No one who knew Jeremy Glick was surprised to learn he helped overpower the terrorists on Flight 93.

"Immediately, I knew he was one of the guys who took them down," said Joe Augienello, the coach of Glick's soccer team at Saddle River Day School. "I guarantee it. He was a tough, hard-nosed kid. He was my captain, the protector on my team, and if you gave him a bloody nose, and knocked his teeth out, he'd still be coming after you again. He wasn't the most talented kid on the team, but Lord, you never wanted to be in that kid's way."

They remember him on the mats, and soccer and lacrosse fields of Bergen County. They remember Jeremy Glick, the judo black belt and the high school wrestler, who as a freshman, walked into the gym and instantly had upperclassmen deferring to him. Most of all, they remember his sweetness and decency, his good character and good family, the way he loved Lyz, his grade school sweetheart, and that sweet baby, Emerson.

Lyzbeth Glick's last conversation with her husband:

The phone rang at 9:37. My parents were in the living room. I heard my father say, 'My God, Jeremy. Thank God it's you. We've been so worried.' I immediately ran into the room. All color had drained from their faces. Jeremy had told them, 'It's not good news. My plane has been hijacked.' Then Jeremy said, 'Let me talk to Lizzy.'

The first thing he told me was, 'My plane has been taken over by three men.' He said they were Iranian-looking, they were wearing red headbands. One of them had something strapped to him that he was saying was a bomb. They moved everyone to the back.

And we just started saying, 'I love you.' It was an endless stream of 'I love you so much.' It calmed us down -- we had just had a baby, we had just bought a house. Jeremy was a very devoted family man, very caring, very athletic - a wonderful sense of humor, a strong sense of values.

Then he told me he thought he was going to die; he said he would respect any decisions I made. He didn't sound panicked, he didn't sound angry. He just sounded very, very sad. Then he started asking me questions about what was going on in New York. He said he had heard from one of the other passengers that planes were crashing into the World Trade Center. He wanted to know if this is true. I told him he needed to be strong, that yes, it was true.

Then he said, 'Are they going to blow up my plane, are they going to crash it into something?' Then he went into a planning mode. He said there were three guys as big as him-- Jeremy was a large guy, a little over six feet and 220 pounds; in 1993 he was the NCAA judo champion for his weight class -- and they were thinking of jumping the hijacker with the bomb. Did I think it was a good idea?

I hesitated, then I said, 'Honey, you need to do it.'

He was thinking of what he could use as a weapon, besides his hands. He said, 'I have my butter knife from breakfast.' Which is like Jeremy; he always made a light comment when things were stressful. He said, 'OK, we're going to go do it. I'm going to put the phone down. I'll be right back.'

I just handed the phone to my Dad. My Dad said he heard screaming and then there was nothing. A few minutes went by and then there was more screaming and noise. Then there was nothing.

(Jeremy Glick was one of the passengers portrayed in the film United 93, about which we wrote a lot on this blog.)
Abe Zelmanowitz was an Orthodox Jewish bachelor who lived with his brother's family. He worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield in the World Trade Center, alongside his best friend Ed Beyea, a Christian.

The elevators were not working, and Beyea, a 300-pound man in a heavy mechanized wheelchair, could not get down the stairs, which were choked with streams of panicked workers.

Beyea's home health aide, Irma Fuller, had gone to pick up breakfast on the 43rd floor when the plane struck the tower. She hurried back to the 27th floor and found the two friends waiting for help in the stairwell. . . . Fuller, 69, was affected by smoke from the the higher floors, so Zelmanowitz told her to go on ahead. It wasn't the first time she had left Beyea in Zelmanowitz's care. As well as working "hand in hand" for 12 years, the two regularly had a beer or a bite to eat together in the evenings.

"If Abe says go, then I knew he would stay with him, because he had always done that," said Fuller, of Bedford-Stuyvesant. "I didn't have to worry about it, because he was that type of person." Both men made calls to family members saying they were OK and waiting for help.

