A couple of weeks ago, it was a Monday Night, I went home early knowing that I was taking way too long to submit a draft to Rabbi Bergman Vann on the subject of tonight's message. The clock was ticking and I knew it.

Most of you know that I was in the news business for most of 20 years, but when that ended in 1997, I took a pretty big step back and now watch the news sporadically…. Most of the time, I'm not even at home by 5:30 to see the national news.

For whatever reason, though, that night, I clicked on right at 5:30, and it didn't take long before I saw the state of the world.

To begin with, it looked as if the entire bottom half of the whole state of California was on fire. Satellite pictures were unbelievably clear and clearly unbelievable. Thousands of acres destroyed, hundreds of homes, and over a dozen people killed.

There I was, watching T.V., and some guy on the screen was standing there with his wife in front of what used to be his house. He said the fire had blown through the canyon behind his house in ten minutes. Just like that, the house was gone. The only thing they salvaged was her wedding ring.

I looked at that guy and I saw myself. That was my house he was standing in front of….. not literally, of course… but, it could have been.

The next story wasn't any better. Four suicide bombings in Bahgdad in a span of 45 minutes. Lots of people killed. Another miserable day in Iraq. And whether you agree or disagree with the U.S. involvement in this war, the daily stories of young soldiers and Marines being killed is hard to put into words.

In the interim since the night in question, the body count of American servicemen in Iraq has gone up and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight.

Anybody who's Jewish, no matter how disconnected you might be or choose to be, can't get away from the almost daily story of horror and violence we see from Israel. Those people killed in savage acts of hate-based violence are at the wrong place at the wrong time. I've been to Israel. Some of you have, too. It could just as easily have been one of us.

Now I know that you didn't come to services tonight to hear about all the bad news in the world. You don't need someone to read you the news in services…… and I'm out of that business, anyway.

I also know you didn't come to hear “the where's G'd in our life?” speech. That's old. Worn out. Not fresh.

And yet, look how the world and our little corner of it is laid out. Any one of us could leave the Temple right now, drive ten minutes, and be at the home of some of the wealthiest people in the world. IN THE WORLD. And we could drive ten minutes in another direction and see some of the most unfortunate.

Most people leave services and go home or out with family and friends for dinner or drinks. The biggest decision that has to be made is where to go. Believe me, I know that all too well. And still others, millions of others around the world, aren't so lucky. They don't get a choice of where to eat….just feel blessed if they actually do.

Trust me when I say this is not a social call to arms or some guy who's standing in for the rabbis tonight asking people to look at themselves in the mirror and take account of their lives.

Far from it. I mean, here I am looking at my Swiss watch, getting ready to get in my Japanese car so I can go have dinner at an Italian restaurant and drink French wine with my Jewish friends. That's our America, today.

And still, I can't get it out of my mind, sometimes, how we/I got where we are.

A hundred years is not much in the vast expanse of time. I wonder sometimes about my own grandparents, my own dad's mom and dad living one hundred years ago as Jews in Eastern Europe. Things were so bad that they traveled hundreds of miles in the dead of night to get on a filthy boat and travel across the ocean to Texas so my life could be better.

Think about it. During the High Holidays, part of the Yom Kippur service asks who will live to old age and who will die young? I've heard those words and some like them dozens of times. Lots of questions, it seems. So many questions…so few answers.

Or maybe there was an answer and I just wasn't looking for it. That answer, perhaps, though personal to everyone, is here in these scrolls. Here in the Torah that we read every week.

This week in our portion of the Torah, the title is Lech L'Cha. In Hebrew, that means “a journey into one's self.” Take a look at where we are in this early part of the five books of Moses.

Abraham, who will become the patriarch of the Jewish people, has to give up his wife twice to other men, including the Pharoah. He believes in a single G'd when the world, including his own father, believes in idols.

Though prominent in Jewish history, life for Sarah, Hagar, and others around Abraham wasn't always so good, proving once again the old saying that it's hard for a great man to be a good man.

Abraham's journey was a difficult one. But, it was the beginning of our Jewish beliefs, the genesis of Genesis. It was a long, hard, and difficult road.

Earlier, I spoke about Israel and the almost endless cycle of violence and fear that grips that country every day. And yet, through it all, very rarely does anyone want to just opt out and leave. They stay.

I often wonder what my own dad thought in 1945 when he left the Army and saw the horrible devastation of the Jewish people in Europe. How did he go on? How did they go on?

It may sound corny or hokey, or whatever adjective you choose, but far from being a king-sized downer, the more I see the resilience of people, the more it inspires me.

That guy whose house burned down will probably be in a new house a year from now and happy that he survived.

Not all stories have a happy ending. We certainly know that. A lot of those people we see on the news won't be back next year. Even among us, everyone in here has had moments of great joy and profound sadness. No one gets away clean. But, here we are.

Our Jewish history is a long saga of sadness and unparalleled persecution. Sometimes we look at Israel and wonder how things could possibly get any worse? Anti-Semitism is still out there, all around the world. We know it. And we go on.

Thousands of years after Abraham took that first step, here we are. Some of the great artists, doctors, thinkers and captains of industry all across the world are Jewish and have been throughout history. We're still here. It can't be by chance. There has to be a reason. The answers, somehow, are in those scrolls. In that Torah. The common thread throughout all time.

Rabbi Stahl once spoke of the lifelong search for that goal or goals in our lives that we have out there on the horizon. A horizon we'll never reach…..and maybe don't want to reach….because once we get there, where is there left to go?

Yeah, sometimes the news isn't so good. Sometimes, it's downright depressing. Sometimes it looks like Jewish people are under attack from all sides. Sometimes you wonder if Israel's very existence is in question.

But, then every few weeks, another youngster takes a big step forward. And honestly, is there anything more refreshing, more exciting, more uplifting than seeing a young man or young woman called to the Torah? Maybe they're too young to know….but someday they will.

What Abraham and Sarah started, we're still here to make sure it keeps going.

Life is, no doubt, an endless source of questions. Why, as we ask on Yom Kippur, do some grow old and some die young? Why are some rich and some poor?

I don't know. I can confidently say that I don't have the answer. But I think I know where the answer is. I'll keep looking. I hope you do, too.

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