Ordinary People

My friend Laurie Rice delivered this beautiful 4th of July message to her congregation this week. I’m so honored to share it here.

From Rabbi Laurie Rice:

Judaism teaches that freedom is never simply the absence of oppression. Freedom is the willingness to bind ourselves to responsibility. At Sinai, our ancestors did not simply escape Egypt; they entered into a covenant. They chose obligation over chaos. They understood that a free people survives only when ordinary people accept extraordinary responsibility for one another.

There is a story from American history that, surprisingly, reminds me of Sinai. Everyone who lived through the September 11 terrorist attacks knows the story of Flight 93. But one journalist came to see this moment differently after visiting the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, not far from the Maryland and West Virginia borders. Colleen Shogan said it was, perhaps, the most profound history-based civics lessons she has ever experienced. She writes:

At 8:42 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93 departed Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, bound for San Francisco. At 9:28 a.m., the plane was hijacked by four men, a Lebanese citizen and three Saudi nationals, wielding knives, including at least one box cutter. After a struggle, the terrorists took control of the cockpit, incapacitating the pilot and co-pilot. A flight attendant and a first-class passenger were most likely murdered soon thereafter. The hijackers then forced the surviving 32 passengers and four crew members to the back of the plane.

This is where the terrorists made a tactical error. No doubt they believed that by keeping the passengers at the rear of the aircraft, they would have the freedom and the secrecy they needed to steer the plane toward its intended target in Washington, D.C. But they fundamentally misunderstood the United States and its citizens.

Instead of protecting the hijackers, relocating the passengers to the rear of the plane gave those onboard Flight 93 the space and opportunity to engage in one of the most extraordinary acts of civic engagement in American history.

The hijackers failed to appreciate that the Americans on that plane had likely been taught civics in school and absorbed our country’s most basic democratic principles. While none of the passengers were thinking about those lessons that day, they knew exactly what to do.

The passengers used cell phones and Airfones—the now archaic-seeming in-flight telephone service—to call loved ones. They quickly learned that two other hijacked planes had been crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. They shared this information with each other and began considering their options. Thirty-seven phone calls were made from the back of the plane. The heartbreaking messages of goodbye and enduring love are understandably what we remember the most. But the calls also served another purpose: gathering valuable knowledge.

Given the duress these 36 Americans were under, the next step they undertook is nothing short of astonishing. Jeremy Glick, a sales manager from New Jersey, called his mother-in-law’s home to speak with his wife. During that conversation, Glick described the plans the passengers and flight attendants were formulating. According to the FBI, he explained that “the passengers were voting on whether to storm the cockpit and retake control of the plane.”

The passengers on Flight 93 didn’t just follow the loudest, strongest, or most forceful person. Faced with circumstances that almost certainly meant death, they chose their course of action by voting. One of their last acts on Earth paid homage to the principles of democracy.

After deciding on the course of action, the passengers waited to implement their plan until they were flying over a rural area. In a conversation with his wife, Tom Burnett, an executive at a medical device company in California, revealed this was a deliberate decision made after passengers discussed their options. “We’re waiting until we’re over a rural area,” Burnett said. “We’re going to take back the airplane.”

When Colleen Shogan read this detail, she felt a shiver down her spine. She grew up in a populated eastern suburb of Pittsburgh. During long summer evenings, she and her mother frequently watched the steady stream of planes overhead, often wondering where they were headed. Had Flight 93 flown over her house that day? Had her neighborhood—or one like it—been spared because of the plan formulated by the passengers onboard?

At 9:55 a.m., an Airfone operator who was on the line with Todd Beamer, an account manager who lived in New Jersey, heard what was likely the passenger’s final exchange. She reported hearing Beamer say, “Are you guys ready? Okay! Let’s roll.”

At 9:57 a.m., less than 30 minutes after the hijacking began, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 attempted to retake the cockpit. By 9:59, a struggle was underway, and the plane was seen lurching from side to side. The hijackers quickly realized they were losing control. Unable to fend off the passenger assault on the cockpit, they decided to crash the plane. At 10:02 a.m., the Boeing 757 flipped onto its back and the next minute smashed into an empty field near a coal mine. Although everyone onboard was killed, there were no additional casualties on the ground due to the unpopulated landscape around the crash site.

