They were off our radar screen before September 11, but New York’s Jewish firefighers, as well as their non-Jewish colleagues, are finally getting the attention they deserve.

At Battalion 50 in Queens, Paul Tauber dons the tools of his trade: black jacket and pants with fluorescent yellow stripes - treated with Nomex so they do not rip or burn - boots, gloves and helmet. He points out the gauges, discharge pipes and hoses, and the coronary-pulmonary-resuscitation gear on the fire engine that awaits the next call. Since September 11, it rolls out of the garage with a large American flag planted firmly at the back.

Tauber is one of the 150 Jews of the 11,000 firefighters who serve in the New York City Fire Department. He has been at his job for 23 of his 47 years, now supervising 10 companies as chief of Battalion 50. He is as used to deflecting the disbelief that often greets him when people first discover he is Jewish as he is to putting out fires. “Fire service is not a big draw for Jewish guys,” he says, shrugging, a short, bald, mustachioed Mr. Clean sans earring.

In the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center, however, firefighters of every stripe have been elevated to the rarefied status of hero. A recent New Yorker cartoon depicted a mother asking her daughter, “But, sweetheart, why do you have to marry a doctor? Why can’t you marry a fireman?”

“Before September 11 we were nobody,” Tauber says. “On September 13 we were everyone’s darling.”

To Tauber, being a firefighter is more than a job. Even if they did not grow up with firehouse fantasies, firefighters often mature into the realization that their work is a calling. “It’s your duty to risk your life to save someone else’s,” Tauber says. “It’s about helping, not about being a hero. That word gets thrown around a lot, but firemen don’t like it. Our philosophy is ‘Lead, follow, or get out of the way.’”

Talk to firefighters and their families and stories abound about the off-duty firefighter who jumped out of his car to help at the scene of an accident, wearing his rescuer’s identity like a 24-hour uniform. The tight-knit brotherhood of the firehouse acts as an extended family, and when the men respond to emergencies, breathing in the stench of smoke and vomiting side by side, denomination and rank become irrelevant. The fire department also answers innumerable odd calls for help, including the proverbial extricating of cats from trees. Firefighters generally work two 15-hour shifts and then are off for two days, two 9-hour shifts and are off for two days, but can combine a day and night tour to make one 24-hour shift. They are not automatically off for holidays and weekends, an erratic schedule that often precludes them from family and community activities. Some work second jobs.

“How many people do you know who would run into a burning building when everyone else is running out?” asks Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, who has served as chaplain for the fire department for the past three years. “To do what they do requires a certain uniqueness. The man of spirit has to be a little meshuga.”

“Firemen put a different value on life,” Tauber says. “We see death a lot. We see destruction a lot. We value family and being home because we see the other side so much.”

Most of the Jewish firefighters belong to the Ner Tamid Society, aptly, though somewhat ironically, named after the Eternal Flame. Like the Ner Tamid, the firefighter is always there, a source of protection; yet while the flame of the Ner Tamid never go out, a firefighter works to extinguish fire.

The 75-year-old organization, which counted a thousand members after World War II, is down to 300; about half are retired. Many of its older members were attracted to the security of civil service jobs during the Depression and after the war.

A recent monthly meeting at the Howard Beach Jewish Center in Queens begins with a moment of silence for the victims of the terror attacks, then moves on to a discussion of how to memorialize the three Jewish firefighters who died in the World Trade Center attack: Steve Belson, of Battalion 7 in Manhattan; Alan Feinberg, of Engine 54 in Manhattan; and David M. Weiss, of Rescue 1, an elite unit. Donations of money, cookies, cards, even a talit, have made their way to Ner Tamid, and the group agrees to distribute contributions among the families.

But, warns Chief Tauber, president of Ner Tamid, “we don’t want to separate these three guys from the rest of the guys who died. They didn’t work separately. They didn’t eat separately. They didn’t die separately.”

He reads aloud from some of the letters that accompany donations. “I’m struck by the beauty of the acts of bravery and strength, and it is stronger than the image of the burning buildings,” wrote the Seltzer family of Bethesda, Maryland. Recommendations about updating paperwork, scheduling physical exams and thinking about their own funerals share the agenda with more mundane matters like marching in the Salute to Israel Parade and planning a dinner dance.

The men voice some of their feelings following the destruction of the Twin Towers. Evan King of Division 3 in Manhattan was asked to hold the Torah during Kol Nidre when he came in uniform to B’nai Jeshurun, also in Manhattan. “Five thousand people gave me a standing ovation for 10 minutes,” he recalls. “It was very emotional.” Butch Brandes, 43, received a similar request from a synagogue in Staten Island, but he declined. “I just wanted to be invisible,” he says.

“I always came to Ner Tamid meetings with Stevie Belson because we both lived in Rockaway,” adds Brandes. “All day today I was joking with my wife, ‘I gotta go because I gotta go pick up Stevie.’ I went by the house on my way and of course he’s not there.” One source of comfort, he continues, was a call from a couple about to give birth to a son. “They wanted to name the baby after a Jewish firefighter. I called Stevie’s mother. His name was Shmaryu Eliahu. So he will live on, even though he didn’t have children of his own.”

“I saw a film of firemen walking into the World Trade Center,” Tauber says later. “You could see them look up and walk right in. They knew how dangerous it was. They knew they were probably going to die, but they didn’t falter. They didn’t look back. I recognized one of the guys, and I started crying like crazy. How much prouder of a profession can you be?

