I was startled out of my sleep at 6:15 AM Tuesday morning by a phone call from my daughter, Gable, who is living just a ten-minute walk from the World Trade Center in New York. “Oh my God,” she cried into the phone, “I’ve just witnessed the most horrible scene of my life." With those words Gable epitomized the dread and horror that we have all felt ever since.

Will any of us ever forget those terrifying images, indelibly etched into our memories? The plane crashing directly into the tower; that first sense of disbelief as the North Tower disintegrated before our very eyes and the 110 story gigantic tower that remained suddenly seemed so frail, vulnerable, and strangely lonely? And the final rush of numbness as we watched the second tower implode and vanish forever from the so familiar New York skyline?

What do I tell her as she cries with the pain of all the human suffering that surrounds her, covered with dust and ash and soot and totally unable to comprehend the magnitude of the trauma that she has just endured?

Of course all Americans are in shock and numb. We can’t help but feel more insecure and vulnerable to the blind hatred and fanaticism of terrorism than ever before in our history. We gasp in disbelief at the human carnage of thousands of innocent lives that can vanish in an instant of unleashed evil. The world as we know it has changed forever, and our souls lie burdened with doubt and grief.

What the perpetrators of terror want most of all, is our terror. For us to give in to the debilitating nightmares of fear. They tried to destroy us in Egypt but we walked away from our enslavement with heads held high. They bound and tossed us into the fires of the auto de fe during the Spanish Inquisition, and we emerged to start again in countries throughout the world. They stripped us naked and forced us into the chambers of death in concentration camps throughout Europe, and we created the reborn State of Israel as a Jewish homeland, and have thrived beyond our wildest imaginations in the United States of America and throughout the free world.

The reality of life is that there will always be blessings and curses, joy and sorry, celebration and tragedy in our lives. The real challenge is to pick ourselves up when we are knocked down, dust ourselves off, and know with certainly that one day we will laugh again, one day we will dance again, one day we will celebrate life again, and blessings will once again outweigh everything else.