In Jewish tradition, there is a beautiful ritual for those who survive near- death experiences to perform. One who survives a dangerous brush with death makes a special bracha called birkat ha-gomel offering thanks for their survival. Typically, the blessing is said in shul, in front of the Torah and a whole congregation. Interestingly, the text of birkat ha-gomel doesn’t explicitly mention the danger we survived or Hashem’s life-saving power. Even Shehecheyanu, the bracha we make on everything from hearing good news to eating seasonal fruit thanks Hashem for keeping us alive and bringing us to the present moment. Instead, birkat ha-gomel thanks Hashem for “bestowing goodness upon the undeserving.”
What are we to make of this sentiment, that we are undeserving of goodness? So much of the work that we have to do involves unlearning the idea that we are unworthy of love, not affirming it. The typical Christian answer would be that we are undeserving of love because we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. One could back up this view with a plethora of biblical verses bemoaning our fundamental sinful nature and extolling the benevolent pity God takes on us. But this view only tells us part of the story. Of course there is no “righteous person on earth who does only good and doesn’t make mistakes.” (Ecclesiastes 7:20) But Hashem wants it to be that way. Jewish tradition holds that Hashem wants to see us make mistakes, so we can overcome them.
While Christianity says that we are all fundamentally wretched sinners, deserving of eternal punishment, Judaism affirms that all human beings are created with a pure spirit and can return to that spirit at any time, not by passively accepting a stranger’s gift but by actively repairing ourselves and the world around us. Despite its universal message, Christianity is all about individual salvation, being personally ‘saved.’ Even in birkat ha-gomel, as we thank God for literally saving us, our rituals emphasize community. Judaism has no concept of individual salvation, only collective liberation. This does not mean we can brush aside personal growth, and focus solely on bettering the world. On the contrary, tikkun olam begins with tikkun atzmi, repair of the self.
How are we supposed to go about healing ourselves? Most of us aren’t doctors, therapists, or rabbis—how should we know how to heal our broken hearts and crushed spirits? Fortunately, we don’t need any special training to repair our souls. We are all capable of tikkun atzmi. We have all the tools inside of us already. This doesn’t mean we don’t need help along the way. In order to heal, we need a supportive community and loved ones who believe in us (and, yes, sometimes we do need therapeutic or spiritual guidance.) But the most important tool for healing we have, teshuva, is something each one of us was quite literally born with.
The Talmud states that teshuva was created before creation itself. It derives this from Moshe’s only psalm: “Before You gave birth to the mountains, before the land and the world were born, from eternity to eternity You are Hashem who returns humanity to repentance, who says, ‘return to me, children of Adam.’” (Psalm 90:2-3) Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz says that this teaches us that “teshuva is a primordial phenomenon, embedded in the root structure of the world.” In other words, teshuva is part of the very fabric of the universe, a force as strong as gravity that any one of us can tap into to heal our broken hearts and alter the course of our lives.
What does any of this have to do with birkat ha-gomel though? We don’t say birkat ha-gomel over making teshuva or healing ourselves, we say it after being miraculously saved from a life-threatening situation. To understand the connection, we need to look at birkat ha-gomel’s origins. The Talmud came up with the modern-day birkat ha-gomel blessing. When the question arose as to who was obligated to say birkat ha-gomel, the rabbis determined that “four must give thanks. They are: those who cross the sea, those who walk in the desert, one who was ill and recovered, and one who was incarcerated in prison and left.”
At first glance this list seems somewhat arbitrary—why should sailors say birkat ha-gomel but not someone who survived a violent attack? The list is derived from Psalm 107, a poem which praises Hashem for rescuing people from danger. “Some lost their way in the desolate desert. They found no path to a city or settlement. Hungry and thirsty, their spirits grew faint.” (Psalm 107:4-5) The psalm goes on to describe how Hashem ‘showed them a direct path’ to safety. “Some lived in darkness, in the shadow of death, imprisoned in oppressive iron... their hearts were humbled by suffering, they stumbled and no one would help.” (Psalm 107:10-12) Hashem rescues them from prison, breaking their chains and cutting through iron bars. Some were “afflicted… and reached the gates of death.” (Psalm 107:17-18) Hashem heals them. “Some went down to the ocean to do their work… a mighty storm wind made the waves surge.” (Psalm 107:23-25) Hashem stills the waves and brings them safely ashore.