Zelmanowitz's niece Chumie, age 12, wrote:

In the days of Avraham Avinu, Abraham, the first Jew, there was a king called Nimrod. He was very powerful. He conquered many nations, and no doubt killed many people. Nimrod said his god was fire. When Avraham refused to believe in this false god, Nimrod threw Abraham into a fiery furnace. Our Uncle Avremel was also thrown into a fiery furnace, but his supreme act proclaimed to the world that his God was a God of kindness, and he would not forsake Him. He gave his life in a totally selfless way to help another person, and sanctified the Name of God before all mankind. I hope that in some small way I should be able to behave in my life with the same chesed as my uncle.

A tribute from a 9-11 site:

I visited The Mt. of Olives (Har Hazeitm) cemetery last week on the Ninth of Av which commemorates the destruction of the Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman legions. I came upon the gravesite and the simple understated monument of Abraham J. Zelmanowitz, a hero of courage and dedication to his fellow man. The terrorists of the today must come to the realization that the goodness of man is that which succeeds and is remembered. May his memory be for a blessing and may the way Abraham Zelmanowitz lived and died be a lesson to all.

(Another power wheelchair user, John Abruzzo, who worked for the Port Authority as a staff accountant, did evacuate with the help of co-workers who were able to find a rescue device for the mobility-impaired. His story is harrowing and his co-workers were as heroic as Abe, as they also insisted on not leaving without him.)

Now for my favorite 9-11 story (very appropriate for the Days of Awe, when we are aware of the chanciness and impermanence of this world, struggling against selfishness, remembering our deceased family members, meditating on our own deaths, and engaging with the poetry of our liturgy). I always cry when I read it. (I'm posting the whole thing - it was originally in the NYTimes, and the other URL I have sometimes doesn't work.)

Stretching a Jewish Vigil for the Sept. 11 Dead

By JANE GROSS
November 6, 2001, Tuesday
Section: Metropolitan Desk

In the darkest hours of the night, Judith Kaplan, dressed in her Sabbath finery, sat in a tent outside the New York City Medical Examiner's office, singing the haunting repertoire from the Book of Psalms. From midnight until 5 a.m., within sight of trucks full of body parts from the World Trade Center, she fulfilled the most selfless of Jewish commandments: to keep watch over the dead, who must not be left alone from the moment of passing until burial.

Normally, this Orthodox ritual, known as sitting shmira, lasts for only 24 hours and is performed by one Jew, customarily a man, for another Jew. But these are not normal times. Thus the round-the-clock vigil outside the morgue on First Avenue and 30th Street is already in its eighth week. The three sealed trucks may or may not contain Jewish bodies. And the shomer, or watcher, is just as often a young woman as an old man.

Ms. Kaplan, 20, a senior at Stern College for Women, a division of Yeshiva University, is one of nine students who have volunteered for this solemn task on weekends, working in shifts from Friday afternoons until nightfall on Saturdays, the holiest part of the week. The rest of the time, the task is performed by scores of volunteers from an Orthodox synagogue, Ohab Zedek, on West 95th Street.

Devout Jews cannot ride on the Sabbath, putting the subway or taxis off-limits for the long trek from Ohab Zedek to the morgue. So the Stern students, whose dormitories are within blocks of the morgue, have filled the breach. They were recruited by Jessica Russak, 20, a student who takes the dawn shift, peeking out of the tent as the sky brightens to time her morning prayers.

Ms. Russak, Ms. Kaplan and the others have won blessings from Christian chaplains at the site, and their dedication has moved police officers and medical examiners to tears. The burly state trooper who guards the area has learned the girls' names, and a bit about their religion. At first, the trooper demanded identification, not knowing that carrying anything on the Sabbath was prohibited for Orthodox Jews. Now he keeps an eye on the prayer books and snacks that the Stern students drop off before sundown on Friday and retrieve Saturday night. The trooper once called Ms. Russak at home when she was a few minutes late, in case her alarm clock had not gone off.

