Twenty-five years ago my best friend was raped at knifepoint. She lived alone in Hollywood and like most 20-somethings, had never really given her safety a second thought. Until that night when she awoke from out of a dead sleep to find a man with his hand over her mouth and a knife to her throat.

Gregarious, outgoing, always making people laugh, caring deeply about others – it takes an hour just to cross the street with her in the Palisades, because she has to stop and talk to every single person she meets.

This past week, as fear stalked the land, quietly insinuating its destructive tentacles around the hearts of our nation, I looked at Didi and her ability to conquer that personal terror in a new light.

When she moved to Los Angeles to continue her career as an entertainer, she lived in a bungalow in Hollywood and never even bothered to close the windows at night.

And when she wasn’t in an apartment that small she couldn’t spend the night alone. In fact long after we were married, anytime I traveled out of town for a speaking engagement, she would have to have a girl friend come to spend the night with her. The trauma, the fear, the feeling of total vulnerability ran deep. It does to this day.

In fact as I spoke with people over the past ten days, “fear” and how to live with it, seemed to be the number one subject.

So how do we learn to conquer this gnawing fear that lies like a dark cloud over our nation? We do it by recognizing that practically every one of us has already lived through our own personal fears and terrors in a hundred different ways.

Every one of us has been forced already in our lives, sometimes over and over again, to cope with fear, to transcend the personal terrors that have threatened to paralyze us and choke all sense of purpose and meaning from our lives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Fear defeats more people than any one other thing in the world.” But it was the remarkable Eleanor Roosevelt who gave us perhaps the most important key to conquering fear:

Even if that “thing,” is simply get up in the morning, get dressed and greet a new day. What we ultimately learn in every case, is the power of attitude to either bring defeat or inspiration into our lives, regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

She and Sandy her fiancé and her parents have been living in terror every single day since her condition was first diagnosed months ago. So how have they coped with this daily fear, a fear that grew more and more terrifying each day, as her body reacted to the intense chemotherapy and twice-daily radiation she was forced to undergo?

They decided that the one thing they did have control over, was who they were, and how they acted today, every day, one day at a time.

“Do you know,” Erika told me, “every single day we find one miracle after another!” Erika’s family reminded me that it is possible to experience gratitude in the face of fear, miracles in the face of loss. That we can discover in the midst of life’s deepest trials, the simple truths that remind us of who we are today. Today, every day, one day at a time.

“I am noticing a new and profound spirit in New York City, one of selfless giving, of tremendous concern for others, of unconditional love and positive regard for one's fellow human beings.” She wrote just yesterday. “An essence of humans coming together during a crisis, putting their egos aside in order to accomplish a common purpose - saving and preserving lives. I am talking about lives of strangers, people we have never met, probably never will meet. People who have never touched our lives before, but are impacting them today, like they have never been impacted before.”

“Outside is a firefighter who drove up on his own volition from Texas, asking to be put to work right away. Wandering about is a woman fresh from Virginia, here for the sole purpose of helping out.

“I have a new found hope in humanity. I see now that for every terrorist that exists, there are a million angels here on earth.” There you have it! FOR EVERY TERRORIST THAT EXISTS, THERE ARE A MILLION ANGELS HERE ON EARTH.

What was meant to crush our spirits and drive us apart has bought us together in a thousand ways, all across the nation.

In a way that’s like asking what an unborn child will look like. Something like his or her relatives I suppose, but a new and precious entity all its own. It may have it’s daddy’s eyes or its mommy’s nose, but ultimately it will be completely unique and full of hope and promise.

We must be committed to creating a world in which those thousands who perished on September 11th will not have died in vain, and we will. Their deaths will literally be the ashes out of which the phoenix of our New World will rise. For it is up to us to make their deaths mean something by remembering them and choosing life at every opportunity.

And she told me there were four keys to overcoming her fears:

So we must share our pain, our loss, our grief and our fears openly with one another, for in the sharing are the building blocks of community and shared purpose. She gave herself permission to be comforted, to be vulnerable with others, and in doing so she was comforted and grew stronger in the broken places. And we must do the same.

As individuals and as a Jewish community we have to be in the forefront of reaching out to our Muslim brothers and sisters, and all Americans from the Middle East, or Pakistan or Afghanistan, or Iran who now live in greater anxiety then ever before for their own safety here in our own community.

Third, she made sure that she surrounded herself with people and wasn’t alone. She found old friends and family, made new friends and got even more involved with the lives of others than ever before.

We must do the same. Get involved with each other. Call family, write friends, volunteer for a Tikun Olam task force, or a local charitable non-profit organization, or the synagogue, or community center right here in our own community. We stand up to our fears by not giving in to them, by not retreating from life but rather embracing life even more fully than before. And as we do, our lives become richer, our lives become more meaningful, and we know to our core that who we are really matters.

So ask yourself, “What can I do?” and do it. Ask yourself, “If this were the end of my life, what would I feel bad not having done?” And do that.

So choose to love – rather than hate.

Choose to build – rather than destroy.

Choose to praise – rather than put down.

Choose to give – rather than grasp.

Choose to pray – rather than despair.

Choose to speak – rather than remain silent.