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Rabbi Yehuda {Leonard} Blank MS, BC
Vice President of Professional Development and External Affairs
Chair of the Chaplaincy Commission
Rabbinical Alliance of America/Igud HaRabbonim
917-446-2126 rablenblank@gmail.com
<:><:>September 10, 2026, 28 Elul 5768<:><:>
Erev Rosh Hashanah
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Am Yisrael Chai, Shalom al Yisrael, Chaveirim Kol Yisrael, Achdus,
Brotherhood and Sisterhood.

We all need each other.

We should enhance shalom, not sinas chinam
and find goodness in each other.

We need to find opportunities of making a Kiddush H,
helping to bring peace with kindness to one and all.

No one is perfect. We try our best to emulate Hakadosh Baruch Hu
with our benevolence, empathy, kindness and compassion for each other.

“Any fool can count the seeds in one apple,
but only the Highest Power (H) can count all the apples in one seed!”

The importance of tefillos before a difficulty arises especially these special days.

The importance of acknowledging and saying thanks to H
for all the good He does for each of us every single day and night.

Some personal reflections of 9/11 and also articles about
Shimmy Biegeleisen zt’l and Avremel (Abe) Zelmanowitz zt’l

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Throughout the years, I have been broached by other professionals sharing their feelings of bias towards those they offer care to. They asked me how they can overcome those feelings and bring a positive approach to those they have been entrusted to care for. I had previously taught sessions on sensitivity, so I taught them how to be sensitive to others. I modeled my own beliefs by wanting to emulate my mentor’s righteousness, their spiritual beliefs and their kindness. It is my firm belief that things should not be my way or the highway. Personally, I have tried to always use loving kindness. I sincerely look at others from different backgrounds, cultures, and spiritual beliefs, as fellow human beings- all created in the image of G. Now, especially during this time of prayer and reflection, I reflect on my own level of spirituality, prayer and chesed. As I offer kindness and good deeds to others, I beseech the Holy One to offer kindness and goodness to all of mankind.

All of us can be wonderful role modes and phenomenal ambassadors of H and Klal Yisrael with our midos tovos. It is important not to cause ill feelings or sinas chinam but rather show one’s love and care for others. It is always preferable to be mevater to ask for forgiveness and enhance goodness rather than bearing a grudge. It is important not to be judgmental but to find the other person(s) with righteousness. In CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) we learn how important it is to see each person with understanding, empathy and not to be critical in the way he/she behaves, speaks, opinions he/she may have, or how one’s physical appearance might be. Appearance can also mean the type of clothing worn, studs on different parts of the body, or tattoos. Regarding appearance, it also can include if a person is disheveled or has an odor due to lack of personal care. We are taught not to gaze or make someone feel uncomfortable. However, a chaplain must take note if the person is having any issues and to discuss them with his or her supervisor.  Rabbis and rebbetzins are also proactive helping to find solutions concerning a congregant who might be going through a challenging time or to seek advice from a mental health professional. It is important to acknowledge and thank H for all the maysim tovim the good things He does for us every single day. It is also meaningful for individuals to ask for forgiveness for any wrong doing that he or she might have done. 

These Holy Days are opportunities for self-reflection and how all of us can help others as well as ourselves to have a positive and caring life in the new year.

The following stories share the kindness and chasadim, good deeds we can all
do for others, for ourselves and how to rid of sinas chinam.

From: Zera Shimshon. The sefer. The stories. The segulah.
“Redemption Will Happen When We’re All Together”

By: Rabbi Shimshon Chaim Nachman Seltzer, in conjunction with Rabbi Menachem Binyomin Paskesz and Rabbi Yisroel Zilberberg. Seidenfeld Edition. Published by Shaar Press, Distributed by Mesorah Publications, Ltd.    

Page 569. Nitzavim “If your dispersed will be at the ends of heavens, from there H, your G, will gather you in and from there He will take you.” “The words from there He will gather you in seem sufficient. Why does the Torah add, “and from there He will take you”? 

To understand this, we need to know why Klal Yisrael went into galus in the first place.

We’re in galus because of sinas chinam: baseless hatred of one another (Yoma 9b). The only path to redemption is for there to be peace and love between all members of the nation.