The young women have the full support of Dr. Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, who agreed without hesitation that the normal gender rules - women can sit shmira only for other women, while men can sit for any deceased person - could be waived under the circumstances. The school is also providing security guards to escort those who sit the late-night shifts.

While the tradition is a peculiarly Jewish one, Dr. Lamm said he felt that the mitzvah, or good deed, reached across denominations. "The idea that you can have companionship even in death is a very consoling thought, whether you are Jewish or not"; he said. Dr. Lamm called "the loving watching of the corpse a very human act"; and noted that the shmira is "the truest and most sublime"; of the 613 mitzvahs "because there can never be reciprocity."

But there are other rewards, which the Stern students discussed on Friday, at Ms. Kaplan's apartment, while preparing their Sabbath dinner - four different kinds of kugel, pepper steak and honey-glazed chicken. All of them had felt so helpless after the terrorist attacks. They donated money to the Red Cross, but were turned away as blood donors or volunteers because those needs had quickly been met. Then came the pleas for Sabbath shomers. "This is something I can do"; Ms. Kaplan said. "And it's surreal. You absolutely feel the souls there, and you feel them feeling better."

Each volunteer said she had begun with fears about sitting within sight of the trucks full of remains. Instead, they said, they have found peace and a kind of joy.

Ms. Russak does not sing the psalms as Ms. Kaplan does, but rather mutters them, in whatever order moves her, often starting with No. 130, which she knows by heart. The effect is meditative. "The meter and the rhythm, one after the next after the next, it calms you," Ms. Russak said. "That's the magic of the psalms. They put you in the right place."

Ms. Kaplan made up slow, sad tunes for each psalm and sings them in a clear soprano, sweet as birdsong. If she mumbled them, without melody, Ms. Kaplan said, she might lose a word here and there and thus the full meaning of each line. By singing, she said, she is fully mindful. "Time completely stops," she said. "Now I understand what it is to pray with your heart."

Two weeks ago, during her regular four-hour shift, Ms.Kaplan sang 128 of the 150 psalms and grudgingly gave up her place to Ms. Russak at 4 a.m., begging her to finish the cycle. Last week, determined to do the full canon on her own, Ms. Kaplan pleaded and won an extra hour.

"It's very completing for her" Ms. Russak said. "Like finishing an entire book of the Torah."

But before Ms. Kaplan's middle-of-the-night vigil on the brown leather benches in the tent, others had taken their turns, among them Anat Barber, the newest recruit, who was full of nervous questions. "The bodies there, do they know who they are?" Ms. Barber asked, as Ms. Russak escorted her to the site for the first time. Ms. Russak did her best to be reassuring, telling Ms. Barber that she would be fine, that "the irony is that it feels too easy". Outside the tent, the last of the men, a volunteer from Ohab Zedek, was rushing toward his Sabbath observance in Brooklyn. It was time for the women to begin their watch, to fill the night with poetry and prayer.

The BBC interviewed Jessica Russak about their task:

Girls keep volunteering for shmira, even for the Thanksgiving weekend. And when their shift has finished, they don't want to leave. Some try to finish the 150 psalms in the Book of Prayer, but I like to look at each one intellectually, to recite it first in Hebrew and then compare that to the English translation. Jessica and Judith sing the psalms because that's how they feel the magic of the words. I don't sing, I mutter - I think my voice would scare away the troopers guarding the morgue.

My favourite is Psalm 130. Right before I walk out, I always say it. The core of it is a line about how we're longing for the dawn, the day in which we don't have to deal with trauma anymore. These people who were murdered missed this opportunity, it was ripped from them, and that makes me want to strive harder for it myself.

Sitting in that tent praying, I'm conscious of the fact that countless numbers of souls are just there. I'm praying for them, and even though its supposed to be a selfless act as the dead can't pay you back, their souls are sitting there saying, 'Thank you'.