Rabbi Alvin Fine wrote a poem that begins with the lines:

Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
But life is a journey . . .

In the Jewish religion, these philosophical words are read every year during the somber observance of the High Holy Days.

In 2001, the New York Times froze a horrifying, yet hypnotic, moment in time as they voyeuristically displayed photos of people leaping from windows of the World Trade Towers. Like a car crash from which rubber-neckers cannot look away, these images of death captured a nation . . . and the individual’s “journey.” Those photos, combined with the reading of this poem at the High Holy Days in 2001 inspired this piece.

THE THIRD PIECE, Rebirth is a New Beginning, is a departure from the poem and the somber nature of the first two pieces. It depicts a belief that after any tragedy we see a new and better world. It is perhaps the natural flow in life that hope springs eternal. Ground Zero is sanctified, the Freedom Tower is constructed, once again raising the hopes, beliefs and remembrances of a country, and the souls of the victims, now protecting newborns and all the hopes and dreams they represent, soar into the future! The stained glass in this piece supports this message as it hints at the ever-optimistic musical Annie, which once sung to the world, “The sun will come out tomorrow.”