This article focuses mostly on the frum Jews whose lives were lost or forever changed by September 11, but that focus is not meant to diminish the lives of the thousands of others who were killed, the responders who risked everything, or the families and communities that continue to live with the consequences. Every person lost that day had a family, a story, and a life that deserves to be remembered.

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, the Jewish story of 9/11 cannot be confined to the nearly 3,000 people murdered that morning.

There were frum men and women trapped high inside the towers. Hatzolah volunteers raced downtown while thousands of people fled in the opposite direction. Families called cellphones that eventually stopped ringing. Medical workers waited for wounded survivors who never came. Rabbanim were asked to determine death when there was sometimes no body to bury. Students sat through the night beside unidentified remains. Some of the people who survived that morning went home and resumed their lives, only to discover years later that September 11 was not finished with them. Some of their names became known around the world. Others remained known largely within a family, a shul, a Hatzolah division, or a neighborhood.

This year, for the first time, the official September 11 commemoration will include a seventh moment of silence honoring those who survived that morning but later died from 9/11-related illness and injury. It will become a permanent part of the annual ceremony, recognizing 25 years later that the death toll of September 11 did not end on September 11.

Their stories are all part of the same history.

 

Frum Yidden We Lost on 9/11

 

R’ Abraham J. “Avremel”
Zelmanowitz, Hy”d, 55

Avremel Zelmanowitz had an opportunity to escape.

A computer programmer for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield in the North Tower, Zelmanowitz was with his friend and coworker Edward Beyea, who was quadriplegic and used a wheelchair.

As employees evacuated, Beyea could not descend the stairs on his own. Zelmanowitz could, but he chose to remain with his friend and wait for rescuers. Neither man made it out.

Those who knew “Uncle Avremel” were not surprised by his decision. A devout frum Jew, he would walk miles on Shabbos to visit his parents. Caring for others had long been part of his life, well before the planes struck.

 

R’ Shimon “Shimmy” Biegeleisen, Hy”d, 42

Shimmy Biegeleisen was a vice president at Fiduciary Trust International in the South Tower. He was also a Brooklyn father of five, a Belzer chasid, and a man whose life revolved around his family, Torah, and the Belzer community.

That morning, his family knew he was still inside. Some of his final hours were preserved through telephone conversations as conditions deteriorated around him. Eventually, the calls ended and the tower came down. No definitive remains were recovered.

For his family, even the certainty that Shimmy could not have survived did not immediately provide the ordinary finality of death. His wife had lost her husband and his children had lost their father, but halachah required that his death be established before she could be considered a widow and eventually permitted to remarry. An extensive rabbinic investigation followed.

 

Nancy “Chanah Perel” Morgenstern, Hy”d, 32

Nancy Morgenstern worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices occupied the 101st through 105th floors of the North Tower. She had joined the firm after impressing a Cantor executive who recruited her as his administrative assistant even after she made clear that she would not work on Jewish holidays and would leave early on Fridays.

Nancy was a frum Jew who also loved cycling, skiing, travel, and the outdoors. Her parents and friends remembered someone who was open about her faith, made people feel included, and formed friendships wherever she went.

After her death, her family established the Nancy Morgenstern Memorial Foundation in her memory. Its projects have included an ambulance and emergency medical service in Beit Shemesh, a free-loan fund, assistance for families in need, and a shul and kollel in Ramat Beit Shemesh. Her father also began riding Nancy’s bicycle and retracing some of the places she had traveled, while an annual cycling race in New York continues to honor her memory.

 

Steven Elliot Furman,
Hy”d, 40

Steven Furman worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. He lived in Wesley Hills with his wife, Chavi, and their four children: Nisan, Sarah Rachel, Naomi, and Menashe.

After he was killed, people began telling his family about acts of kindness they had not necessarily known about. He had helped with school expenses, bought clothing for people who needed it, given rides, distributed tzedakah, and quietly helped others without needing his name attached to what he did. His family remembered that the more he had, the more he wanted to give away.

 

Deborah H. Kaplan, Hy”d, 45

Deborah Kaplan was a Port Authority engineer who lived in Paramus with her husband, Harold, and their four children. One of only three women engineers in her graduating class at Cooper Union, she later worked at the World Trade Center, but her husband said her family always came first. For years, she worked only part time and continued taking an early train home so she could be with her children.

Friends remembered Deborah as capable, dependable, and the person others counted on to get things done. On a family trip to Niagara Falls, she effortlessly set up the family’s new tent while everyone waited, a small example of the practical ability that came naturally to her.

When she learned that the local yeshiva did not provide students with lulavim and esrogim for Sukkos, she found a wholesaler, collected orders and payments, and organized the distribution herself. The project eventually expanded to five area synagogues.

 

Andrew Steven Zucker, Hy”d, 28

Andrew Zucker was a young attorney at Harris Beach and part of the Riverdale Jewish community.

After the towers fell, his family waited. No body had been recovered, and the holidays came. His family knew where he had been and what had happened to the World Trade Center. But an Orthodox funeral without a body required a rabbinic determination, so they had to wait for that as well.

When the funeral was finally held at Riverdale Jewish Center, approximately 1,500 people came: people who had davened with him, friends from his Binghamton years, law school classmates, coworkers, and others whose lives had crossed his.

Several colleagues credited Zucker with helping them escape the World Trade Center. They survived; he did not.

 

Mark Louis Rosenberg, Hy”d, 26

Mark Rosenberg was a software developer for Marsh & McLennan who lived in Teaneck.

His Jewish life ran through the yeshiva and youth worlds: MTA and Yeshiva University circles, NCSY, and study at Yeshivat Ohr Yerushalayim in Eretz Yisrael. He met his future wife, Jennifer, through a Jewish youth program. He had already begun building a life that should have stretched decades into the future.

After his death, friends and classmates learned Torah in his memory. A shiur room at the yeshiva where he had studied in Israel was dedicated in his honor. 

 

R’ Abraham Nethanel “Avrum Nesanel” Ilowitz, Hy”d, 51

Avrum Nesanel Ilowitz was a Borough Park resident, father of five, and insurance broker for MetLife.

His brother, Mendel, recalled that Avrum became trapped in his private office after the building shifted when it was struck, leaving him unable to open the door. Twenty other MetLife employees made it safely downstairs just moments before the building collapsed.

Avrum lived to help others. He had an immense love of learning and took particular pleasure in seeing others learn as well. That commitment to Torah continued after his death. Shiurim that Avrum helped establish during his lifetime continue to this day, carrying on the learning that meant so much to him.