One World Trade Center is seen ahead of a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, on Sept. 11, 2026, in New York City. Photo: DAVID DEE DELGADO/Pool via REUTERS

Hundreds of Jewish students returning to college campuses across the US this fall will serve the poor and underserved to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which jihadist terrorists directed by Osama bin Laden murdered nearly 3,000 people in multiple airline hijackings while perpetrating the deadliest foreign attack on US soil in history.

The initiative, coming on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will be directed by Repair the World — a nonprofit organization which specializes in training Jewish young adults to pursue “a just world” — and Hillel International, the world’s largest campus organization for Jewish students.

“This is a way of reclaiming the day for something positive,” Hillel’s director of social impact, Dani Levine, told The Algemeiner during an interview. “Of course, nothing could ever give back what was lost, but this is a way to both honor those who were murdered and also give young people a chance to understand how working together and trying to alleviate problems in their community, whether it’s hunger, trash, needed clothes, pajamas, whatever it is, can make a difference in honor of those who were killed.”

Leaders of the initiative acknowledged that they will be working with students who were born after the terrorist attacks, explaining they will emphasize how so many people came together in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

“Since most of them don’t have a memory of that day, what we’re encouraging is actually not to start with the history but what people did right afterwards,” said Melissa Levine, strategic initiatives director for Repair the World. “We hear stories, in every crisis, but specifically about how on 9/11 neighbors dug through the rubble and neighbors fed people and there were water stations and food stations for first responders everywhere and how quickly New Yorkers acted in the moment.”

She continued, “It gives us a reason to activate again and serve again, knowing that service is our connection to history.”

Levine expressed similar sentiments.

“Making those connections to first responders helps them understand that their work is to put themselves into those most dangerous situations too, when there is an emergency,” she said. “So, building relationships with first responders locally while also hearing the stories of people who lost family and friends — it can be an abstract concept to many of our students because a vast majority of them were not alive.”

Repair the World and Hillel will continue their current work until early October with the National Days of Jewish Service Initiative (NDJS) initiative. The groups say that students will be steered toward “volunteer opportunities with nonprofit partners nationwide focused on issues including food, the environment, housing, and refugee and immigrant support.”

The initiative comes at a challenging time for Jewish students, as antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks flood the internet.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday published a new article by its Center on Extremism noting that the spread of artificial intelligence is fueling a frenetic metastasis of such conspiracy theories online.

“Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled purveyors of 9/11 conspiracy theories to manufacture synthetic ‘proof’ for their claims that Jews orchestrated the attacks and that broadly accepted narratives about the attacks are false,” the article said. “Social media platforms, too, facilitate the spread of conspiratorial content to new audiences.”

It added, “Significant global events, including terror attacks and wars, are inevitably claimed to be ‘false flag’ attacks carried out at the behest of Jews or Israel, with the 9/11 attacks treated as a foundational example of these claims.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.