For months, I’ve been thinking about writing a piece about the traditional blessing of gratitude that we say in Judaism after surviving a life-threatening situation. And then, during our daf yomi siyum recently, marking the completion of Masechet Menachot, someone spoke about her recent near-death experience and how they thanked Hashem afterwards for saving her son’s life.

I’ve learned many beautiful customs and practices along the path to becoming more observant, and Birkat HaGomel and the Seudah Hodaya are certainly meaningful ones.  In ancient times, when the Temple stood, an individual who had survived one of four dangerous situations that are mentioned in the Gemara (Berakhot 54b) would bring a Korban Todah to the Temple. This included situations where you survived sea or desert travel, sickness, or captivity.

With the destruction of the Second Temple, the physical sacrificial system stopped, and the sages designated prayer to stand in for sacrifices. The Korban Todah turned into Birkat HaGomel, a prayer said in the presence of a minyan thanking Hashem for allowing the person to survive. I first recited this prayer after childbirth, and in a typical year people would hear this prayer once in a great while; after childbirth, after a severe illness, after a particularly treacherous trip or car accident.

But these last 2.5 years have not been normal. And I’m often struck by how much the recitation of Birkat HaGomel mirrors the pain, sacrifice, and survival that our nation has experienced in these last few years.

Following October 7th, 2023 our shul was overflowing with people saying Birkat HaGomel. For weeks, we would see person after person coming to the bima to thank Hashem for their lives.

When our son burst through the door on October 8th, after experiencing Simchat Torah in Sderot on that horrifying Shabbat, we knew immediately that he needed to recite Birkat HaGomel. A few days later, we gathered the boys who had all survived together and cried in shul as they gave thanks for their lives. Unfortunately, exactly as my son was thanking Hashem, we received the confirmation that Shiloh Rauchberger had, indeed, been killed on a base near Gaza on the 7th. These were insane, confusing, terrifying days and the rate of the recitation of Birkat HaGomel mirrored that frenetic frenzy.

In the weeks and months following October 7th, there wasn’t a single time that I remember being in shul without Birkat HaGomel being recited. This typically unusual recitation, saved for the most harrowing of situations, was becoming a daily mantra, heard across the nation for the battle-weary active soldiers and reserve soldiers who were lucky enough to return from the field.

The question became, not “Do I need to recite Birkat HaGomel?” but, “If I’m in danger literally every second of my day, when do I actually stop to recite the prayer of thanksgiving?” My sons, who were in constant danger, would return home and I would encourage them to recite the prayer. They typically scoffed at the suggestion, implying that the danger felt like it was never-ending, so it wasn’t the time, yet, to give thanks. I knew they had been in particularly harrowing situations when they agreed, once in a while, to recite the prayer.

You could follow the intensity of the war, the ebbs and flows, based on the number of people who recited Birkat HaGomel that week. It started to quiet down in recent months, only to then reaccelerate during the recent war with Iran.

It is nearly impossible to convey to people outside of Israel what our lives have been like for the last 2.5 years; what the fight for the survival of our people has entailed on a daily basis. I was reminded while listening to someone discuss their experience with Birkat HaGomel and a Seudah Hodaya (a meal of thanks, not discussed here) last night just how much this prayer has embodied our struggles as a people.

It is a beautiful built-in part of Judaism that we have this physical way to mark our thanks after a harrowing situation. As beautiful as it is, my prayer for my family and my nation is that it may, soon, become something infrequently heard in all our lives.