, it seemed as though darkness had won. But twenty-five years later, look again. The towers fell. America did not. Thousands died. Humanity did not surrender.

At Ground Zero today there is not a monument celebrating the murderers. There is a memorial bearing the names of their victims. There are stories of firefighters climbing upward while others were running downward; police officers, paramedics and ordinary citizens helping strangers; passengers aboard Flight 93 choosing courage when they understood what was happening. The terrorists wanted to be remembered for what they destroyed. Instead, history remembers countless ordinary people for what they were willing to save.

And then comes the shofar

Tonight another sound enters this anniversary: the ancient sound of Rosh Hashanah. In the Torah the festival is called Yom Teru‘ah (the Day of the Blast): “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts.” (Leviticus 23:24). Jewish tradition eventually made the shofar, the ram’s horn, the great symbol of this day. The shofar does not speak in sentences. It cries. Its sound can resemble lamentation, and awakening. That makes it strangely appropriate for September 11.

Remember! Remember the dead; Remember how fragile human life is; Remember what hatred can do when ideology convinces human beings that murdering the innocent is somehow sacred. But the shofar does not allow us to remain at the grave. Wake up! Life remains. The future remains. God has given humanity another morning.

A new year must mean more than another year

Rosh Hashanah literally means “head of the year.” In Jewish tradition it begins the great season of moral examination leading toward Yom Kippur. It asks human beings not merely to celebrate another year but to examine what kind of people they are becoming. That question should also confront America twenty-five years after 9/11. Have we become wiser? Have we learned that freedom requires courage? Have we learned that religious fanaticism becomes monstrous when it values an ideology more than a human life? But we must ask another uncomfortable question as well: Have we allowed the hatred of terrorists to teach us hatred of entire peoples? If so, terrorism has won another victory.

The nineteen hijackers do not represent the billions of Muslims who have lived before God,  raised children, cared for neighbors and desired peace. Neither does evil belong exclusively to one religion, nation or civilization. Human history gives us too much evidence for such comforting illusions. The proper answer to fanaticism is therefore neither naïveté nor hatred. It is courage joined to truth, justice joined to humanity, vigilance without surrendering our souls.

Twenty-five years later, we are still here

This year the 9/11 Memorial reminds us that roughly 100 million Americans are now too young to remember September 11 firsthand. The responsibility for memory is therefore passing from witnesses to a new generation. We must tell them what happened, but we should tell them something else too. Tell them that when the buildings burned, strangers carried strangers. Tell them firefighters climbed the stairs. Tell them people lined up to give blood. Tell them churches, synagogues, mosques and communities prayed. Tell them that human beings discovered again that beneath our politics, races, religions, languages and nationalities, another person’s suffering can become our suffering. That is the civilization terrorism could not destroy.

From September 11 into a new year

So tonight’s sunset carries unusual symbolism. We stand with one foot in remembrance and another in beginning. Behind us lies September 11, 2001. Before us lies Rosh Hashanah 5787. Twenty-five years separate them, but perhaps one ancient blast of the shofar can interpret them both: Remember and arise! We will remember those who died. We will honor those who ran toward danger. We will confront those who choose terror. But we will refuse to become what hatred wants us to become. Let Jews stand with Christians. Let Christians stand with Muslims. Let believers stand with those who profess no religion. Let Americans stand with people of every nation who believe that innocent human life is sacred and that civilization is worth defending. Terrorism says: Destroy. The Creator says: Create. Hatred says: The story ends here. Rosh Hashanah answers: A new year begins. And perhaps that is the most fitting answer America can give on this twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11: You tried to make that day our ending. It was not. We remember our dead. We cherish our freedom. We defend human dignity. We stand together. And as the sun sets tonight and a new year begins, we choose life again.

Shanah Tovah—שנה טובה.

May 5787 be a year in which memory makes us wiser, suffering makes us more human, courage makes us stronger, and the peoples of this wounded earth learn once again to stand together!