I seem to be in very good company: presidents, six year old girls, and even beauticians in Marlington, West Virginia. Although I doubt he saw a copy, President Bush told the entire nation, "We must carry on with our lives or we hand the terrorists a victory," a couple of days after I said the same thing in the Rosh Hashanah sermons. A six year old girl from our congregation told her parents after hearing those sermons: "Like the Rabbi said; we have to keep doing what we have to do. We have to help the people and we have to keep going on, or we let them win." And Loretta Macomb, owner of the House of Style, who certainly never heard of me, is quoted in this morning's NY Times as saying: "You have to do what you have to do. Otherwise the negativity feeds on itself… and the terrorists win some more."

So, did I change every one of my High Holyday sermons? Yes, I certainly did. Did I change every word, throw out the whole thing and start from scratch? No, I didn't. Why not? Partly, not to give in to the terrorists any more than absolutely necessary. But mainly, because the issues the sermons deal with: survival, living a life of sacred integrity, tyrannical authority vs. personal self-direction, the sanctity of the family, how we treat the underprivileged, and not allowing our fear of death to either turn us into killers or empty our lives of meaning - have, I believe, even greater relevance in the light of the terrorist attacks.

If the general schema through which these issues are discussed - reality shows - seems not quite in keeping with the gravity of the situation, I'm sure you realize that I'm not talking about reality shows at all, but only using them as a convenient framework for dealing with these far more important issues.

Here's one of the best ideas for a TV show ever: Take a number of good looking, committed young couples involved in serious relationships, some contemplating marriage, put them on a lush, tropical island with a greater number of even better looking males and females whose job it is to seduce them, and see what happens. What's the name of this piece of media genius? Temptation Island.

But it hardly takes a genius to realize that Temptation Island is where we all live, all the time. Temptations are all around us: on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, in the movies, on TV, on the Internet. Gorgeous, beautiful men and women smile come-hither smiles to get us to buy toothpaste, Toyotas, or tickets to see them in various stages of undress as they save the planet, find the bad guy, or get together, break up, and get together again in their movies.

And then, of course, there's television, especially the soap operas:

With so many sexual blandishments constantly bombarding us, is it any wonder that over 50% of our marriages end in divorce, and in some places, like Beverly Hills, the home of the fantasy industry, where the hole in the ozone layer apparently fries their brains, over 65%? Is it any wonder that, by some estimates, 40% of our population has committed adultery?

One of the main things that has helped all of us cope with the recent terrorist attacks, whether we were harmed directly, or, like everyone, knew someone who was, is our families. If they are what provide us with most of the strength to go on in the face of adversity - and they are - what will happen if more and more families become dysfunctional, filled with lying, mistrust, and recrimination, or disintegrate altogether?

What are we to do, we inhabitants of Temptation Island? Shall we say that it's OK to stray, that an occasional fling with someone other than your spouse is just a meaningless dalliance that ought to have no bearing on your marriage? There are certainly people, perhaps many people, who have used that as an excuse when they're caught cheating, but I doubt that any significant number really believes it.

You've got to be pretty naïve to think that a little extracurricular activity doesn't hurt anyone. Picture this: You're sitting in the beauty parlor and there's a phone call for your beautician. It's a teenager who is trying to find out if his mother, who gets her hair done there, is having an affair! If the answer is yes, could this child slough it off as no big deal, just a meaningless fling? The child would be devastated! That he had to even ask means his world is already severely shaken. And yes, the story is true.

We all know what Jewish tradition has to say: "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is one of the Ten Commandments. It is wrong. It is a mistake. It is bad in the moral sense that it involves lying and breaking one's promises. It is bad in the practical sense in that it often leads to messy, angry divorces that almost without exception are harmful to the children, even if they're already adults themselves.

On this day of Yom Kippur we are called upon to atone for the sins we have committed against our fellow human beings by first setting things right with them. Only then will God forgive us. If we can understand some of why we act the way we do, perhaps we will be better able to make amends and, more importantly, not fall into the tempting trap of adultery in the first place.

I would like to suggest that three of the main things in our culture that make us vulnerable to adultery are fantasy, myth, and romance. They are all intimately - pun intended - connected.

We humans have an incredible capacity to fantasize. With our equally incredible imaginations we can dream up things that are far better than reality - more perfect, engaging, beautiful, sexy. There are feelings that go along with our fantasies - strong, powerful feelings. Like the fantasies themselves, these feelings can be stronger, more enticing, more engaging than those in the real world.

Why? In what way is fantasy better than reality? In fantasy there is no risk, no suffering, no aging, no death, no limits. Even imagining yourself being murdered causes no blood, no pain. One of our greatest needs is for safety and security, and our fantasy life gives us just that. We are safe from the perils of the real world locked inside our own heads.

A lot of people, including Madison Ave., have learned to plug into our capacity for fantasy, to promise satisfaction without risk, in order to make money, lots of money. Stuart Roll of Dix Hills, Long Island, multimillionaire owner of a very successful condiment company, was arrested in July on a felony charge of promoting prostitution:

But once we go from Temptation Island to actually living on Fantasy Island, there is no going back. Things are never just the way they were before. We need to develop for ourselves, and teach our children, to recognize the line between fantasy and reality, to recognize the temptations all around us for what they really are: advertisements to make money, not depictions of a reality more perfect than this one. There is no such thing.

We also need to recognize the myths that often govern our lives. One of the more pernicious ones is the myth of the "one and only," the myth that teaches that there is one perfect mate for each of us, one ideal soul-mate with whom we can live a life of perfect bliss, a life of happily ever after. That doesn't exist, either. There are certainly lots of people we could never marry, but there are lots of others we could. Perfection, happily ever after is a myth, not a reality. To expect it to happen is to court disaster.

Where do we get some of these ideas from? Unfortunately, our own Judaism has been one of the culprits, though certainly not the only one. There is a midrash that teaches that the first humans were created both male and female, as if two people were stuck together back to back. To make two sexes, God separated them, and forever after we have each been looking for our one and only missing "other half."

Eastern European Jewish folklore teaches the same idea, the idea of the "bashert," the one perfect mate intended only for you. But it doesn't work. Even the math is all wrong:

A far better model would be Golda, Tevye's wife in "Fiddler on the Roof." He asks her if she loves him. Remember her response? "For all these years I've lived with you, had your children, taken care of the house, mended the socks, cooked the meals…" - and she ends by saying, "If that's not love, what is?"

Is she the only one on earth who could have done these things? No. But she's the one who actually did them. She's the one who made the commitment, kept the promise, and lived with Tevye in the real world, harsh as it was. Is she his bashert, his one and only? Of course not. Does she love him and does he love her? Absolutely, with the real love and companionship of a shared life.

Lastly, it is the idea of romance that is also responsible for getting us to act out our fantasies in the real world involving real people. It may seem rather grinch-like to attack romantic love, but when it controls us rather than the other way around, it can cause untold misery.

Romance, as scholars know, was invented by the noblewomen of another era whose husbands had gone off to fight in the Crusades. It's whole purpose was to cultivate a tremendous yearning for someone, who by definition was not your spouse, and who you could never have. It was, and is, a lousy idea:

Andrew Sullivan, writer for the Sunday NY Times, would agree. In his "The Way We Live Now" column he asks, in an article entitled "The Love Bloat:"