On September 11th 2001, I was in my second year as a Religious Studies Major at Queen’s University.
At 8:46 that morning, as American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, I was walking to class.
And so I first heard about what was happening from my TA, who gave us a very brief summary and sent us all back home. I lived on the edge of campus, and so I got home just in time to hear that United Airlines Flight 175 had crashed into the South Tower.
My housemates were already gathered around the TV, and I joined them. We stayed there, frozen in place, eyes glued to the coverage as Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, as one tower fell, and then the other, as Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. In fact, we stayed on our couch, together, watching TV for the next few days.
Classes were cancelled. We watched the news. We called our families. We watched the news some more. We cried as we watched the horrible footage played and replayed, as the firefighters searched in vain, as families spoke about their missing and lost loved ones. We speculated about what had happened and why, and about what would happen next. We watched the news. We slept fitfully. We watched the news some more.
This is the first time I remember being glued to non-stop, 24-hour coverage of a catastrophic event; the first time I can remember
not being able to get away from it; to losing hours and hours to the drone of CNN. The first time, but definitely not the last.
So much about our world changed that day, in ways we could not possibly have imagined. The geo-political landscape changed;
our sense of safety changed; the way we travel changed; the way we felt about certain politicians changed; the way we felt about war and retaliation changed. So many of the instabilities of life now, in 2026, can be traced back to that awful and unforgettable day.
Each generation has moments such as this. Moments of bearing witness to cataclysmic, watershed moments in history. The Great Depression, World War II, the Atom Bomb, the Founding of the State of Israel, the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X and Yitzhak Rabin, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Princess Diana, 9-11, October 7th . . . I’m sure you can think of others.
On September 11th in 2001, I knew nothing like this had ever happened before, but as a still a relatively young woman, I didn’t fully comprehend that I was witnessing something that was altering the world; altering our reality; changing the course of history. During the Covid pandemic, almost 20 years later, I was better able to recognize, in real time, that I was living through another moment of world-altering history – where I was hyper-aware of the ways in which the decisions of world leaders, and medical providers, and every-day citizens had life-or-death consequences, on an individual scale and on a global scale.
When we catch ourselves experiencing history-in-the making, we may also catch ourselves making choices. Sometimes we prioritise our own safety and the health and safety of our loved-ones. We shelter in place. We follow instructions. We don’t get involved.
Other times, we are moved to action, even at great risk to ourselves. During 9-11, firefighters from all over North America
headed to New York to join in the search and rescue attempt. When Israel is at war, Jews from the Diaspora make aliyah and join the IDF. During the pandemic, hundreds-of-thousands of people, including myself, participated in clinical trials for the various vaccines that needed to be developed and tested at an unprecedented and rapid pace.
My point is not that we all need to be heroic, or put our lives on the line during a crisis. My point is that when we are aware of something major happening in the world, we also become more aware of what role – if any – we want to choose.
In our own lives, it is also true that when we are aware of something happening – something changing in some critical or irreversible way, we make choices about how we will or won’t respond. In Judaism, we call such moments “bechira points”. The Hebrew word bechira means “choice”, and relates to our freewill. The concept of a nekudat bechira, a bechira point, was first introduced by Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, a 20th century Lithuanian Talmudic scholar and Jewish philosopher. Dessler taught that a bechira point is the exact psychological and spiritual moment where a person has the freewill to make a genuine moral choice.
Jewish tradition teaches that each of us is born with an equal amount of good inclination and evil inclination. We call these the yetzer haTov and the yetzer haRah. We are taught that even though we are born with an innate sense of knowing right from wrong, no sooner does an inclination to do something good come into our minds or hearts, but then, up pops an objection, a contrary thought or a feeling – a desire that is sometimes so small it is unconscious – and yet, it pulls us – sometimes strongly, sometimes ever so slightly – in the opposite direction.
The Jewish sages identified this impulse as the yetzer haRah, and they taught that although we are born with free will, whenever we try heed our yetzer hatov, our inner inclination stretching us in the direction of good, we should expect to encounter this inner, counter-resistance as well. Rabbi Dessler, in describing this moral push and pull, identified the bechira point as the tipping-point when we make a conscious and intentional decision to either be tempted by our yetzer haRah, or to lean-in to our yetzer HaTov.
He described it as an inner battle-line, drawn right at those places where moral and ethical choices are most alive or relevant for us, especially in moments when we really could go either way.
In Dessler’s depiction of the inner-battle of a particular spiritual struggle, there are the actions that happen “below the line”, which are usually choices that come easily, automatically, or out of habit – the things we do without thinking, like tying our shoes. We know that tying our shoes is a practical task that helps keep us from tripping and falling, but the decision to tie our shoes each morning is made subconsciously, and it’s not morally complicated, so it’s not really a choice. The same goes for choosing not to do something that goes completely against your morals – you simply wouldn’t consider it, and so the choice essentially makes itself. These types of responses are not bechira-points. They are not conscious or intentional acts of choosing.
