This past year, if there is one thing that we have learned as individuals, as a community, as a nation, it is that our security - our financial security (if we ever had it); the security of our health and physical integrity (temporary as it may be); the security of knowing what our future is likely to look like - is, and always was an illusion.

We have entered a time of deep anxiety, fear, instability and insecurity. Since last year, the market crash has disrupted the hopes, expectations, and life plans of many of our retired or near-retired friends. Since last year, many families have experienced job loss, furloughs or extended unemployment and many other households are coping with new or recurrent diagnoses of life-threatening illnesses - most often cancer.

Rancor and bitterness fill the airwaves as the leaders of our nation debate means of providing basic health insurance to all of us. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - sapping our nation's resources and the lives of our youth - continue, although so quietly in the background, we barely even pay attention, only to look up once in a while when a local soldier is brought home dead.

And the scandals - the bank scandals, the finance scandals, the political scandals, and yes - even the rabbi-selling-organs scandal - continue unabated.

It's a time of deep anxiety. We've been here before - nine years ago last week our country was viciously attacked, the World Trade Center, symbols of American prosperity, were destroyed. We were on the brink of war; all of us held our breath in shock, and waited for the next shoe to drop.

But this is different. Then, the fear united us, brought us together - Jew, Christian, rich, poor - we were all attacked, we all felt threatened and we responded together. As awful as 9/11 was - and it was awful - it brought out the best of America and of our communities. Houses of worship threw their doors wide open, and joined together in an embrace of solace and comfort.

Today, I have a very different sense of things. Those of us who have lost their jobs stay home. Those with jobs look over our shoulders and wonder, who's next? Those who have taken ill cope the best we can - but don't want to burden any one. Those who are healthy turn away, wishing there was something we could do, yet immobile in our helplessness.

Today's threats, economic displacement, loss of health, loss of self-reliance and individual identity, are not the kinds of threats that naturally bring people together. These threats are the ones that drive us apart, push people away from each other, increase isolation, increase despair.

It scares me. But I refuse to lose hope and refuse to bow to my own natural instincts to shore up the bunkers, stock up for the long haul and batten the hatches. The Talmud tells us, in Brachot 5a: "If a person sees that suffering comes to him, let him examine his deeds."

For much of Jewish history this was understood to mean that the bad things that happen to people are deserved, are some kind of divine retribution for sins both known and unknown. This blame the victim mentality is reprehensible, despicable and ultimately - simply not true. We know that. We can't abide the notion that these troubles that afflict us are deserved; we won't be mollified with platitudes that are simply false - and potentially hurtful.

But, the reality is there, troubles have befallen us. What can we do? A different way to read the text, as suggested by Rabbi Doniell Hartman says that, "When suffering comes to you, you may not be able to do much about it (the specific crisis), but you can do something about yourself (your stance, perspective, attitude in the world)."

Understood this way, the teaching is urging us not to waste the spiritual opportunity in a material crisis. It is asking us to think: What might we learn from these difficult times? How might we grow? Material crisis provides us the opportunity to ask some very real and important questions:

How have we been complacent, stuck in our ways? How have we held on to things that really don't matter - what, indeed, does really matter? What do we want to do with the time, space, health, money we do have, at this very moment?

Does the loss of a job open up more time to spend with family, to volunteer in a meaningful way, to expand my education? Can the end of one career help me reclaim my center, my identity, which for so long was defined by "what I do" rather than "who I am?" Does loss of income mean figuring out how to do more with less? Learning to distinguish better between needs and wants? Can learning to accept other people's good will be a lesson in the value of true humility and the sin of false pride?

Does illness provide me the incentive to live every moment to its fullest? Can I learn to internalize how precious life and love are? Does weakness allow me the opportunity to accept help from others, to fully know what it means to be cared for and loved by another?

Can I learn to share my despair, both as a way to lighten my load and to lift someone else's? Can admitting my vulnerability, showing it to loving friends, in fact provide me with a different, richer strength?

If I am healthy or able, or even if I am not, can I be present for others? Can I offer more of myself, my resources, and my time than I thought? Can I learn to sit in the presence of pain without needing to fix it or control it or make it go away?

For all of us, can I learn to hold the blessings of this life in the same hand as the curses? Can I learn to see that all I thought I had - my health, my job, my home, my very sense of security - are, as Rabbi Hartman further said, fleeting, momentary and that our lives really are, as we are reminded in the Psalms, dust. Can we learn to only hold on to what is eternal: God, holiness, the spirit that we see in the outstretched hand of the other? Can we learn to cherish what is essential, the giving and receiving of love?

The word in Chinese for crisis is the same word as opportunity. The facts are the same - unemployment, illness, despair. These times are not as I had hoped nor expected us to be living in. But this is where we are.

"If a person sees that suffering comes to him, let him examine his deeds." Not to find fault, not to place blame, but instead to figure out how to respond, what we can do, what perspective we must seek - not only to survive the immediate crisis, but also to re-examine what is truly important, what it is we want to do with what little time, money, strength, will we have - here, now.

Rabbi Elyse Wechterman is the spiritual leader of Congregation Agudas Achim, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Attleboro. This column is a condensed version of a sermon that she delivered from the pulpit for the Jewish New Year. Her columns are published monthly on The Sun Chronicle's religion pages.