The Torah therefore states, “He will gather you in,” He will make peace among Bnei Yisroel, and we will be gathered together. “And from there He will take you out of galus.”

The only way this galus is ever going to end is if we make peace with each other. Hence the two expressions: one referring to making peace with each other and the other referring to the redemption itself.”

From: Yamim Noraim with the Maggid.
By Rabbi Paysach J. Krohn. Artscroll Series. Mesorah Publications, Ltd.

 “From Good to Great” Page 27 “We can all be good and we can even be great. Rav Tzaddok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900) writes that just as one must believe in H, he must believe in himself. (Tzidkas HaTzaddik, note 154). We underestimate our qualities and potential. We realize that we are not perfect, as Shlomo HaMelech said, Ki eina dam asher lo yecheta, For there is no man who never sins (I Melachim 8:46).

As we enter the fourth hallowed days from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Yom Kippur, we should not let our missteps bring us down. We should not let our errors depress us so that we think we cannot change our errors depress us so that we think we cannot change our ways.  Rav Yerucham Levovitz (1873-1976), the Mashgiach of the Mirrer Yeshiva, would often say “As important as it is for one to know his faults so he knows what he must amend, it is even more important for one to know his virtues to know what he can accomplish.”
 
(ibid page page 119) “Deeds of Beauty” “Tiku vachodesh shofar bakese liyom chakeinu. Ki chok leYisrael hu mishpat leilo leilokei Yaakov.”
Blow the shofar at the moon’s renewal, at the time appointed for our festive day. Because it is a decree for Yisrael, a judgment [day] for the G of Yaakov (Tefillas Maariv).”

The Midrash Shocher Tov (Tehillim 81:5) homiletically notes that Rosh Hashanah, a new chodesh, month, is a time for chadash, renewal, and shofar (related to the word shipur, beauty), beautification and improvement of one’s deeds. As we renew our commitment to enhance our actions from this Rosh Hashanah onward, the following anecdotes of a special person could be our guidepost.

Mr. Izzy Herzog of Melbourne, Australia, was an extraordinary individual, known for his exceptional philanthropy for all Torah institutions in Australia and for his remarkable capacity of oheiv shalom verodeif shalom, loving peace and pursuing peace, resolving conflicts and bringing people together again, between a husband and a wife, business associates, religious or secular organizations. I knew Izzy zt”l and his wife Mary (Miriam) yb”l, as they hosted my wife and me the first time we visited Melbourne, in 2009. When I was recently asked to deliver a video lecture for his eleventh yahrzeit, I spoke to numerous people in Melbourne to learn about his kindness and sensitivity.

The following acts of benevolence are worthy of emulation. When Izzy and his wife took their own children shopping for clothes for Yom Tov, they would take along some of the poor neighborhood children and buy them clothing as well. When a young married man with children lost his father, to whom he was very close, Izzy told him during the shivah, “Most people think that being sensitive to a yasom applies only to children. It is not so, an adult who lost a parent is the same yasom.” I will be your father from now on; you can call me at any time!”

The following gesture seems so simple but is so magnanimous. Where Izzy davened every morning, there was a ten-year-old boy whose parents were impoverished. They could not give him spending money such as the other boys in his class were given. Thus, Izzy made an arrangement with the boy: Every morning Izzy would put a dollar or two under his own tallis bag. The boy would come in, unobtrusively walk past the table, reach under Izzy’s tallis bag, and take the spending money. Izzy was always in shul before the boy walked by. Why did Izzy do it this way? Because were he to take the money from his pocket and hand it to the boy, onlookers would know that the generous Izzy was giving charity to an unfortunate poor child- and the boy would be embarrassed. What a sensitive regard for a young boy’s dignity! Chodesh and shofar- now is the time.” 

(ibid pages 129-131)
“Apples, Seeds, and a Sweet New Year” “May it be Your will, H our G and the G of our forefathers, that You renew for us a good and a sweet year. (Prayer on apple and honey). One of the most symbolic and most widely known rituals of the year is dipping a piece of apple into honey at the seudah on the first night of Rosh Hashanah to symbolize our wishes for a sweet new year. (Some also do so on the second night). Though we eat other symbolic foods- such as the head of a fish or sheep, pomegranates, dates, carrots, etc.-as hopeful harbingers for the good to come, the apple and honey are usually eaten first and are observed even by less observant families. 