Above the line, on the bechira battlefield that Rabbi Dessler describes, are the decisions that are so difficult to make, they are essentially beyond our ability to choose. They are too complex to process, and so we can’t be held accountable for choosing. These are also not bechira–points.
Bechira-points happen at the line – the Front Line, as it were, in the spiritual battlefield. This is the meeting place of what we know is right, and what tempts us to do wrong. It is understood to be the only place where we truly have free will and personal responsibility.
Rabbi Dessler writes about two people with different relationships to material goods. One is a professional thief who was raised among thieves and robbers. This person has no inner struggle whatsoever about stealing, because that’s their established way of life. “For him,” Dessler writes, “whether or not to steal does not present any bechira at all”.
And yet, it might be that in the course of a robbery, the thief would have to decide whether or not to shoot his way out of a jam, and risk killing someone. If that decision is a struggle for him, then the moment of him choosing to shoot or not to shoot would be a bechira point – one that not only tips the scales of moral decision making, but also has the potential to dramatically alter the thief’s life and the lives of others.
The other person Rabbi Dessler describes is someone brought up in a good home with strong moral values. This person would have not the slightest temptation to steal because they would have no need to. So while this person may not experience a bechira in relation to acquiring wealth, their bechira-point might instead, come in relation to another aspect of their finances – such as deciding how much charity they will give annually, and whether it will be done with a spirit of generosity, or whether they will give begrudgingly.
For most of us, our b’chira-points may come in less extreme or obvious ways. Think of the choices that confront you in your everyday life. Maybe you’ve recently wavered over a second piece of dessert? Do you sometimes avoid calling or visiting a sick friend, or someone going through a difficult time? Is reaching into your purse or wallet for an impulse-buy a struggle with an uncertain outcome? Have you ever avoided a sink full of dishes in the hopes that someone else in your household might relieve you of the chore? Do you struggle to put your phone away during family dinner, or while out on a date? Maybe you have snapped at a loved one at the end of a long day?
These examples not only help us to understand the types of situations in which we might encounter a bechira-point, but also illuminate how each of us will experience bechira-points in different areas of our lives. Your bechira-points define the front-line in your spiritual struggle, which may be very different to the spiritual struggle of the person sitting next to you.
And while it might not seem like eating that second slice of pieis a life-or-death decision – ignoring the opportunity to make a healthy decision can lead to a life-time or a life-style of unhealthy decisions. And that can become a matter of life or death.
Ignoring our children while we scroll through our social-media feeds; shouting at our spouse instead of taking that breath and counting to three – these might also seem like small matters. But the more we choose to permit these behaviours in ourselves, the more damage we do to our relationships – damage that can have a long-lasting impact for ourselves and our loved ones.
The good news, as Rabbi Dessler reminds us, is that bechira-points are not static. “With each good choice successfully carried out,” he writes, “(we rise) higher in spiritual level . . . things that were previously in the line of battle are now in the area controlled by the yetzer hatov, and actions done in that area can (now) be undertaken without struggle and without bechira. And so (too) in the other direction. Giving in to the yetzer hara pushes back the frontier of the good, and an act which previously cost one a struggle with one’s conscience will now be done without bechira at all.”
In other words, each time we find ourselves at a b’chira-point, the line on our spiritual battlefield moves one way or the other. When we push through a tough choice and do the right thing, our moral baseline rises, and it becomes easier to do the right thing again in the future. And when we give into bad habits, or make excuses for not doing the right thing, our moral sensitivity drops, our bechira-point lowers, and we risk a slippery-slope where doing wrong becomes easier and more thoughtless.
The midrash teaches: mitzvah goreret mitzvah; avera goreret averah. One mitzvah leads to another, just as one sin leads to another.
This evening, as we begin a new Jewish year on the anniversary of a tragic event that changed our world forever, we have the unique opportunity to call our attention to the pivotal moments in our own lives, and to recognize that our bechira-points, our moments of moral choosing, are more than just moments that we move through – they are moments that change us, and that have the potential to change our relationships, and even our world.
In the month of Elul leading up to tonight, we spent time looking back at the bechira-points we wish we had done differently, and hopefully we’ve taken steps to repair whatever harm we may have caused by making the wrong choice in those moments.
And now, at the dawn of this New Year, we turn and face forward, hopefully with a renewed commitment to do better, to choose more wisely, and with greater awareness of each moment of choosing, and its potential.
In the coming year, let’s try to skip that second dessert and avoid those impulse-purchases. Let’s push ourselves harder to show up for those in need, let’s wash those dishes, or whatever the equivalent chores are that we’ve committed to doing, so that someone else doesn’t have to do them for us. Let’s put our phones away and be more present for one another, and let’s work harder to speak more gently and kindly, even at the end of a long day.
With each good decision – with each increment of effort, we push our bechira-points higher and higher. In doing so we may yet bring more goodness into our lives, into our relationships and into our world.
Kein Yehi Ratzon. May it be God’s will.