Heart-wrenching as these final moments remain, they are the culmination of one of the most remarkable acts of civic initiative and courage in American history. Placed in an impossible life-or-death situation, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 followed the steps we would expect of citizens in a functioning democracy confronting crisis. In less than 30 minutes, they gathered information, discussed their options, took a vote, and acted on their decision.

At the Flight 93 National Memorial, clips from the National Park Service dedication ceremony held on September 10, 2011, play on a continuous loop. You can hear President George W. Bush’s words: “At the moment America’s democracy was under attack, our citizens defied their captors by holding a vote. The choice they made would cost them their lives. And they knew it.”

They are followed by the voice of President Bill Clinton, who joined Bush at the ceremony in a display of bipartisan unity. “With almost no time to decide,” Clinton said, “they gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the capitol from attack. They saved God knows how many lives. They saved the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American government. And they did it as citizens.”

Flight 93 is an example of what historians call “uncomfortable” or “difficult” history. It is not easy to digest the reality of what happened that day.

Uncomfortable history often forces us to confront moments when Americans failed to live up to our principles, such as slavery, the Dred Scott decision, or the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. These chapters require humility and reckoning.

But at other times, it reveals Americans choosing to live by their principles even when they are afraid, desperate, or being treated unjustly: Frederick Douglass publicly recounting the story of his bondage despite the risk of recapture; suffragist Alice Paul enduring violence and abuse in prison in seeking the vote for women; or Chief Standing Bear, driven from his homeland, insisting that the federal government recognize Native Americans as people under the law. Such moments leave us with a deeper respect for our ideals. Flight 93 belongs in that tradition.

Historian Drew Gilpin Faust remarked in an interview, “How do we have history that’s not uncomfortable? How do we have any kind of education that doesn’t make you in some way uncomfortable? Education asks you to change.” Faust urges us to have the courage to be disturbed.

The story of Flight 93 should disturb us—not only because of its violence, but also because of its moral clarity. In a moment when fear could have justified submission or chaos, the passengers chose legitimacy. Knowing the cost full well, they acted as citizens. It is an important lesson for all of us. The passengers of Flight 93 left us little room for excuses. If self-government was possible in those final, dire minutes, it cannot be dismissed as impractical or obsolete today.

I wanted to share this story with you tonight on the Shabbat before the 4th of July, on the brink of America’s 250th anniversary. Shortly after taking office, President George Washington received congratulatory letters from various religious minority groups—including Catholics, Baptists, and Jews—who were eager to understand their place and rights in the new republic. The Jewish community in America was small, numbering only about 1,000, and several congregations sent their own distinct messages.

In his reply, Washington emphasized his belief in religious liberty, civil equality, and tolerance. He drew parallels between the dawning of America and the Israelite’s deliverance in Egypt. President Washington also championed the idea that all citizens of the United States, regardless of religious denomination, would fully participate in the “temporal and spiritual blessings” of the country. This letter, along with his more famous Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport written a few months later, cemented the idea that America was founded on religious equality and inherent natural rights rather than mere “toleration”. Much like we read in the book of Genesis…B’tzelemElohim… we are all images of the Divine. All of us.

Our tradition teaches, Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—all Israel is responsible for one another. Over the centuries Jews have expanded that teaching beyond our own community because every human being bears God’s image. The passengers of Flight 93 acted because they realized their fate was connected to the fate of people they would never meet. The Mishnah teaches: “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if they have saved an entire world.” The passengers of Flight 93 could not save themselves. Yet they chose to save countless worlds they would never see.

Political philosopher Daniel Elazar often described both America and Israel as covenantal societies. A covenant is different from a contract. A contract asks, “What do I get?” A covenant asks, “What do I owe?”

Sinai was a covenant. America’s founding, at its best, aspired to covenant as well—not merely a collection of individuals pursuing private happiness, but citizens accepting shared obligations for the common good. Covenants survive only when ordinary people choose responsibility over self-interest.

The passengers of Flight 93 did not know one another. They came from different states, occupations, faiths, and political convictions. Yet in a matter of minutes, they became an eidah—a community. Judaism has always believed that holiness emerges not simply from individual heroism but from people choosing to become responsible for one another. In that sense, Flight 93 is not only a story of courage; it is a story about how a collection of strangers became, however briefly, a covenantal community. That is perhaps the deepest Jewish lesson of all. Shabbat shalom and Happy 4th.

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