September 9, 2002
Many New Yorkers dread anniversary of last year's fatal terrorist attacks
___NEW YORK (RNS)--It's hard not to read a certain pessimism, even dread, in the air as New Yorkers approach the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.
___In a city where the tragedy was rapidly absorbed into New York's already tense psychic landscape and where ground zero just as quickly became a tourist destination, the commemorations of the event seem something that New Yorkers--normally a group unafraid of adversity--want to avoid or put off altogether.
___"There's a whole choir of people singing, 'What it Means,'" said Rabbi Marc Gellman, the former president of the New York Board of Rabbis. "I'm not in that choir. I'm not singing that song."
___Larry Rasmussen, who teaches social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said another dynamic might be at work: After a year of daily news about the event and its aftermath, New Yorkers may be "just too saturated with Sept. 11. Reliving the event through memory may be just too painful."
___"I think a lot of folks will go to the movies that day," he said.
___From his clergy experience, Gellman knows it can take an enormous amount of time for people grieving and still experiencing fear to come to terms with either individual or collective tragedy.
___"A year later, any facile meanings people try to pin on the event won't work," Gellman said. "It's way too soon to know what it means."
___Too soon and too fresh--it has been only a few months since the work of clearing away the debris of the World Trade Center ended. Family survivors still struggle with enormous difficulties and pressures; some are still contacting social service agencies, at a loss about what to do next.
___The round of memorial services continues, and it seems likely that New York will soon undergo a protracted, and possibly heated, civic debate about how best to memorialize the dead at ground zero.
___And then there is the continued fear and apprehension that another terrorist strike against New York remains a possibility. Those who will cope well with such fears, Gellman said, are those "who have a spiritual community or a circle of friends. Those who don't are in trouble."
___Meanwhile, flashes of weariness and frustration are discernible.
___While condemning the attacks, Sheikh Omar Saleem Abu-Namous, imam at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, said Americans remain uninformed about international politics and have made no effort to understand the social and political realities driving the terrorist attacks.
___Gellman, on the other hand, condemns acts of discrimination against Muslim Americans but believes the Muslim world has been "virtually silent" in condemning the events of Sept. 11. "Individual Muslims have spoken out, but there has not been an outpouring of condemnation by Muslim leaders," he said. "It's always been, 'Yes, but ...'"
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