What is the significance of the apple? The honey? The combination?
The selection of the apple is based upon the verse in which Yitzchak says regarding Yaakov, See, the fragrance of my son is like the fragrance of a field that H has blessed….(Bereishis 27:27, see Rashi). Chazal identify the fragrance as that of an apple orchard (Taanis 29b). The Vilna Gaon writes that Yizchak blessed Yaakov on Rosh Hashanah(Orach Chaim 583:1; see Biur HaGra).

The Benei Yissacher notes that devash, honey has the same gematria (306) as Av Harachamim, Father of Mercy, and this evokes H’s compassion and mercy.

On a trip to Manchester, England, in the winter of 1995, I met an extraordinary teacher, lecturer, and writer, Rebbetzin Chavi Wagschal. She was suffering from multiple sclerosis, which curtailed her mobility, yet she regularly gave shiurim and had just completed the manuscript for a book about her travails. She asked if I would write a letter of approbation; I told her I would have to read the manuscript first.

The book, Facing Adversity with Faith, was heartbreaking. Page after page described her steady deterioration as well as her courageous resilience to fight her challenges. She cited the great Torah legends who visited her: Rav Yehuda Zev Segal (1910-1993), who lived in Manchester, and Rav Shlomo Brevda (1931-1931-2013), who would call on her when he visited from Israel.
To me, though, one sentence in the book superseded everything else. She quoted the phrase, “Any fool can count the seeds in one apple, but only the Highest Power (H) can count all the apples in one seed!” Unquestionably, those words are among the most inspiring I have ever heard.    

As we hold the piece of apple in our hands, let us think about this concept of potential that lies hidden in the acts we do and the words we say. A “seed” we plant could be a word of encouragement that sparks a despairing person to become uplifted and move on to accomplish great things, A “planted seed” could be a small loan that allows someone to regain his financial footing. A “planted seed” could be the listening ear that validates someone’s pain and gives that person the strength to move on. We must never underestimate the value of one kind word, one kind deed, one small seed.

Hence, the sweet new year that we hope for when we dip the apple in honey should not merely be directed toward our own lives, but to the sweet life we can provide for others as well.”

 From: The Weekly Dvar. Issue 437. 22’ Elul Weekly Divrei Torah from and for the Passaic/Clifton community. Parshas Netzavim-Vayeilech. Tehillim. “As we approach the Yemei HaDin and the new year, we have a special opportunity to daven for H’s closeness and assistance, and for a year filled with bracha and hatzlacha for all of Klal Yisroel.

During the year, challenges may arise when we need a Yeshua from H. At those difficult moments, we naturally turn to Him for help. Yet the Gemara (Sanhedrin 44b) teaches Leolam yakdim Adam Tefilah litzara – a person should daven before a difficulty arises, because tefillos said before the challenge can be especially powerful.

The Baal HaMelech expresses in Perek 102: Tefilah leani ki yiatif velifnei H yishapeich sichu. Dovid davened in advance so that if Yom Tzar li- a day of difficulty, would come, his powerful tefillos would already be there for him.

As we enter the new year, we can daven now for H’s guidance, protection, and assistance for whatever the coming year may bring.”

Let us be mispallel that with our teshuva, H will forgive us for any aveiros we might have done and bless us for all the maysim tovim we have done. May we be inscribed in the “Good Book” for a sweet and good year.

Sincerely, Rabbi Yehuda (Leonard) Blank 

Remembering 9/11

I was called to active duty as a police chaplain. I was at Ground Zero before the Twin Towers imploded. I was filmed by NY 1 escorting an elderly woman to safety before being engulfed by the tremendous cloud of dust. I visited police, first responders and many civilians offering pastoral care and counseling. I visited the site next to the Medical Examiners building as police personnel were carefully going through the thousands of particles for body parts and other items. I was assigned a driver and police vehicle visiting police at various locations. 