The Shulchan Aruch gives a compelling mnemonic to remember the four groups of people obligated to say birkat ha-gomel: חיים, chayim, meaning ‘life’ or ‘the living ones,’ short for חולה, chola, the sick; יסורין, yesurin, incarcerated people; ים, yam, sea; and מדבר, midbar, desert. Psalm 107 goes on to say about these four groups of people, “Let them thank Hashem for His kindness… let them exalt Him in the community of their people.” (Psalm 107:31-32) Thus, the ritual of birkat ha-gomel was born.
After reciting the blessing in shul, many have the tradition of hosting a seudat hoda’ah, a thanksgiving feast to share with loved ones. In many ways, the seder is a seudat hoda’ah—we celebrate our personal liberation from captivity in Mitzrayim, our miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, our journey through the desert, and our recovery from a very serious sickness which afflicts so many souls: hopelessness. The four who are obligated to say birkat ha-gomel represent our seder’s four themes. The prisoners who went free represent abolition, the ones who crossed the sea are our liberation, the sick who recovered are our transformation, and the desert wanderers who found their way to Mount Sinai represent our community.
There is a fifth group of people mentioned in Psalm 107. “The desert is turned into pools, arid land into springs of water. The hungry settle there; they build a place to dwell. They sow fields and plant vineyards that yield a fruitful harvest. Hashem blesses them and they increase greatly, after they had been made few and crushed by oppression, misery, and sorrow.” (Psalm 107:35-39) These hungry people who have survived in spite of a world that tries to kill them, they are all of us, and they represent Hashem’s fifth promise to the Jewish people, the promise that has not yet been fulfilled: to bring us into the Promised Land— Eretz ha-Chayim, the Land of Life, the World to Come. We find the fifth theme of our seder in the fifth promise, among these hungry, downtrodden people who finally make their way home and reap their harvest: possibility.
If we ever hope to abolish prisons and police, we must first recognize that abolition is possible. For some of us, this may sound easy, trivial. For others, this may feel impossible in and of itself. All too many of us fight for prisoners or show up to Black Lives Matter actions without truly believing abolition is possible. Some chant ‘defund the police’ instead of howling for abolition because they want to fight for something ‘realistic.’ Some of us advocate for prison reform instead of abolition because we would rather our work be ideologically unsound and make a difference, no matter how small, than ideologically pure with no impact at all. These tactics have their uses and their virtues—none can deny that lives have been saved through reform campaigns. But so many more lives have been lost through compromise. No matter how many reforms we pass and checks and balances we put into place, as long as police live and prisons stand, countless human lives will be destroyed and irretrievably lost.
Some might say, “Our movement is tiny! We can’t be expected to stop police violence and dismantle the prison industrial complex altogether! Abolition is a nice dream, but we should focus on harm reduction, saving the few lives we can.” It’s true, there is enormous value in materially improving prisoners’s lives and preventing a few police murders, because saving one life is like saving the entire world. But, conversely, when one life is destroyed, it’s as if the entire world has been destroyed. To those who say “I’m not the one killing people!” the Talmud would say “anyone who had the ability to protest injustice in the world but refrained from doing so, they are responsible for the sins of the whole world.” The Tanach holds a grim warning for those who fail to try saving prisoners: “If you refrained from rescuing those sentenced to death, those condemned to be killed, even if you say, ‘we didn’t know about this,’ the One who weighs hearts will know what you did.” (Proverbs 24:11-12)
Here, we find the key to understanding birkat ha-gomel’s problematic phrase. Hashem bestows goodness on the ‘undeserving,’ not because we are all terrible sinners or lowly, worthless worms, but because every day we fail to fully appreciate the unfathomable value of a human life. And this is why tikkun atzmi is so crucial—our own lives are so precious that Hashem created the entire world so we personally could be born. If we don’t believe that we deserve healing, how can we believe that others do as well? As it is written, גמל נפשו אישׁ חסד, gomel nafsho ish chased, “the compassionate person bestows good upon themself.” (Proverbs 11:17) There is a lovely midrash that expounds upon this verse. Hillel’s students were following him after class one day, and he told them he was on his way to do a mitzvah. They asked which one, and he replied, “to bathe in the bathhouse.” Surprised, they asked him, “Is this really a mitzvah?” He took them to the circus and showed them a statue of the Roman emperor. He said, “Just as someone is appointed to scrub these statues and care for them, and he earns a living and gains status in the kingdom, I who have been created be-tzelem Elohim, in the divine image, all the more so!”
