As America prepares to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the passage of a quarter-century invites not only national remembrance, but profound spiritual reflection. The approaching anniversary evokes the nearly 3,000 souls whose lives were extinguished, the heroism of firefighters, police officers and rescue workers who entered buildings from which others were fleeing, and the extraordinary unity that briefly transformed a stunned and grieving nation.

Yet this particular anniversary possesses an additional spiritual resonance. As Friday, September 11, 2026 draws to its conclusion and the sun descends, the Jewish people will enter Rosh Hashanah, the sacred Jewish New Year-a period devoted to divine judgment, introspection, prayer, repentance, remembrance and renewal.

Against that remarkable convergence, the teachings of the late Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis assume extraordinary poignancy.

Rebbetzin Jungreis, a’h, was no ordinary commentator on suffering, faith or the mysteries of divine providence. A survivor of Bergen-Belsen during the Holocaust, she emerged from one of history’s darkest infernos not embittered against G-d, but possessed of an incandescent determination to bring Jews closer to their Creator and to the eternal teachings of Torah.

To generations of students and admirers throughout the world, she was regarded as one of the most extraordinary Torah teachers of the 20th and early 21st centuries-a woman whose remarkable spiritual perception was inseparable from the suffering she had witnessed, the faith she had inherited and the sacred mission to which she devoted her life.

When Rebbetzin Jungreis wrote about September 11 in her 2006 book “Life Is a Test," therefore, she did not approach the catastrophe merely as a historical event. She looked through the surface of history toward the spiritual question beneath it.

What was mankind supposed to learn? What was G-d asking of His children?

And why, amid the incomprehensible devastation of September 11, did the number 11 appear again and again with such remarkable frequency?

For Rebbetzin Jungreis, the answer was never about mathematical novelty for its own sake. The recurring number became part of a much more profound meditation upon divine messages, human responsibility, repentance and the extraordinary capacity of catastrophe to awaken souls that had become spiritually dormant.

Her discussion begins with something deeply characteristic of Rebbetzin Jungreis: intellectual sincerity. Young people had approached her asking whether the numerous references to the number 11 surrounding the attacks possessed any significance in Judaism. Her initial reaction was skeptical. “My natural inclination was to say, ‘It’s hokey! You can’t take anything like that seriously,’" she wrote.

But Rebbetzin Jungreis did not stop there. That willingness to reconsider-to move beyond instinctive dismissal and search the Torah for meaning-was emblematic of the spiritual seriousness with which she approached life itself. “But then I began to think about it," she wrote.

Those few words open the door to the entire meditation. Rebbetzin Jungreis understood that Torah teaches a person to look beneath appearances. Events may unfold in the physical world, but the believing soul is summoned to ask what moral or spiritual responsibility may be contained within them. She therefore examined the extraordinary concentration of elevens that had captured public attention following September 11.

The date itself-9/11-produces 11 when its digits are added: 9 plus 1 plus 1.

The Twin Towers, standing beside one another against the Manhattan skyline, bore an unmistakable visual resemblance to the number 11.

Each tower contained 110 floors, another numerical association with 11.

September 11 was the 254th day of 2001: 2 plus 5 plus 4 equals 11.

The first aircraft to strike the World Trade Center was American Airlines Flight 11.

Flight 11 had 11 crew members.

Flight 11 carried 92 people (9 + 2 = 11)

United Airlines Flight 175 carried 65 passengers (6 + 5 = 11)

American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon, was airborne for 92 minutes (9 + 2 = 11)

United Airlines Flight 93 had 38 passengers (3 + 8 = 11)

"Shanksville" contains 11 letters.

"New York City" contains 11 letters.

"Afghanistan" contains 11 letters.

"Saudi Arabia" contains 11 letters.

"The Pentagon" contains 11 letters.

The expression "the eleventh hour" traditionally signifies a moment of crisis or impending catastrophe.

The emergency telephone number 911 is itself associated with a plea for immediate help.

Even ordinary language seemed to contribute an eerie resonance.

For a Torah teacher whose entire life had been devoted to awakening Jews from spiritual complacency, the symbolism could hardly have been more arresting.

A call for help. An emergency. The eleventh hour. A moment demanding immediate response.

Rebbetzin Jungreis did not treat those coincidences as an invitation to frivolous speculation. Quite the contrary. She transformed them into a spiritual demand. “What does it all mean?" she asked. “What should we make of it, and how should we respond?"