I visited one of the Armory sites where thousands came to give all types of identification in case a person or body parts were recovered. At this site, I met two chaveirim who were there giving information about Shimmy Biegeleisen. He was last heard from when he spoke to his wife and chaveirm as he was trapped on the floors above where the plane crashed into the Twin Tower. The phone eventually went dead. He was a Belzer chosid. Body parts were eventually found and with those a levaya was not only held but one of the Belzer shuls was named in his memory.

I visited Ground Zero often to give support to all of those working there including police and fire department personnel. Yes, I remember the fire and the smoke still burning at Ground Zero for quite some time. What I did was nothing compared to all the first responders, many who gave their lives trying to save others and to all the Hatzolah members who responded. BH they all survived, though some of the Hatzolah members were injured. I was on call for quite some time.   

There are videos on Yeshiva World about Hatzolah, Shimmy Biegeleisen, Avremel (Abe) Zelmanowitz and Edmund Glazer. On Matzav, there are videos about Hatzolah and Profiles in Heroism, a film by Aryeh Gelbar. 

In Memory of Shimmy Biegeleisen HYD, 9/11 Terror Victim

The following are excerpts of a Wall Street Journal article, and re-posted from the YWN archives:

FIVE FLOORS ABOVE, Shimmy Biegeleisen phoned his wife from his office at money-management firm Fiduciary Trust International Inc. “There’s been an explosion next door,” the 42-year-old vice president said. “Don’t worry. I’m OK.”

After a few minutes, Mr. Biegeleisen grabbed his black canvas bag, walked past a cluster of cubicles and headed toward the stairwell. But when he reached the doorway — a step behind a project manager who worked for him — he stopped, leaned his big body against the open metal door and rummaged through his bag. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not important,” the manager told her boss. “Please come.” She started down the stairs.

THE WORD “FIDUCIARY” filled the caller-ID panel on the kitchen phone in the Biegeleisen home in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Miriam Biegeleisen knew it was her husband calling again from his office. “I love you,” he told her.

He hadn’t made it to the stairs when the wings of the second jet ripped diagonally through the south tower just four floors below Mr. Biegeleisen’s cubicle. Fire engulfed the tower’s stairwells. Mr. Biegeleisen was trapped.

Mrs. Biegeleisen handed the phone to Dovid Langer, a friend who volunteered for an ambulance service and had run over when he heard that ambulances had been dispatched to the towers.

“Dovid,” Mr. Biegeleisen told him, “take care of Miriam and take care of my children.” Mr. Langer heard a recording in the background saying over and over that the building was secure and that people should stay put. (A Port Authority spokesman said, “We are not aware of any recorded announcement made by building management.”) Mr. Biegeleisen continued: “Dovid, I’m not coming out of this.”

Mr. Langer connected Mr. Biegeleisen to Gary Gelbfish, a vascular surgeon and friend who was watching the towers burn on TV. “I’m having difficulty breathing,” Mr. Biegeleisen told him. Black smoke was filling the room.

“You’ve got to do two things,” the doctor said. “Stay low to the ground. And do you have a towel or a rag? Put water on it and put it over your mouth.” Twin

Mr. Biegeleisen walked past three cubicles to the water cooler. He wet a towel and raised it to his mouth. Then he walked back to his desk and lay down on the slate blue carpet in his black suede shoes, black pants, oxford shirt and black felt yarmulke. Mr. Biegeleisen was a Chassid, a devoted follower of the Belzer Rebbe, the leader of a rabbinic dynasty that dates to 1815.

“Is there a sprinkler?” Dr. Gelbfish asked. Mr. Biegeleisen looked up but couldn’t see through the smoke. He and the five colleagues trapped alongside him decided to try to get to the roof. Mr. Biegeleisen hung up the phone.

THE PHONE RANG in the Biegeleisen home. Again, “FIDUCIARY” flashed on the display. The intense heat had kept Shimmy Biegeleisen from reaching the roof. “We couldn’t even go into the hallway,” he said into the phone.

The Biegeleisen home was filling with worried friends and neighbors. Women clustered in the living room, trying to calm Mrs. Biegeleisen. Men paced in the kitchen, taking turns speaking to her husband. One phoned 911. They waited while Mr. Biegeleisen tried again to reach the roof.