In the context of birkat ha-gomel, the word חיבים, chayavim, is generally translated as ‘undeserving.’ But it also can mean ‘obligated’ or ‘responsible,’ as it does earlier in the Haggadah when we say, ‘ be-chol dor va-dor chayav adam… ’ “in every generation, each person is obligated to see themself as if they personally left Mitzrayim.” In order to fulfill our holy obligation to repair ourselves and the world around us, we need to understand what is truly at stake: human lives, something infinitely precious in the eyes of Hashem. If we are undeserving of the kindness Hashem shows us it’s because we fail to show this same kindness to ourselves and to others. By settling for anything less than full abolition, we degrade the value of human life by allowing injustice to reign. But Hashem doesn’t care if we deserve kindness! It’s given to us anyway, whether we’re ready to accept it or not.
It often takes those who survive near-death experiences a long time to recover psychologically from the experience. These encounters can shake a person to their core. Often those who survive danger don’t feel ‘lucky’ at all—they feel exhausted, scared, and traumatized. For those who survive mass tragedies while others didn’t make it, this pain can be even more severe. Survivors’ guilt is a horrible psychological phenomenon where a person is tortured with grief over their own existence. People who live with survivors’ guilt often ask God “why me? Why did you leave me alive when so many others died?” All of us, to some extent, wrestle with these questions, because we are all perpetually forced to witness horrific state violence.
Some of us deal with this guilt by justifying the deaths of others—playing God and deciding that they are dying because they deserve to die. Others of us deal with this guilt by surrendering to helplessness, saying, “what can I do? I’m just one human being, I can’t stop this death machine.” Some of us never deal with this guilt at all, and let the full gravity of it destroy us. But there is a fourth way: accepting the radical possibility of abolition, and joining the fight. Through doing so, we show ourselves extraordinary kindness, for to accept that no human being deserves to be destroyed is to affirm that our own life has intrinsic value and purpose.
In her close reading of the birkat ha-gomel ritual, author Ellen Frankel finds the real purpose of the “undeserving of goodness” line. The bracha is not meant to be recited alone—it is said in front of a community. In a unique twist, they then bless the survivor: “may the One who rewarded you with all goodness continue to reward you only with goodness! Selah!” This call-and-response format is designed to combat survivors’ guilt. The survivor is asked to do something extremely vulnerable: admit their doubt as to why Hashem chose to preserve them. Then the community does something remarkable: it corrects the survivor, affirming that their survival is nothing but a blessing for the whole world.
With this kavanah, let us bless ourselves and each other for our survival. Let us affirm that human lives are worth fighting for. A better world is possible, a better self is possible! As long as we are alive, there is hope, no matter how broken we are, there is always the possibility of healing. As it is written, “All that your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength, for there is no doing in the grave.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)
(One person starts by saying the blessing, then everyone else responds with the response below. That person then chooses the next person to say the blessing, and so on.)
בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ שְׁכִינָה, רוּחַ הָעוֹלָם
.הַגוֹמֶלֶת לְחַיָבִים טוֹבוֹת שֶׁגְמָלַנִי כֹּל טוֹב
(Fem:) Brucha at Shechinah, ru’ach ha-olam,
ha-gomelet le-chayavim tovot, she-g’malani kol tov.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
.הַגוֹמֵל לְחַיָבִים טוֹבוֹת שֶׁגְמָלַנִי כָּל טוֹב
(Masc:) Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam,
ha-gomel le-chayavim tovot, she-g’malani kol tov.
Blessed are You, who bestows good upon the undeserving,
and has bestowed all good upon me.
אָמֵן! מִי שֶׁגְמָלְךָ\שֶׁגְמָלֵךְ\שֶׁגְמָלֵךֶ כָּל טוֹב
!הוּא יִגְמָלְךָ\יִגְמְלֵךְ\יִגְמָלֵךֶ כָּל טוֹב, סֶלָה
Amen! Mi (Masc:) she-g’malecha (Fem:) she-g’malech (NB:) she-g’malecheh kol tov
Hu (Masc:) yig’malecha (Fem:) yig’malech (NB:) yig’malecheh kol tov, selah!
Amen! May the One who rewarded you with all goodness
continue to reward you only with goodness! Selah!
(After this ritual is completed, all say:)
בְּרִיךְ רַחֲמָנָא דֶיַהֲבָךְ נִיהֲלַן וְלָא יַהֲבָךְ לְעַפְרָא
Brich rachamana de-yahavach nihalan ve-lo yahavach le-afra.
Blessed is the compassionate One who gave you to us and did not give you over to the dust.
