The mother of a 9/11 victim claims a world-renowned yeshiva and Jewish organization demands more money to remember.
Nelly Braginsky, 77, donated $36,000 to Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem to place a memorial plaque in a new building after her son, Alexander, 38, was killed in the terrorist attack.
But when the Staten Island mom recently discovered it was not in the spot she had paid for, the organization solicited tens of thousands of dollars more from her to put it there, she said.
“If a rabbi does this to me, who can I trust?” she asked. “How can he have the guts to ask me for $80,000 more?”
Braginsky’s son, who worked at Reuters, was eating breakfast at Windows on the World on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorists attacked.
She immediately found ways to honor him and the other victims of the tragedy.
Her generous $36,000 donation — to dedicate an “arcade balcony door with cupola top” in the $20 million Aish HaTorah expansion overlooking the Western Wall — was selected in the hope that future generations might stop and ask about it.
“Children have to remember,” Braginsky said.
But when she eventually made the trip to Israel, Braginsky says, she found a tiny memorial plaque for her son on a lower floor, in violation of her contract.
“I feel like someone has slapped me in the face,” she added.
Rabbi Ephraim Shore of Aish HaTorah argued that the plaque was on the top floor and given to the grieving mom at a discount.
“When we heard she wanted a larger plaque than she was supposed to get, we offered her the possibility of upgrading to a larger donation and a much larger plaque,” he said. “Suggesting a donation is not ‘extortion’. Alternatively, if she did not desire to donate more, we offered to make her her a new larger plaque anyway, that we hoped would satisfy her.”