He didn’t make it. At 9:45, he phoned home again. “Promise me you’ll look after Miriam,” he told one of his friends. “Tell Miriam I love her.” Lying on the floor beneath photographs of his five children that sat atop his filing cabinet, he now spoke of them and gave instructions for handling his finances.

Mr. Biegeleisen and his 19-year-old son Mordechai were supposed to travel in five days to Jerusalem to spend the Jewish new year with the Belzer Chassidim and meet with the Belzer Rebbe. Mr. Biegeleisen made the trip every few years at Rosh Hashanah. Most inspiring to him was the second night of the holiday, when the Rebbe read aloud the 24th Psalm.

Now, in a voice hoarse with smoke, Mr. Biegeleisen began to recite that psalm in Hebrew over the phone: “Of David a Psalm. The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness …”

The friend on the phone began to shake. He handed the phone to another friend, who urged Mr. Biegeleisen to break a window. “You can get some air and go to the roof,” the friend said. Mr. Biegeleisen called out to a colleague. “Let’s go! Let’s break the window!” At 9:59, the two men hauled a filing cabinet to the window. “I’m looking out the window now,” Mr. Biegeleisen said into the phone. Then he screamed: “Oh God!” The line went dead.

SEVEN DAYS AFTER her husband’s phone line went dead, Miriam Biegeleisen stood in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah murmuring a prayer about God and fate: “How many will pass from the earth and how many will be created. Who will live and who will die. … Who by water and who by fire.”

By tradition, she and her family would have begun their shiva, the weeklong mourning period for her husband, the day after his death. But no body had been found, and the Biegeleisens for days had held on to hope that Shimmy was alive. Now Shimmy’s father decided that they were ready to mourn. Before they could, it had to be established that Mrs. Biegeleisen wasn’t an agunah.

In Jewish law, an agunah is a woman who is separated from her husband and cannot remarry, either because he won’t grant her a divorce or because it isn’t known whether he is alive or dead. With no trace of a body, a rabbinic court must rule whether death can be assumed.

Minutes after Rosh Hashanah ended, Mr. Biegeleisen’s father phoned Efraim Fishel Hershkowitz in Brooklyn. The 76-year-old rabbi said he would convene with two other rabbis to decide the case at once. He asked that the men who had spoken to Mr. Biegeleisen on the day he disappeared come to the rabbi’s home. He also wanted a tape of the 911 call.

THREE RABBIS and six of Shimmy Biegeleisen’s friends gathered at the home of Rabbi Hershkowitz on Thursday, Sept. 20. It was the Fast of Gedalia, so the men sat down at the dining-room table with empty stomachs. The rabbis wore the long ear-locks, long black coats and wide-brim velvet hats of their European predecessors.

One of them opened a copy of the Yiddish newspaper Blat to a sequence of photographs of the towers’ end. In Yiddish, the rabbis discussed various logistics of the case: the floors the planes hit, how and when the buildings fell, the intensity of the fire, where Mr. Biegeleisen lay, what he said on the phone. They spoke with Mr. Biegeleisen’s friends about the phone call — and about Mr. Biegeleisen — then asked them to wait outside.

The rabbis deliberated for 10 minutes. Caller-ID repeatedly placed Mr. Biegeleisen at his Fiduciary office. The building fell at the precise moment Mr. Biegeleisen screamed. Mr. Biegeleisen’s relationship with the Belzer Rebbe attested to his character. They cited a case, in a 16th-century book of Jewish law, of a furnace of fire from which there is no escape. Mr. Biegeleisen’s was just such a case, they said. His death could be assumed. Mrs. Biegeleisen was not an agunah. The mourning could begin.

One of the rabbis went to the Biegeleisen home. He took a razor from his pocket and made cuts in the clothing of the male mourners — on the left for Mr. Biegeleisen’s three sons, on the right for his brother and father. Mrs. Biegeleisen, standing by the kitchen, said, “Is the psak [ruling] final?” It was. “It’s over,” she thought. “Shimmy is not coming back.”