The final words are essential: “How should we respond?"

That was always the concern of Rebbetzin Jungreis. Not curiosity alone. Not prediction. Not abstraction. Response.

The Torah, she said, was not merely a book to be studied but a divine instruction for living. History was not merely something that happened to humanity; it demanded that humanity examine itself.

Rebbetzin Jungreis therefore searched the Torah portion (Parshas Nitzavim) read during the period of September 11 and encountered a verse that profoundly affected her meditation. “The hidden things are for Hashem, our G-d, but the revealed things are for us and our children," she quoted from Sefer Devarim.

The theological implications are profound. There are mysteries human beings cannot penetrate. Why does catastrophe strike? Why are the innocent taken? Why does one person survive while another does not? Why does evil sometimes appear to triumph?

Rebbetzin Jungreis, a woman who had personally survived the Holocaust, possessed an authority in confronting such questions that cannot easily be overstated. She had witnessed a civilization descend into barbarism. She had known terror, persecution and death not as theological abstractions but as childhood realities.

Yet she emerged from that abyss with complete faith intact. Her lesson from the verse was therefore not that human beings possess the capacity to decipher G-d’s hidden calculations. Rather, there are matters that remain beyond mortal comprehension. “The hidden things are for Hashem."

But then comes the second half. “The revealed things are for us and our children." Therein lies responsibility. We may not understand why history brings catastrophe, but we can decide how catastrophe changes us.

That distinction lies at the center of Rebbetzin Jungreis’ remarkable interpretation of September 11. She believed that suffering could become a wake-up call. Indeed, she explicitly described the attacks in precisely those terms. “Ours is a generation that has been challenged again and again," she wrote. “We have had so many wake-up calls - some subtle, some more obvious, but perhaps none has impacted like 9/11."

For a fleeting moment after the attacks, Rebbetzin Jungreis believed America had awakened. “It appeared as though we were actually listening," she wrote. The significance of that sentence becomes more powerful when one remembers who wrote it.

Rebbetzin Jungreis had spent much of her life pleading with people to listen-to listen to Torah, to their parents, to their children, to their consciences, to their heritage and ultimately to the word of Hashem.

September 11, she believed, silenced the distractions. For a brief moment, Americans understood that life was not fundamentally about acquisition, status, professional advancement or pleasure. “We realized that our lives were not only about business and the pursuit of pleasure, but about timeless values, mature love, and sacrifice," Rebbetzin Jungreis wrote.

That insight may constitute the spiritual heart of her entire September 11 meditation. The towers fell. The financial capital of the world was attacked. Symbols of American commerce and economic might were consumed in fire and smoke.

And amid the devastation, something unexpected arose. Human beings turned toward one another. “On that day of infamy, we rose above the flames of the Twin Towers and united in fellowship and kindness," Rebbetzin Jungreis wrote. For Rebbetzin Jungreis, kindness was not sentimentality. It was sacred service. She taught that genuine kindness extends far beyond writing a charitable check. It requires surrendering some portion of oneself for another person. It means recognizing someone else’s pain even while experiencing one’s own. It means offering encouragement while frightened. It means smiling at another human being when one’s own heart is breaking.

“Chesed is more than making a charitable contribution," she wrote, employing the Torah term for lovingkindness. It means “giving of ourselves and placing the needs of others before our own."

She continued with a breathtaking definition. Kindness, Rebbetzin Jungreis wrote, means offering someone encouragement “even when we are consumed by our own fears." Most profoundly, it means possessing “a desire to give, not necessarily because someone is in distress or deserving, but because our hearts overflow with love and we feel a need to give."

That, she believed, was what America witnessed after September 11. “On September 11, we felt that need," she wrote. “We examined our lives; we evaluated our priorities; we became kinder and gentler."

She remembered a transformed city. People who ordinarily hurried past one another stopped. Strangers spoke. Neighbors became neighbors again. Families listened differently. People called parents, children and friends simply to hear their voices. “Instead of the usual cursory nod, we actually greeted one another from the heart," Rebbetzin Jungreis recalled.

Heroism cascaded through New York. “Everywhere there was a willingness to help," she wrote, “from the heroic firemen, to the police, the mayor, the president, and the man on the street."

