One who has been held captive and been released, and also someone who has recovered from a dangerous illness and also one who has completed a dangerous journey, whether by land or by sea, should recite a blessing of gratitude for having survived such a dangerous ordeal. Tehilim 107 is the source for the obligation for those who have been so rescued
י֭וֹצִיאֵם מֵחֹ֣שֶׁךְ וְצַלְמָ֑וֶת וּמוֹסְר֖וֹתֵיהֶ֣ם יְנַתֵּֽק׃
יוֹד֣וּ לַה חַסְדּ֑וֹ וְ֝נִפְלְאוֹתָ֗יו לִבְנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃
God brought them out of deepest darkness,
broke their bonds asunder.
Let them praise the LORD for God’s steadfast love,
God’s wondrous deeds for humanity;
for God shattered gates of bronze,
God broke their iron bars.
The blessing that the Talmud codifies for these circumstances is known as Birkat HaGomel and is recited to this day. The blessing expresses our acknowledgement of God, who הַגּומֵל לְחַיָּבִים טובות שֶׁגְּמָלַנִי כָּל טוב who has done good for those who are guilty and who has done good to me as well.
The blessing is explicit that our gratitude for God’s rescue is the gratitude for having received something one does not deserve. We include our rescue in the context of God doing good for the “chayavim” those who do not necessarily deserve that good. Essentially, that is what it means to be grateful.
Rav Hutner, in one of his masterful essays included in the Pahad Yitzhak volume for Hanukkah, explains that the Hebrew word for “thanks” and the Hebrew word for “acknowledging” are the very same word. “Modeh” or “Modim” is to thank and it also is the word used when a litigant in court admits that the opposing party is correct in total or in part, as in the Talmudic phrase “modim m’miktzat chayav b’shuv’ah” one who admits that the other litigant is partially correct must take an oath to claim partial ownership.
Rav Hutner elaborates that every human being has a portion of our souls that wants to live fully independently and self-sufficiently of all other people. We want to be able to say, in the words of Sefer Devarim, “kochi v’otzem yadi asa li et ha’chayil ha’zeh – my own ability and the strength of my hand made all this success.” When we thank someone, we admit that someone else did something for us that we appreciate. And, Rav Hutner astutely notes, that same dynamic is true when it comes to our relationship with God.
When we thank God, in our amidah, three times each day, we say מוֹדִים אֲנַֽחְנוּ לָךְ – we admit before you, that you are our God and the צוּר חַיֵּֽינוּ the rock upon which our lives are sustained. And then we say, נֽוֹדֶה לְּךָ וּנְסַפֵּר תְּהִלָּתֶֽךָ we thank you and tell of your wonders.
In Parashat VaYetzei, the capacity to give thanks is also marked and celebrated. Although our matriarch Leah never receives the love and companionship from her husband that she wanted and prayed for, she has four sons in quick succession. The first three receive names from Leah that express Leah’s hopes and yearning for her husband’s love. Leah names the fourth child as an expression of gratitude: וַתַּ֨הַר ע֜וֹד וַתֵּ֣לֶד בֵּ֗ן וַתֹּ֙אמֶר֙ הַפַּ֙עַם֙ אוֹדֶ֣ה אֶת־ה עַל־כֵּ֛ן קָרְאָ֥ה שְׁמ֖וֹ יְהוּדָ֑ה וַֽתַּעֲמֹ֖ד מִלֶּֽדֶת׃ And she conceived again and gave birth to a son and said This time I shall thank God and she called his name Yehudah…”
Why does this child elicit gratitude? Rashi, informed by the Midrash, tells us that Leah calculated that this fourth child was more than her “share.” If Yaakov would become the father of 12 tribes through his four wives, that would come to three tribes for each of the wives. When Leah had a fourth she realized that she had more than her share and so הַפַּ֙עַם֙ this time, “I will thank God.” Which means, “this time, I acknowledge something good happened to me which I could not deserve.”
Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Eptsein, in his commentary Torah Temimah, explains the way that Leah was a spiritual innovator in the capacity to offer gratitude. When she named Yehudah she realized that she had received more than what she had a right to expect and she was the first person to have that recognition. Others felt gratitude. Leah felt gratitude for something that she acknowledged she did not deserve. She was the first to link the two meanings of the Hebrew word for thanks and admission.
But this insight was not just true about Yehudah. The insight was equally true about Leah’s first three children. There are no “shares” or “portions” of joy, or wealth, or justice that God divvies up according to some formula of fairness. Every good that comes to us is something we can appreciate and something that should elicit feelings of gratitude. And the universe, as God made it, does not owe us anything. And so our gratitude should be linked to an admission. הַגּומֵל לְחַיָּבִים טובות – God does good for those who do not deserve it.
Perhaps this is what birkat ha’gomel is expressing. We are חַיָּבִים – we are guilty when we recite Birkat HaGomel because it took some crisis to elicit an appreciation of our dependence on God that should have been there all along.
Leah also expresses gratitude for her children out of awareness that her abiding loneliness and the lack of a loving relationship with her husband will not be solved. If her first three children are given names that are truly prayers for the sort of marriage that she hoped for, Yehudah represents a refocus towards gratitude in the midst of enduring sadness in spite of real blessings. In this way too, Leah was a spiritual innovator and someone who developed a religious stance that is profoundly relevant for most of us at one point or another in our lives.
There are losses and disappointments and enduring grief in almost every life. One cannot make it through the world for long without encountering some loss or without confronting a disappointment that resists all attempts at amelioration. And we all have the chance, three times each day in the amidah, and with every additional berakhah or prayer that crosses our lips, to give voice to the gratitude that we can and should feel for the genuine blessings that have come our way.
This is also the parasha – the episode at which the Jewish people find themselves today. There must be unequivocal moral clarity of the basic demand, fully consistent with every call of justice, that each and every Israeli hostage be freed immediately and without delay.
But as we find ourselves in the midst of that delay, we find ourselves engaging in strange negotiations about which hostages to prioritize. Young children and their mothers. But not their fathers. Elderly women but not their husbands or brothers. These prioritizations have nothing to do with what is deserved or what is just. But the universe does not operate with perceptible justice. As the Talmud says, שכר מצוה בהאי עלמא ליכא. And so some are freed and some remain in captivity.
Some of those released on Friday escaped their captors the same day that they learned that their husbands or sons or other family members had been murdered on Shimini Atzeret. Some of those released on Friday most likely knew that members of their immediate families were left behind.
We cannot experience full joy and tranquility until every last hostage has been returned. Additionally, even the freeing of each and every known hostage will not erase the grief and moral outrage and trauma of the Shimini Atzeret massacre, nor of the deaths that occurred in the weeks that followed. And yet, when the words of Tehilim are almost literally brought to life, even on a small scale, י֭וֹצִיאֵם מֵחֹ֣שֶׁךְ וְצַלְמָ֑וֶת וּמוֹסְר֖וֹתֵיהֶ֣ם יְנַתֵּֽק God brought them out of deepest darkness, broke their bonds asunder. The only response can be:
יוֹד֣וּ לַה חַסְדּ֑וֹ וְ֝נִפְלְאוֹתָ֗יו לִבְנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃
Let them praise the LORD for God’s steadfast love,
God’s wondrous deeds for humanity;
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 