AN ORTHODOX JEWISH woman came to the Biegeleisen home on Sunday, Sept. 23, the fourth day of shiva. Mrs. Biegeleisen, following Jewish law, sat on a low, hard chair. She didn’t know the woman visitor, who said, “My husband was also there.” Mrs. Biegeleisen understood that the woman had not yet been allowed to mourn. She was as yet an agunah.

For Mrs. Biegeleisen, knowing that she could remarry was hardly a comfort. “It’s not something I’m thinking of,” she said, her covered hair and engagement ring evidence of her 20 years of marriage. “When you live with only one person, it’s all you know.”

SHIMMY BIEGELEISEN’S FAMILY had almost finished mourning him when the phone rang. On the line was the Belzer Rebbe, Issachar Dov Rokeach, calling from Jerusalem.

Mr. Biegeleisen’s wife, five children, parents, brother and sister scurried upstairs to a closed room. They encircled a phone and put it on speaker. The 53-year-old Rebbe spoke quietly in Yiddish. He asked for the men and boys, one by one, and recited to each the Hebrew verse traditionally spoken to mourners: “May the Omnipresent console you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”

Finished, the Rebbe said, “There are no words.” A dial tone reverberated in the room as the family echoed him, over and over: “There are no words. There are no words. There are no words.”

Yehi Zichro Boruch….

In Memory of Avremel (Abe) Zelmanowitz HYD, 9/11 Terror Victim

FROM THE YWN ARCHIVES:

When the terror attack occurred, Avremel was fifty-five; his friend Ed, a quadriplegic, was forty-two. Both worked at Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield as program analysts on the 27th floor of One World Trade Center.

By Chavie Zelmanowitz (sister-in-law), as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner

On the morning of 9/11, Avremel davened in the same shul with my husband, Yankel, which was unusual. Usually, whenever they said goodbye, they would shake hands. That morning, however, Avremel came toward Yankel and hugged him tightly before he left for work.

While driving home after taking me to work, Yankel heard that something had happened at the World Trade Center. He tried to call Avremel. I also tried. We couldn’t get through. Then Avremel called Yankel. He said, “I’m here with Ed. We’re waiting for help and then we’re going to leave.” Yankel called me and said, “I heard from Avremel–he’s going to leave.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I got a phone call from Avremel. I asked, “Where are you calling from? I thought you were on your way home.” He reassured me that the air was clear where they were, on the 27th floor. “I’m waiting here with Ed for someone to come help.” He said that Ed wanted to wait for a medical team, because in the past when people lifted him improperly, his bones would break.

Edward Beyea, who became disabled after a diving accident at age twenty-one, was a large man. He used a wheelchair with all kinds of contraptions. He had no arm or leg function, and operated his computer with a mouth stick. An aide accompanied him at all times. The normal routine was that the aide would bring him to work, set him up in his cubicle, and go up to the 43rd floor to the cafeteria. That’s where she was when the plane hit. There was water coming down, things were falling, smoke was filling the room. She immediately ran back down the staircase to the 27th floor and found the two of them together. Avremel assured her that he would stay with Ed and that she should leave. She barely made it out. Avremel is responsible for her survival.

Avremel told me, “The fireman is here and he wants me to move to another area.” That was the last we heard from him. No one had any idea that the buildings were going to go down. He didn’t stay to die; he stayed to help. That was his intention.

Avremel and Ed had worked together for twelve years. They traded books and tapes and played chess together. Avremel was a master carpenter; he built Ed a cigar stand and a book stand so that he would be able to read in bed. He used to visit Ed during his numerous hospitalizations. It was a friendship that culminated with this extraordinary act.

Initially our son-in-law made up a flyer; everyone was posting flyers for missing relatives. The flyer mentioned that Avremel was together with a quadriplegic friend. Immediately, we were bombarded by reporters. They wanted to hear details of the story. We were interviewed on a few news programs, at one point three in one day. A week after 9/11, our rav told us it was time to sit shivah. Rescuers were not finding anyone alive any longer. We knew Avremel had been in the building at the time. It was time to make a decision.

