Birkat HaGomel - Thanksgiving Blessing (Part 3)
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
G.T. Shedd
Birkat HaGomel reads: “Blessed are You Hashem, our God, King of the universe, Who bestows good things upon the guilty, Who has bestowed every goodness upon me.
The congregation then responds: “Amen! May He Who has bestowed goodness upon you continue to bestow every goodness upon you forever.”
Birkat HaGomel is unique: We have no other blessing that requires any response other than “amen”. Yet, when Birkat HaGomel is recited, responding “amen” is not enough; rather, those present respond by blessing the person who made the blessing! After answering “amen”, they add: “May He Who has bestowed goodness upon you continue to bestow every goodness upon you forever.”
I once asked Rabbi Shlomo Katz -- the brilliant Rosh Yeshivah of the legendary Chevron Yeshivah and the Rabbi of the Shul where I am a member -- why it is that Birkat HaGomel has such a different ending than every other blessing. He offered a fascinating insight:
Amen, he explained, is the “signature” to the blessing; the word amen, in effect, completes the blessing and brings it to an end. As he put it, amen is the symbolic equivalent of a period at the end of a sentence, and it draws to a close the influence and the inspiration of the blessing that was just recited.
Rabbi Katz made a connection to the way that Rachel named her first son: the barren Rachel watches her sister Leah give birth to six sons, while Bilhah and Zilpah - Leah and Rachel’s maidservants - each bore another two sons. At long last, after an agonizing wait, it is Rachel’s turn. Having practically despaired of ever meriting a child of her own, Rachel finally gives birth.
How strange it is, Rabbi Katz points out, that Rachel calls this long-awaited son “Yosef”; the Torah explains that the name Yosef is a plea – “May Hashem add on for me another son” (Bereshit 30:24). Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for Rachel to give her son a name reflecting the depth of her gratitude to Hashem? But instead, through the name she gives, Rachel reveals her passionate desire for another child!
Rabbi Katz explained that by using a name that signified her gratitude to Hashem, Rachel might have been given the mistaken impression that she had been granted enough blessings, that she didn’t want more. She saw how her sister Leah -- after naming her fourth son Yehudah to thank Hashem for all the blessings He had showered upon her -- then stopped having children. Rachel realized that by thanking Hashem, Leah had inadvertently given the impression that what she had was enough and that she didn’t need any more. It was as if Leah, by giving her son the name Yehudah (from the Hebrew word for thanks) had said “amen” to her own blessing.
Unquestionably, Rachel’s feelings of indebtedness to Hashem were immeasurable, but she did not want to do anything that might inadvertently be the cause of her not being able to have another child. She thus chose the name “Yosef - He will add” – expressing her desire for more, rather than a name that signified thanksgiving.
So, too, Rabbi Katz continued, the person reciting Birkat HaGomel does not want their blessings to end, but when the congregation answers amen it is if they are saying “enough”. Even though the person reciting the blessing wants to let Hashem know that they need more blessings, they cannot do so, because it is forbidden to add anything to the words of the blessing itself. Instead, the congregation therefore says it on the person’s behalf. When the congregation declares “Amen!” May He Who has bestowed goodness upon you continue to bestow every goodness upon you forever,” they are asking Hashem to regard their amen not as the “period at the end of the sentence”, but rather as a ‘comma’, to be followed by a continued inundation of goodness!
To be continued…
