Photo Credit: Jewish Press

It was still dark in the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 8, 1981, as I slipped quietly out of the house to travel to New York City, where I would daven atop the World Trade Center and watch the daily miracle of the sun slowly rising over the city in all its glory.

But this particular sunrise was special: this morning, I would be joining Jews all over the world in reciting Birkat Hachamah, the most infrequent of all Jewish prayers. It is recited only once every 28 years, on the day the sun completes a 28-year solar cycle and returns to the precise position in the firmament where it was initially established by God on the Fourth Day of Creation.

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I took the elevator up to the Observation Deck with my fellow Jews, each silently carrying his tallit and tefillin and lost in thought. It was almost impossible not to be deeply moved by both the wonder and the rarity of this mitzvah. When we stepped out on the deck, there was just the glimmer of light appearing over the East River, but no sight of the sun yet.

The davening began at 6:30 a.m. sharp, and it remains one of those tefillot I will never forget. It turned out to be a remarkably beautiful day, with the guest of honor making its appearance right on schedule and dazzling one and all. My only regret is that I forgot to take my camera, so the sights of that day will have to live on only in my memory. Fortunately, however, I did manage to hold on to what has become a remarkable keepsake of that morning: displayed here is what may well be the only surviving admission ticket to the 1981 Birkat Hachamah services sponsored by the Wall Street Synagogue. I still get a chill whenever I look at it.

Singer-091115-Invite

After the service, nobody seemed to want to leave. Some of the older men were telling grand tales of where they were and what it was like attending previous Birkat Hachamah ceremonies. But the story I will never forget was told by a 92-year white-bearded rabbi, who merited to attend his fourth (!) such service. He described in detail how, as an 8 year old, he was woken up in the middle of the night to join his family and all the Jews in his little town in Czechoslovakia as they walked together in the dark down to the river, where they stood in the morning chill waiting for the sun.

As he shut his piercing grey eyes and began chanting a portion of the service from memory, we could all sense he was actually transported back there through time and space – and the best part was that he was taking us with him.

Before leaving for work, I pondered the famous thought expressed by the Aruch La-ner, Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger, upon reciting Birkat Hachamah in 1841: “How much the world has changed since I pronounced this praise for God’s creation 28 years ago, and how will it look another 28 years from now?” I remember thinking, “With God’s help, wherever in the world I happen to be in April 2009, I will do anything and everything within my power to return here to experience this again. Then, I will be the “senior citizen” (well, almost) who can tell the others what it was like to stand atop the World Trade Center 28 years ago, and I will tell them the story of the grey-eyed rabbi from Czechoslovakia…

As we now all know, it was not to be. And the world did indeed look a lot different in 2009. For one thing, the World Trade Center was gone.

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Saul Jay Singer serves as senior legal ethics counsel with the District of Columbia Bar and is a collector of extraordinary original Judaica documents and letters. He welcomes comments at at [email protected].