Keeping Watch: A Jewish Response to 9/11

September 11th, 2001 is etched into our collective memory. Nearly 3,000 lives were lost in a single morning. Planes turned into weapons, skyscrapers crumbled, and a sense of safety collapsed with them. Each year since, we return to that day, not only to grieve, but to uncover stories that still carry meaning. We hear of firefighters who climbed the towers, strangers who carried one another down stairwells, families who never gave up searching.

One story that stands out to me is quieter, less visible, yet deeply powerful. In the months following 9/11, students at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women volunteered to sit shmira, to watch over the bodies of victims. Every Shabbat, they walked by foot to the temporary morgue set up near the City Medical Examiner’s office. There, in a tent across from First Avenue, they sat for hours upon hours, reciting Psalms so that the remains of the dead would not be left alone.

Most of those victims were not Jewish. The students did not know their names, nor the circumstances of their deaths. Yet they understood that Jewish law required the deceased to be guarded until burial. So they came, week after week, carrying prayer books they had deposited in advance, since carrying on Shabbat was forbidden, and continued this vigil for months.

Why does this matter? Why, out of so many stories of heroism, is this one worth retelling? The answer lies not just in compassion, but in the Bible itself. The Torah teaches:

לֹא־תָלִ֨ין נִבְלָת֜וֹ עַל־הָעֵ֗ץ כִּֽי־קָב֤וֹר תִּקְבְּרֶ֙נּוּ֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֔וּא כִּֽי־קִלְלַ֥ת אֱלֹהִ֖ים תָּל֑וּי וְלֹ֤א תְטַמֵּא֙ אֶת־אַדְמָ֣תְךָ֔ אֲשֶׁר֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָֽה׃ {ס}        

you must not let the corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury it the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God: you shall not defile the land that your God יהוה is giving you to possess.

(Deuteronomy 21:23)

From this verse, Jewish tradition derives the principle that a body must never be abandoned or left unattended. Death does not erase dignity. The deceased must be treated with reverence until burial. Shmira, sitting watch, is how that commandment is lived out.

Rabbinic teaching adds that the soul lingers near the body until burial. The recitation of Psalms during shmira is meant to offer protection and comfort as the soul begins its passage. This belief helps us understand the significance of what those College students were doing. In a tent filled with the remains of strangers, they were not only keeping vigil over bodies, they were offering words meant to steady souls violently torn from this world. Their whispers of prayer turned an anonymous morgue into sacred space.

What makes this story even more compelling is that these students stood guard for people outside their own community. They were not guided by tribal obligation but by a universal principle: all people are created in God’s image. In a world that often fractures along lines of race, faith, or nation, shmira proclaims a counter-message. Death strips away divisions. What remains is the essence of humanity, the shared imprint of the divine. Guarding those bodies was a way of affirming that their deaths, though anonymous, though violent, mattered before God.

Jewish mourning does not end at burial. It continues into shiva, the seven days of grief that follow. We see its origins in the mourning of Jacob by his children, and in the silent companionship of Job’s friends. From these examples comes the Jewish practice of structured mourning: sitting low, welcoming comforters, allowing time for the wound to be felt and named. Together, shmira and shiva form a continuum. Before burial, the community guards the body, refusing to abandon it. After burial, the community guards the mourners, refusing to let them grieve alone. Both reflect the Bible’s insistence that life and death are framed by dignity.

When the towers fell, terrorism sought not only to kill but to dehumanize, to reduce lives to rubble and statistics. By taking up the practice of shmira, the Stern students offered a biblical answer to that attempt. They stood watch. They prayed. They bore witness that even in the ruins of Ground Zero, each victim remained a bearer of God’s image.

Twenty-four years later, as we commemorate 9/11, we are called not only to remember the destruction but to notice the sparks of holiness that appeared in its aftermath. The practice of shmira: ancient, biblical, humble, became a way for young students to bring dignity into a place of devastation. In their vigil, we see the heartbeat of the Bible: that the dead must be honored, the living must guard their memory, and that no life is ever too broken to be treated with holiness.

In the shadow of tragedy, they taught us something enduring. Terrorism desecrates. Faith sanctifies. And sometimes the most powerful act of resistance is simply to sit, to pray, and to keep watch.