Chabad of Wall Street Moves On, Does Not Forget 9/11

NEW YORK, NY — “When Ground Zero is four blocks away from home, you don’t wait until 9/11 to remember 9/11, it’s in a corner of your heart always.”

So says Rachel Katz who directs Chabad of Wall Street with her husband Rabbi Shmaya Katz.

When the bells toll on Thursday, Chabad of Wall Street will be carrying on its activities – teaching Torah classes, wrapping tefillin around the arms of those who hold Wall Street in their hands, preparing food for communal Shabbat meals.

Seven years after that black day, Rabbi Shmaya and Rachel Katz, directors of Chabad of Wall Street, have moved on in a big way, but not forgotten, aiming to help their corner of Manhattan find strength in Jewish teachings. They have brought in a new couple, Rabbi Chaim and Faige Drizin, to assist them in their work, and are in the discussion stages of a preschool. Later this month, they will be moving their home to an apartment in Tribeca to join the booming neighborhood that is estimated to be 20-30% Jewish.

The Katzes had been working with Jewish businesspeople and residents of Tribeca, Wall Street and Battery Park City for two and a half years before 9/11. On the day America’s reality changed, the couple’s twin boys Avrohom and Moshe Yitzchok were 2 years old, and Mrs. Katz was in the morning sickness phase of a new pregnancy.

Noting that his wife looked especially tired and wan, Rabbi Katz postponed his 7:45 appointment to put tefillin on with a Merrill Lynch executive in the World Financial Center, directly across the street from the World Trade Center.

Mrs. Katz was sitting by the window of the couple’s apartment on Rector Street, right off the Hudson River, when she saw an airplane rocket by too low, too fast, toward its deadly target.

“We saw people frantic, running. We grabbed the children and a few Pampers and ran for our car,” said Mrs. Katz

Plans to take refuge in Brooklyn got the Katzes outside as the second plane struck. The air around them turned black, chunks of concrete and metal hailed down from the sky. They clutched their children to their bodies to shield them from filing cabinet sized missiles of concrete, shards of glass, throat burning chemicals and soot.

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