A guy gets a Labrador and he can’t wait to show him off to his neighbor. So when the neighbor comes over, the guy calls the dog into the house, bragging about how smart the little guy is and how incredibly trained he is. “Wait till you see this!” he says to his neighbor. The dog comes running and quickly stands looking up at his master, tail wagging furiously, mouth open in classic Labrador smile position, eyes bright with anticipation. The guy points to the newspaper on the couch and commands “Fetch.”

The neighbor’s jaw drops at hearing the dog speaking like that! “Oh, sorry about that,” the dog owner explains, “he’s a little hard of hearing. He thought I said “Kvetch!””

And speaking of dogs, I believe the best fear indicator for America might be found in statistics compiled by the American Kennel Club. Yes, I did say the American Kennel Club. It’s my official “Dog Facts Fear Indicator.”

By 1994, the poodle population had been more than cut in half to 61,000 while Rottweilers had increased 100 times to 102, 596. America is not just going to the dogs – but mean dogs at that.

Of course fears are a natural part of life itself and all of us have some. We are afraid of failing health and ending up helpless in a nursing home, afraid of death and of losing a loved one, afraid of global warming and of the housing bubble bursting, afraid of losing our jobs and going bankrupt, afraid of growing older, of disappointing our parents, our children, our spouses, our lovers, afraid over a troubled marriage or of our children losing themselves, afraid of what people think of us or that they don’t think of us at all, afraid of appearing foolish, afraid of failure or perhaps of success, and always, always in the back of our mind is the fear of the next 9/11 – the next terrorist attack – repeating the mantra over and over again that it’s not a matter of “whether” but only a matter of “when.”

So afraid that 40% of all homes in America have at least one firearm in spite of the fact that 30,000 people die by firearms each year and that guns kept in the home are 22 times more likely to be used to kill a family member or friend than be used for self defense. Worse than that, 55% of all unintentional shootings are committed by a child or teen. 9 children die every day in America as a result of guns kept at home. Every Day.

If facts determined our fears, our biggest fears would probably be of Cheeseburgers and French fries. After all according to the National Center for Health Statistics the number one cause of death in America is heart disease. The “fact” is that someone dies of cardiovascular disease in America every 34 seconds – 697,000 a year.

It reminds me of an add I saw on CNN last month in which a woman drives up her street alone at night and parks in front of the house as a man stares at her while sitting in a car across the street. She gets out of the car and holds the key between her fingers as protection and quickly darts into her home locks the door and breathes a sigh of relief. Then she sits down to relax and lights up a cigarette. The voice over says merely, “It’s time to protect you, from yourself.” I saw that commercial the very day that Peter Jennings died of lung cancer at age 67.

Then there was this headline in the news: “Military Aim To Fight Leading Cause Of Death In Armed Forces - Join Largest Seat Belt Crackdown In U.S. History.” The article then went on to state that more young men and women in uniform are killed in traffic crashes than in combat or training combined.

How many suffer from fear of flying? Lots of us. Yet the “facts” tell us that there are 87,000 flights over America every single day, and the same year that 42,000 people died in car accidents the number of people who died in commercial airline crashes in America was ZERO. ZERO. But if you are afraid of flying, the “facts” are cold comfort indeed when the plane takes off and you are pressed by the plane’s velocity into the back of your seat - the fear remains the same.

Jewish tradition understood how fundamental fear is to the human condition. The very first humans created in Jewish mythology were Adam and Eve. When they eat the forbidden fruit God comes looking for them and they attempt to hide. Like a scene from our own childhoods when we had done something we were not supposed to do and we literally hid from our searching parents behind a couch or in a closet. When God finds them, as of course God must, God asks them why they are hiding and Adam’s response is: “Because I was afraid.” “Because I was afraid.”

Conquering fear is one of the greatest spiritual challenges of living. And for anyone who has had that experience, it can only be called transcendent, sacred, godly.

I met a man from Argentina while I was on vacation this summer in Costa Rica. We were talking about the state of the world & at one point he turned to me and echoed what I have heard over and over from so many of you right here at home: “More than ever I am afraid,” he said, “tomorrow seems tenuous, “iffy” and unsure.”

Yet when you step back and really look at it the exact opposite is true. We are healthier and live longer today than at any time in the entire history of humanity. In 1850 only 33% of newborns born in America lived past age 60 while today fully 83% of us live at least that long.

We are like that famous shipwrecked sailor who when he was rescued after three years on a deserted island was tossed a bundle of newspapers by the Captain who said, “First please read through these and then let me know if you still wish to be rescued.”

The fact that more people died from tornadoes than terrorists in America last year somehow seems cold comfort to most. And yet herein lies our spiritual challenge and our passionate desire on this Yom Kippur. How can we feel safe in an unsafe world?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom wrote a few months ago immediately after the bombings in London: ”Terror fails and will always fail, because it arouses in us a profound instinct for life….Free societies are always stronger than their enemies take them to be. Enemies of the West mistake its openness for vulnerability, its tolerance for decadence, its respect for differences for a lack of moral conviction.”

Thomas Carlyle in a beautiful and wise poem wrote: “When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.” “A hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.”

The Biblical book of First Kings contains perhaps the most dramatic declaration of faith over fear in all of sacred literature. God tells the prophet Elijah to stand on top of the mountain and there he would find God. It is a particularly poignant passage given the power of the natural disasters we have all experienced in our beloved country these past few weeks.

God is that still, small voice. That still, small voice within us all – not in the storms of life, the earthquakes that frighten us, the fires that would destroy us. Not in the hurricanes and not in the floods. Not in the fear that surrounds and often overwhelms us, but in the quiet inner life of our own spiritual center, our own spiritual awareness of who we are. That who we are is a unique, one-of-a-kind being created in God’s image and precious beyond measure.

The path to feeling safe in an unsafe world is to get out of our own skins, out of our own heads, out of our own anxieties, out of our own self-absorption and turn our gaze to those whose fears we can do something about. To the hungry, we can bring food. To the naked, we can bring clothes. To the homeless, we can provide shelter. To the lost we can be their compass. It isn’t so much what we do, but that we do that matters.

Well, we can’t do everything for everyone everywhere, but we can do something for someone somewhere. And it is in the very act of doing itself that is our salvation.

“God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

A woman who was watching came up to the father and said, “Congratulations, you really know just how to speak to babies – calmly and gently. So the little one’s name is Jacob?”

We are all Jacob. When the howling of the world echoes in our ears. Take a deep, slow breath. And remember the beautiful words of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”