“I got to the scene about an hour after the second tower dropped,” he continues. “It was dead quiet. I was standing on two stories of steel. I couldn’t believe it. I must have said that a thousand times. Three of my four kids were taken out of class crying. They knew I’d be down there as soon as I could. It could have been me. There are still 200 firefighters buried in the rubble. The emotions are still unfolding.”

Despite the danger—or perhaps because of it—it’s hard to find a firefighter who doesn’t love his job. “It’s the best job there is,” says Sheldon Barocas, 51, a 24-year veteran who is captain of Ladder 129, Battalion 52 in Flushing, Queens. “There’s excitement. There’s friendship.”

Kathryn Emhardt, David Weiss’s girlfriend, says being a firefighter meant everything to him. “It was the first thing he told me about himself. He was a firefighter 24/7, a daredevil. Nothing stopped him.” Weiss, 41, was decorated for rescuing a man who had driven his car into the East River. He had been off duty when he spotted the car and dove into the water.

For Steve Belson, 51, the dedication to rescuing others began when he was a lifeguard, says his mother, Madeline Brandstadter. He joined the fire department with a group of friends; all were lifeguards together at Rockaway Beach, now renamed Bells Beach, after one of Belson’s nicknames. “He was a Jewish firefighter living half his life with Irish friends,” she said. “They considered him one of their own. Sometimes they would call him O’Belson.” He wasn’t religious in the conventional sense, she says, but recalls Potasnik’s words at her son’s memorial service: “If you tell me a man who is willing to lay down his life to save other people is not religious, then I don’t know what religion is.”

“Firefighters respect people for what they do rather than who they are,” Barocas agrees, asserting that his Jewishness is not an important issue among his colleagues. Teasing often does occur, but “it’s not anti-Semitism or hatred. There are jabs about every nationality.”

Brandes remembers his first night as a fireman..
“The guys knew I was Jewish. One guy walked around with a paper cup on his head. I ignored it. Then he said, ‘If you’re a fireman and a Jew you must be a failure.’ I said, ‘My father was a fireman. I don’t consider him a failure.’ He didn’t know what to say. Guys make stupid remarks but you can’t get upset. Sometimes they make an anti-Semitic joke, then they’ll find out I’m Jewish and say, ‘I didn’t know you were one of them.’ Then I say, ‘If you didn’t know I was one of them, how do you know what they’re like?’”

“Everyone knows I’m Jewish,” says Tauber, who keeps kosher and belongs to a Reform synagogue in Elmont, Long Island. “They don’t cook pork in the firehouse. They don’t mix milk and meat. They call me the King of the Jews. Some would get turned off by that. Your skin has to be tougher.”

Barocas speculates on the reason people express surprise when they meet a Jewish firefighter.

“Maybe they perceive that Jews work with our minds instead of with our backs. Much of our work is strenuous, but a lot of the job is thinking of options and escapes. You can’t rest for a second.”

In fact, most of the Jewish firefighters have college degrees, often in education, health or physical education. Tauber, a second-generation fireman, earned a master’s degree in health education, then took all the civil service tests, trying to qualify for everything from border patrol to secret service. When he got called to the fire department, he had to pass physical and written exams before enrolling in Fire Probation School, which trained him in tools, operations, tactics and safety.

Brandes, whose great-grandfather was a rabbi, followed a similar path. Both his father and brother are firemen, as are two non-Jewish brothers-in-law and five cousins by marriage. When he qualified for the fire department, he gradually phased out his career teaching science and English.

Not all firemen would recommend their career to their children. Though he loved his job, the scheduling challenges can test the mettle of a family, says Gus Beatus, who retired in 1982 after 19 years: “I’m happy I can say ‘my son the lawyer, my daughter the lawyer, my son the M.B.A.’”

“The wives of firefighters are used to making decisions on their own,” says Lorraine Tauber. In the 20 years she has been married to Paul, she says, he has been burned badly a couple of times. “When that happens you say ‘whew, that’s all it was.’ I have confidence he knows what he’s doing. The kids thought their father was invincible until a couple of years ago, when the father of one of their friends was burned to death. We try to stress the picnics and downplay the danger.”

“My daughter Sari, who is 11, always used to say, ‘I like you being a fireman. I don’t like you going to work,’” says Barocas.

Tara Feinberg’s college admissions essay about her father, Alan, is taped to a window of Engine 54, which has become a shrine of sorts to the 15 firefighters who worked there and lost their lives. At a young age, she wrote, she and her friends thought her dad was “the coolest.” As she grew older, however, she would cry hysterically when he left for work, “wondering if this would be the last time I ever saw him. Why couldn’t my dad have a safe job, like an accountant or computer analyst?” But, she continued, “When my father was not fighting fires or saving the world, he was busy running the household and taking care of my younger brother and me.… My father has taught me the true meaning of a hero. It amazes me how someone can have such an unyielding desire to help others.”

“The danger is there but I’m a real believer in God,” Tauber concludes. “It’s like the last line of Adon Olam—Adonai li v’lo ira—God is beside me, I will not fear.”

He stops and smiles. “In my first firehouse, we had a big sign in black and white that said, ‘What do you want to do? Live forever?’”