Local opinion: Rosh Hashanah offers a lesson from the lasting legacy of Sept. 11

In July 2025, I was traveling through Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport when I noticed a television reporter setting up her gear near the security checkpoint. I asked what was going on, and she told me that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would no longer require passengers to remove their shoes.

Fort Lauderdale was among the first airports where the new policy was being rolled out. “Everyone’s happy about it,” she said, smiling. “No one wants to take off their shoes.”

She was right. Then I started thinking about why we had been taking them off in the first place.

For almost two decades, millions of people removed their shoes at airport security because one man tried to blow up an airplane with explosives hidden in his shoes in 2001. His attempt failed, but what he did changed the routine of air travel for years afterward.

For those of us who remember the 9/11 terror attacks, they do not feel like ancient history. Ask where we were that morning, and many of us can answer immediately. But nearly a third of Americans today were born after 2001. University of Arizona students recently spoke about learning about 9/11 in school, watching documentaries, and hearing their parents describe that day. One student said that for his generation, it is history rather than memory.

Still, they have spent their whole lives with what followed.

For most of their lives, airport security has looked this way. Kirssa Ryckman, a University of Arizona professor, made a point that stayed with me: even when people are no longer thinking about 9/11, they can still be affected by the changes it produced. Over time, we tend to forget how something began, even as we continue to live with the results.

There is something very Rosh Hashanah about that. The 25th anniversary of September 11 falls this year on Friday, September 11. That evening, Jews in Tucson and around the world will celebrate Rosh Hashanah and welcome the Jewish year 5787.

The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides writes that a person should imagine themselves, and the entire world, as balanced between merit and wrongdoing. A single action can tip the scale.

At first, that seems like an enormous amount of weight to place on one action.

On Rosh Hashanah we say, “Hayom harat olam,” today the world is born. Every action gives birth to the future. Naturally, we think about what we want from the coming year: health, livelihood, peace and happiness for our families.

This year I find myself thinking about the other side of that prayer: What are we going to contribute to the year that is being born?

September 11 taught us, terribly, how far a human action can reach. A few people made decisions that changed millions of lives and shaped a world that would be inherited by people who had not even been born.

Thankfully, human influence works in other ways too. A mitzvah can have an impact we may never see. Kindness can be remembered and passed along. A few encouraging words may matter far more than the person saying them ever realizes.

Last summer in Fort Lauderdale, I happened to watch one small consequence of an old act finally come to an end. After all those years, travelers could leave their shoes on. Most consequences do not end so visibly.

As Rosh Hashanah begins this September 11, perhaps that is worth remembering. We may never know how far one action will travel. But that is exactly why the next one matters.