Perhaps most movingly, she observed that “People were actually listening with their hearts to the voices of family members, friends, neighbors, and even strangers." Listening with their hearts.

For Rebbetzin Jungreis, this was spiritual awakening made visible. And yet she knew human nature extraordinarily well. The transformation did not last. “All too soon," she lamented, “as the intensity of our pain subsided, we reverted to our old ways, and it was business as usual."

There is perhaps no sentence in these pages more relevant to the 25th anniversary. The deepest question for 2026 is therefore not simply what happened on September 11, 2001.

America knows what happened. The deeper question is whether we remember what we became immediately afterward. Were we kinder? Were we more patient? Did we value family more deeply? Did political divisions temporarily seem insignificant beside human mortality? Did firefighters become more important than celebrities? Did sacrifice become more impressive than wealth? Did Americans remember that civilization is sustained not merely by markets and institutions, but by ordinary human beings willing to help one another?

Rebbetzin Jungreis saw that moment. And she feared we had allowed it to disappear. That is where the number 11 becomes most meaningful.

It is not necessary to regard 11 as a secret code explaining September 11. For Rebbetzin Jungreis, it became something infinitely more morally demanding: a spiritual alarm. A wake-up call. An eleventh-hour summons. A reminder that life is passing and that tomorrow is never guaranteed.

She wrote of a revered righteous teacher who taught that G-d sends humanity “wake-up calls through many channels." Rebbetzin Jungreis believed our obligation was to become sensitive enough to recognize them. And that understanding brings us inexorably to Rosh Hashanah.

The 25th anniversary of September 11 will unfold on Friday. By evening, another kind of reckoning begins. The Jewish people will enter a sacred season that asks precisely the questions Rebbetzin Jungreis posed after September 11: Who are we? How have we lived? What have we neglected? Whom have we hurt? Whom have we failed to appreciate? What have we done with the precious gift of time? And can we still change?

The calendar could scarcely provide a more powerful setting for revisiting Rebbetzin Jungreis’ message. America will remember a day when thousands left home expecting an ordinary Tuesday and never returned. Then, as darkness descends, Jewish families will turn toward G-d and contemplate another year of life.

What better moment could there be to hear Rebbetzin Jungreis’ wake-up call anew? Her message was not despair. That would have been alien to the woman who survived Bergen-Belsen and nevertheless spent her life teaching faith. Her message was return. Renewal. Kindness. Responsibility. An unwavering faith in Hashem. The conviction that even after terrible darkness, a human being can choose light.

That was the extraordinary spiritual legacy of Rebbetzin Jungreis. Having witnessed unspeakable evil during the Holocaust, she did not devote her life to telling people that the world was irredeemable. She devoted herself to teaching them how to redeem their own lives through Torah, prayer, love, faith and responsibility.

She knew what catastrophe looked like. She also knew what resurrection looked like. And perhaps that is why her reflections upon September 11 carry such unusual authority. She understood that the proper response to tragedy cannot be perpetual terror. It must be transformation.

Twenty-five years after September 11, the number 11 still stands before us. It stands in the date. It stands in the image of the vanished towers. It stands in the memory of Flight 11. It stands in the language of the “eleventh hour."

And it stands symbolically in 911-the cry for emergency assistance that every American child learns to make. But through the luminous spiritual vision of Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, perhaps 11 represents something greater still. It is a call from complacency to consciousness. From selfishness to kindness. From distraction to purpose. From spiritual sleep to awakening. From forgetting to remembrance. And from remembrance to action.

Rebbetzin Jungreis asked, “What does it all mean? What should we make of it, and how should we respond?" Twenty-five years later, those questions have lost none of their urgency. Perhaps they have become even more urgent.

As Americans gather Friday to recite the names of those whose lives were snuffed out, and as the Jewish people prepare that evening to stand spiritually before Hashem, the King of the World, at the dawn of a new year, the teachings of Rebbetzin Jungreis rise from the pages with astonishing immediacy.

Remember that life is fragile. Remember that love must not be postponed. Remember that kindness sustains the world. Remember that tragedy must awaken rather than merely frighten us. Remember that the hidden mysteries belong to G-d, while the responsibility for what we do with our lives belongs to us. And above all, remember to listen.

For perhaps the enduring lesson of Rebbetzin Jungreis’ meditation upon the number 11 is that Hashem’s wake-up calls are not given merely to be noticed. They are given to awaken us.