By Yankel (Jack) Zelmanowitz (brother), as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner

Avremel lived with us. When my parents went to Eretz Yisrael in 1973, just before the Yom Kippur War, he moved in. I was his big brother; I’m twelve and a half years older. We were very close. I took him into the textile business with me, and then he learned programming. He was really a wonderful human being. He had a lot of friends. Always friendly, always doing ma’asim tovim, favors for people, giving tzedakah, going to shiurim; everybody liked him. He was a simple guy who never looked for praise. His death made such a roshem, such an impression on people. Letters came in from people all over the world. A woman in Canada contacted us. She has a son with cerebral palsy who was fifteen-years-old at the time. She worried about him going into the workforce. “I hope I meet someone like Abe,” her son said.

That week, when President Bush spoke, he mentioned Avremel. He said: “We are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation’s sorrow. . . . We have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end at the side of his quadriplegic friend.”

My son, Chaim Shaul, was there when the president came the week of 9/11 to visit Ground Zero. He was told to stay behind to tell the story to the president. He called us and asked what he should do since it was erev Shabbos and time was short. We said, “Stay as long as you can, leaving yourself enough time to get home for Shabbos.” In the end, he had to leave before speaking with the president. We received a phone call from the president’s staff. “We’re looking for your son to meet the president,” they said.

On the first anniversary of 9/11, all of the victims’ families were at Ground Zero. The president spent time mingling with the families and made special time for us. He is a person with a heart; he is very compassionate. He didn’t know what to do for us.

Avremel’s actions that day are what defined him. He lived his entire life that way, always caring about people, always anticipating people’s needs. You wouldn’t have to ask Avremel for something; he’d understand that it had to be done and he’d go and do it. This was who he was. He was an extremely devoted son; his kibbud av va’eim was extraordinary. He never married or had children, but our children and grandchildren are following in his footsteps in their gemilut chasadim. How proud he would be to know that.

We were called upon to speak about Avremel very often–at shuls, dinners, et cetera. A library at a nearby yeshivah was dedicated to him. We were constantly on call; that helped us get through the initial period.

In August 2002, the police came to our home to inform us that they had identified Avremel’s remains. We were able to have a kevurah. He had always wanted to be buried in Israel; we asked someone to arrange for a plot on Har Zeisim. When we got there, we were amazed that he had found a plot available right at the foot of our parents’ graves.

In 2006, a street was dedicated to Avremel. The street, on the corner of East 35th Street and Kings Highway [in Brooklyn], our corner, was renamed Abe (Avremel) Zelmanowitz Way. One of the speakers at the dedication, Rabbi Shlomo Zucker, said it is so fitting that the street is called “way” rather than “lane,” “drive,” or “street,” because Avremel showed us the way to live, the way a person should conduct his life, and how he should interact with Hashem and his fellow man. That is his legacy. He led by example.

We have letters from people he worked with. One of his colleagues wrote, “We knew he was a religious man, but he never preached. He was always aware, thinking ahead, thinking of others.”

The effect that Avremel continues to have is amazing. After I heard the news about Bin Laden, I wanted to go down to Ground Zero. It was a relief; we felt a need to share it with those who had lost family members, to be close to them. While we were on the train to Manhattan, my son called us. He said he just got a call from NBC News. They wanted to interview us, find out about our feelings. Avremel’s story is out there.

While at Ground Zero, we must have given twelve or fifteen interviews. Reporters from all over sought us out, wanting to hear the story. We told them the story of Avremel. We always try to point out that it was an Orthodox Jew and a non-Jewish friend and this is what Avremel did because of his friendship.

The Shabbos before 9/11, Avremel had gone to a shiur. He was a very reserved person. He wasn’t pushy in any way. When the rav started to speak about Kiddush Hashem, Avremel interrupted him and said, “How could an ordinary person make a Kiddush Hashem?” He got an answer but wasn’t satisfied. Avremel interrupted him another time; again, the rav gave him an answer. Then he asked a third time. It wasn’t like Avremel to do that. Three days later, he got his answer.

Every rav has told us the same thing: it’s an obligation to perpetuate Avremel’s story. No matter how painful it is for us, we do it l’shem Shamayim. I feel it is our responsibility to perpetuate his Kiddush Hashem.

Chavie and Yankel Zelmanowitz live in Brooklyn, New York.

Excerpted from Jewish Action, fall 2011