TBS News and Information

As we begin the month of April by anticipating Passover, which begins on Saturday night, April 12th with the first seder, Gary and I are returning to Los Angeles for the holiday and for our grandson’s Bar Mitzvah in May. As many of you know, we were evacuated from our Los Angeles home on January 10th. We returned to Virginia praying that our house would survive the fires raging through Los Angeles. Thankfully, it did. This is not the first trauma of my life, just the most recent. I thank God that we will be able to welcome 20+ people to our seder each night, because our house is still standing in a neighborhood that was spared. My heart breaks for those households who lost everything and were not as fortunate. And I thank all of you who reached out with words of support during that difficult time for us.

In April 2009, I was in a terrible car accident right as I was leaving my neighborhood of Dominion Valley Hunt, just a short distance from TBS at the intersection of 123 and Lee Chapel Road. A truck ran a red light and crashed into me as I was entering the intersection dragging me down 123 and totaling my Jeep Grand Cherokee (which thankfully kept me alive). Although I still have some damage to my spine, and was in constant pain for over a year, I thank God every day that I could return to my life, my family, and my beloved TBS.

When I got back to temple, just a few days after the accident, Rabbi Nyer said, “Do you want to say the HaGomel blessing?” I began to cry. She is the most thoughtful person and rabbi in the world and was doing for me what I had done for so many people. I believe in the HaGomel blessing so much that we put it in our TBS prayerbook Minhag B’nai Shalom. We went into our sanctuary, just the two of us, opened the ark and I recited the blessing and she responded. It was a wonderful Jewish moment in my life, and I am forever grateful to “my rabbi” for making it possible.

Who among us hasn’t had a trauma or an accident or an illness or a moment from which we survived in the face of extreme adversity? Jewish tradition first describes the HaGomel blessing in the Talmud:

Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: Four must offer thanks to God with a thanks-offering and a special blessing. They are: Seafarers, those who walk in the desert, and one who was ill and recovered, and one who was incarcerated in prison and went out. All of these appear in the verses of a psalm (Psalms 107). The Gemara elaborates: From where do we derive that seafarers are required to thank God? As it is written: “They who go down to the sea in ships, who do business in great waters; they see the works of the Lord” (Psalms 107:23– 24)…

Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 54b:12-1

7 HaGomel is traditionally recited these days after 1) recovering from a serous illness, surgery, crime, or accident, 2) surviving a dangerous journey or deployment, 3) giving birth and/or 4) being released from prison.

Although it is preferred for it to be said in public, and often at the Torah, I am fine with an individual reciting it privately (preferably before an open ark). The blessing does require a respondent, a witness, to one’s blessing of gratitude and thanksgiving.

As a Reform rabbi, I do not say the traditional blessing which includes a peculiar phrase that seems to blame the victim in my mind. Instead, I say the HaGomel that is in the Reform Rabbi’s Manual, which I believe every Jew should have access to:

The individual says:

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam, sheg'malani kol tov.
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who has bestowed every goodness upon me.

The congregation or person with you responds:

Amen. Mi sheg'malchem kol tov, hu yigmolchem kol tov selah.
Amen. May the One who has bestowed goodness upon you continue to bestow every goodness upon you forever.

The daffodils are out. Spring is in the air. Whether these are good times for you or stressful times (rough storms and seas) that you hope to put behind you, it is always important to find even one moment to count our blessings and give thanks.