In memory of the victims of 9/11
I knew the time was coming for me to leave Beyond the Crossroads and spent time over how to end my time here. Last year this time, I participated in the 2,996 we will never forget. It was my pleasure to share with you Shimmy D. Biegeleisen, you can find that post here. It is six years later as we approach the day the world changed. So much has taken place since that day but so many things remain unchanged. We are very deep in a war but one that is not directed at the terrorist who brought so much vastation to us on September 11, 2001. I recently became aware of so much more about Shimmy and I would like to share it with you.
What I am about to share was written by a very kind man who was a friend to many of Shimmy’s friend. If you would like to see the article in full you can find it here. I know how some people are, they never click to the link mentioned and because I want to share more about Shimmy I am going to share most of it.
Exactly one month after the 9/11 attacks, the Wall Street Journal published an article about five of the victims. I didn’t know any of the 9/11 victims personally, but I knew friends and relatives of several of them. Several of my friends knew Shimmy Biegeleisen HY”D, whose family owns a well-known Jewish book store in New York. This is Shimmy’s story, excerpted from the Wall Street Journal article. I cannot think of a more appropriate way to remember on the Yahrtzeit of the 9/11 victims:
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.” -
I will share no more here at Beyond the Crossroads and this seemed a very appropriate way to end my time than here. Sharing more of one of the 2,996 Memorial, the one I honored last year. We will never forget—-I will never forget my time spent sharing with you here.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I am sorry to see you go…and hope you reconsider some day…I am a loyal reader and fan
September 10th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
OHH Vickie!!!
I am so sad to see you are closing up shop. You will be missed terribly. I always look forward eagerly to your next post. Your writing and wonderful humor gave just a glimps of the wondrful woman you are. I have long admired you for all your special qualities and have come to consider you as a true online friend. Your care for your readers is very apparent. Your courage and dignity with which you faced Missy, gave me determination to keep up with my own much lesser battles.
I hope you will keep in touch. I will check back here regularly to see if you have dropped a line or two just to let us know you are okay!
Thankyou Vick for years of wondrful words.
All my love to you and to Carl also.
Take Care.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:12 am
it is a very sad day indeed miss vickie. thanks for sharing this post with all your friends. my father who was in world war2 is getting quite old and there are a lot of americans that seem to want to forget about ww2. i pray that never happens and also i pray that we never forget ,no matter how old we get, about what happened on 911. i think there are many people that wonder why we try to remember these awful things but id you do not remember then you will forget and if you forget it is like 911 never happened at all and we don’t want to ever forget and should not. we owe the people who died and their families that much.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:07 am
Miss Vickie, your posts have come from the heart, and have touched my very soul. While I understand closing up shop, there is a piece of me that wishes you wouldn’t. You are a great person, and your love shines through.
You will be sorely missed; I leave you with:
God bless, Good Luck, God speed….
September 11th, 2007 at 7:17 am
I love you, Ms. Vickie.
auf Wiedersehen
September 11th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Oh Miss Vickie!
I will miss you! I wish you peace and happiness, Girlfriend!
I love your post. It was touching. We will never forget that day and the losses we suffered as a country.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
As others have said, you have touched many of us with your charm and the amazing way you have handled your life with Missy over these many months. We will miss being able to read your writing and I, too, hope you will add a bit here now and then. I think all blogs eventually come to an end and you have used a very fine reminder to all of us to close yours with. God bless and Thank You.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
September 12th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I’ll miss your gentle words. I hope for all the best for you in whatever is ahead!
September 12th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I noticed you hadn’t blogged much. There are times we need to move on, maybe you’ll feel like coming back one day. Keep visiting and saying hi, I really appreciated your caring, without any judgment. Thank you for that. I wish you well, that you’ll feel better and hopefully your health will improve!
I just had to put those in. 
God bless!
September 12th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Dearest Vickie,
Your absence from the blogging world will be a great loss and I feel very sad at this news. I have missed you very much from my own blog. You always have such lovely words of wisdom to share and the blogosphere will be a poorer place without you.
Please stop by once in a while and let me know how you’re doing. Take good care of yourself and hopefully one day you will come back and share your beautiful self with us again.
I miss you!
September 13th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for sharing your laughs and for allowing us a peek into your thoughts. Take care of yourself and enjoy each day.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
I miss you, darnit! I understand, but that doesn’t take away the missing part. Email me, hint hint!!
September 15th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Dear Vicki ~~ Like everyone else, I am so sorry that we are losing you and you will be very missed. I hope your health improves enough for you to be happy and comfortable. Your post of remembrance was very nice. We must never ever forget. Take great care, dear friend, all the very best wishes for the next stage of your life
Much love, Merle.
September 16th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Please take care of you Vickie you are such a kind heart xxx
September 17th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Vickie, thanks for sharing that story and yours with me. I hope you will keep in touch. I think of you often and pray that you feel the peace that you deserve.
XOXO
September 18th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Would you please come back ! We need you here.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Ohhh nooooo.I don’t want to hit you with 20 questions…but for my families anger,who continues to read my thoughts and calls me on the phone..and for my job maybe not understanding my past sillyness…I chose to block my blog from the world,and open it only to the people I invite,and I thought you were invited….no wonder I haven’t heard from you,hun.Plus I stopped blogging for a bit too b/c of the reasons I mentioned.But if you are closing down b/c of reasons such as mine…please re-consider,because I have beeen such a fan of yours for a while now and just saddens me to see you close shop.If you want,please email me at tamra747@yahoo.com so I can send you an invite into my blog(which I THOUGHT I did)….or at least email me and let me know how you are.
Btw…another home run post.(blurry eyed)
You have such a unique and great big heart,and to close…well,I understand.Maybe your just burnt out.But I won’t play the guessing game.Just know this site will be missed by lots of people.
E me….K?
Great big huggggggs!!!
T.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
OHH SNAP! Found your email.Whew!
another hug-ola! ;-{
September 19th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I miss you, Ms. Vickie.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
oh dear! why are you leaving? i am so sorry to see you go. i was just getting to know you and read your blog. i wish you the best of luck.
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:01 am
Vickie,
I am saddened to see that you won’t be posting any more. However, I will not question your decision because only you know what is right for yourself.
I do hope you find some way in the future to share your passion, courage, and convictions with the rest of us.
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:27 pm
I can’t really express how finding this post has affected me. I can’t believe that you are not posting any longer. My PC craps out and the world goes to hell in a hand basket.
I will miss you dearly and will be calling you soon. I have both #’s. Love you dear and you are always in my prayers.
September 29th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Your tribute brought SHIMMY and what he and his family went through into the hearts and minds of anyone who took the time to read your words. I believe 2996 is an important project. I posted mine as well if you have time to stop over.
I got to the end of end of your moving tribute and then read about your closing your blog. I support your decision because I will support you in whatever choices you feel you need to make. I will miss your blogging. My thoughts and prayers are with you. I Love you.
Take care of you. Call me when you get a chance.
Huggles and Love,
Raggedy
October 31st, 2007 at 12:53 pm
won’t you come back vicky !
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Vickie, thanks for sharing!
It’s sad to see your last post, and I’m sorry for not being around.
I wish you well, and you will always be in my thoughts!
November 3rd, 2007 at 4:58 am
Missing the heck out of you Ms.Vicki!!I feel like this —–>
It’s supposed to be a sad face…but it’s not cooperating.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Dear Vickie, so sorry that you have decided to close the crossroads, I trust your life is happy and that your health improves, best to you and Carl.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Oh Miss Vickie,
How many times I thought of you! I hate I missed saying goodbye. You touched my heart.
God bless you,
WFW