Moshe Kanovsky's Last Moment

On Friday, April 13th, 2007 I was taking a broker class on the 11th floor of The Empire State Building. Breaking the monotony was a sudden thump and a slight tremor in the room. The teacher, a man named Sandy, stopped speaking and just looked at us, dumbstruck. To me, it sounded like someone had dropped a large safe on the floor above us.

We looked outside, where a crowd had already developed to point, gasp, and stare in our vicinity. Sandy sent his secretary downstairs to find out if we were under attack, and/or on fire. The downstairs people didn't feel like answering any questions, except to hint that we weren't at risk of annihilation. That was good enough for Sandy, and we finished the class, albeit a little uneasily.

Later we found out that the thump was a man named Moshe Kanovsky, a young lawyer who had jumped to his death from the 69th floor of the Empire State Building, landing on a platform on the 30th floor. Here he is, studying the Torah:

For a while, I was haunted by this thud. I read everything I could about Moshe, but there wasn't much in the newspapers, besides that his body-parts had scattered all over. One article concluded with a quote from a bus driver saying, "Only in New York. Only in New York." An idiotic thing to say, though technically true, since there is only one Empire State Building in the world, and thus New York is the only place someone could jump from it.

I found some blogs about Moshe that provided a little more insight. He was known to be depressed; one woman said Moshe had asked her to marry him and she had refused but that they had stayed friends after that; a couple others said there had been a number of Orthodox Jews committing suicide fairly recently. He came across as a nice, depressed guy.

But my own personal experience with Moshe will always be limited to the last moment of his life - the thud of his body on that landing, the shaking of the room, and the stunned expression on the face of my teacher.

Comments

[Jolyn]

oSytOU IJWTS wow! Why can't I think of things like that?

[Tyanne]

jdBNv8 That's not just the best answer. It's the bestest answer!

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I haven't been up to much lately. So it goes. What can I say? I've just been letting everything wash over me recently, not that it matters. I just don't have much to say these days.

[schechter]

i was a very close friend of moshes he was at my home 2 days before he jumped he was bipolar i miss him so much

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The Empire State Building remained the tallest man-made structure in the world for 23 years before it was surpassed by the Griffin Television Tower Oklahoma in 1954. It was also the tallest free-standing structure in the world for 36 years before it was surpassed by the Ostankino Tower in 1967.

I miss him so much