9/11 Halachic Questions Linger

By COLlive reporter
Photos by Itzik Roytman

On Monday night, the famous “Tribute in Light” returned to the skies above New York City honoring those killed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The tribute is comprised of 44 7,000-watt xenon light bulbs, arranged into two 48-foot squares inspired by the shape and orientation of the Twin Towers, About.com said.

The illuminated memorial reaches four miles into the sky and is visible from as far as 30 miles away. The two arrays cast the strongest shaft of light ever projected from Earth into the night sky, the information site wrote.

An official memorial service will take place at Ground Zero on Tuesday morning with 4 minutes of silence beginning at 8:46, the moment of the first place crashed on the devastating day.

Installment loans website BadCreditLoans.com announced it sponsored a cobblestone that will be placed on the Memorial plaza at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Events around the country will also mark the dramatic special-forces raid that killed the attack’s mastermind Osama bin Laden in Pakistan more than a decade later.

Rabbi Michael Broyde, Professor at Emory Law, used the opportunity to address the legal problem of determining the status of people who went missing on 9/11 and whose remains were never recovered.

In particular, the member of Beth Din of America and founder of the Atlanta Torah MiTzion kollel examines the Talmudic approach to the question of whether or not the spouses of such people are free to remarry.

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