Fear is walking the land. Kids are afraid to go to school. Jews are afraid to go to synagogues and Jewish community centers. A White Supremacist drives down Chicago streets using any minority man, woman or child for target practice. Disgruntled employees open fire on colleagues, financial loss triggers a murderous rampage at a brokerage house in Atlanta.

And just this Wednesday, an angry man walked into the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas and opened fire – killing seven. Yes, there is no doubt – fear is walking the land.

How can this be, after all this time? Inquisitions have long past. Ghettos of medieval Europe a distant memory. Even Hitler has been dead for half a century already. So how can it still be true, that here on the cusp of the 21st century a little 9 year old boy in Pacific Palisades is still frightened to have a Mezuzah on his door?

Indeed, after Buford Furrow should we be fearful that anti-Semitism or White supremicism is on the rise in America? Not really – for exactly the opposite is true! It is one of the great ironies of Jewish history that today when Jews feel suddenly so vulnerable again, we are unquestionably safer than we have ever been in the entire history of Jewish civilization.

Listen to this nursery rhyme that appeared in every edition of Mother Goose up to 1940, as well as The Big Book of Nursery Rhymes and Grolier Society’s Book of Knowledge:

To a rogue of a Jew

Of half of his due. The Jew got the goose

Resolving at once

Can you imagine going to Storyopolis, picking up Mother Goose and reading that today? Of course not. We can easily forget how far we have come, how totally integrated we are into American life, and what a radically different society we live in today. Not only isn’t this Germany of the 1930s, it isn’t even America of the 1930’s anymore.

Then Reverend Faith Whitmore from the United Methodist Church, which was having a convention in Sacramento at the time, stood up and announced that they had taken a special offering of her members to help rebuild the temple, handed the rabbi a check for $6,000 and then hugged him.

So what is worth being fearful of? That as a society we have abrogated any responsibility for providing mental health care to the Buford Furrows of the world, who before they shoot and destroy cry out for help, cry out for intervention, cry out for attention.

And there is another child I can’t get out of my mind. This one a student sobbing as she stood outside her high school, a place called “Columbine,” in Littleton, Colorado. “We should be safe at school,” she cried. “We should be safe at school, school should be a safe place.” And yet for too many of us, no place seems safe anymore – certainly not schools. Like a waking nightmare the names haunt us with their tragic familiarity: Bethel, Alaska; Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Springfield, Oregon; Port Huron, Michigan; Fayettville, Tennesee.

And that was before Littleton – where two teenagers wreak unspeakable tragedy, death and destruction, murdering 13, killing themselves, wounding dozens and sewing confusion and terror into the hearts of every parent in the nation.

At least it seems as though our schools are less and less safe. And so we fear. But someone once said “fear – F.E.A.R.” really stands for “False evidence appearing real.” That most of our fears are primarily in our own minds and like ghosts and boogie men under the bed, disappear the minute the light of knowledge, reason or truth is shined upon them. So if we take the time to examine what studies of kid’s lives today actually reveal, what do we find?

But perhaps more significant is that for all the hoopla about the effect of video games, rap lyrics, movie violence and peer pressure, most kids still want their parents’ approval over every thing else. And there is always only one way to teach a child anything you value – it’s to live that value yourself. That’s why Albert Schweitzer once said, “Example isn’t the main thing in influencing others – it’s the only thing.” And he meant your example.

“The reason I turned out good is because I was blessed with a mother who still built me up regardless of what other people thought of me,” said a teenager from Denver. Now what this boy is saying is crucial. One study recently showed that the average parent spends no more than12 ½ minutes a week one on one in any meaningful way with his or her child. 12 ½ minutes!

Weren’t we all shocked to realize that Dylan Klebold’s parents had no idea that their son’s room in their own home, ten feet away behind a closed door was filled with home-made bombs, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a sawed off shotgun and hand guns? “How could they not have known?” we asked in amazement.

The good news is that research consistently shows that the steady presence of even one caring adult can alter a teenager’s life for the better. That’s why we are pushing Koreh – LA (The Jewish Literacy Project) so much this year – because you can be that one adult who makes a difference in the future of a child.

The fact is that staying connected with your kids during these crucial years is the single best protection social scientists have ever been able to find. Studies show that something as basic as having dinner with your teenager three times a week brings the chances of suicide, depression and aggressive behavior down dramatically. I know it sounds too simplistic to be true. But it is.

T.S.Eliot once wrote, “Half of the harm that is done in the world is due to people who want to feel important.” When you feel like a nothing and a nobody, and everyone is putting you down, rejecting you, you can always pick up a gun and get instant recognition.

What’s really worth being fearful of, is the tragic state of self worth of young people today. Do you know that there has been an astronomical rise in teenage plastic surgery in the past ten years? That in the last 6 years alone the number of men and boys who have had plastic surgery has increased 500%? With an equally dramatic rise in the number of boys who take steroids and other muscle enhancers.

When I was young I was always the smallest kid in my class. And it wasn’t fun. I was picked on and harassed by everyone bigger than me, and that was just about everyone. I remember dreaming about those ads – but of course I never did anything about it. I just internalized that sense of being small, and vulnerable and somehow “less than” others. And I knew I needed to be funny and clever and smart and easygoing and stoic to survive.

And today? Boys and men have now fallen even more victim to the exact same disease that used to afflict primarily girls and women – the idea that self worth is primarily a reflection of your physical body.

And it’s worth being fearful of just how dangerous feelings themselves are for boys. There is a reason that every single shooting of the past several years in every high school across America was by boys – angry, hurt, disgruntled, disaffected, disconnected, rejected, vengeful boys.

Revealing feelings just gets you mocked, and induces shame in boys. And that is surely worth being fearful of, and incredibly sad about.

Then, when the men return to duty, he searches for a spot in the area where no one can see him. He literally sneaks behind a boulder, sits down out of sight, and cries. He lets it all out – and he just cries.

After all, how will light win out over darkness and love over hate? How will we together conquer our fears in the year ahead? By inscribing ourselves in the Book of Life, by living our lives to the fullest each day, even in the face of our fears. That my friends is the true meaning of heroism. Not being fearless – but having your fears and acting anyway.

“So many people walk around with a meaningless life,” he said. “They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they are chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is simply to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to the community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”