There is a principle in the tractate Brachot of the Mishna that suggests something seemingly outrageous: One is obligated to praise God for both the good and the bad. Not just to perfunctorily recite a blessing, but to make it wholeheartedly.
This is not a new concept. When someone dies, Jews traditionally recite the line, “Baruch Dayan Ha’emet” – “Blessed be the True Judge.” I’ve always viewed that as a formulaic and failed attempt to mitigate the pain of loss with a forced reaffirmation of faith.
But the Mishna goes one step further, making it clear that the blessing on the bad should be said with a similar level of enthusiasm as employed in acknowledging the good.
This Mishnaic principle can be confusing. That is, until you look back at the last year and a half since Hamas’s October 7 invasion of southern Israel.
Is there a way to view October 7 – and the subsequent multi-front war, the never-ending missile sirens, the unbearable plight of the hostages, and the disgusting discourse and Israeli infighting – as something to be praised?
Yediot Ahronot’s Nadav Eyal helped me frame the narrative. In a recent article, Eyal wrote, “The word heroism shrinks in shame in the face of the returning hostages.”
Eyal explained what he meant to Dan Senor on his “Call Me Back” podcast.
“Those who have been kept by Hamas are now giving us a gift,” he said.
How so?
By “telling incredible stories of resilience and fortitude. I don’t think we expected these kinds of stories to come after more than a year of captivity, of being held by a fundamentalist, genocidal organization.”
Eyal referenced the painful yet profoundly touching story of some of the women captives meticulously dividing granules of rice evenly between them “down to the last grain” even as they were facing imminent starvation.
“When you are willing to sacrifice yourself for others in this kind of a condition after being held for so many months, and you’re willing to share your food…this is truly heroic,” Eyal continued, returning to the appellation of “gift” as one to all of “Israeli society and the Diaspora Jewish community around the world.”
That “gift” included:
- Eighty-year-old Gadi Moses who, Eyal pointed out, walked to freedom through a mob of armed Hamas terrorists with “almost a grin” on his face. (The emaciated hostages released the week after did their best to maintain their dignity.)
- Agam Berger, the last of the IDF spotters to be freed, who was filmed just a few days after her release beaming at her younger sister’s graduation ceremony in the IDF.
- Emily Damari’s now-infamous missing-fingers hand gesture which encapsulated a nation’s pride as her version of a “thumbs-up” was memed in a thousand ways across the web. Damari also pleaded with her captors to let her friend, the ailing Keith Siegel, go before her. Hamas refused.
It wasn’t just the hostages who have given us a reason to bless the bad of October. 7.
Civilian heroes like Noam Tibon and Yair Golan drove directly into the killing fields of the Nova rave and the kibbutzim under attack to rescue Israelis in their private cars.
Youssef Ziadna, a Bedouin Israeli resident of Rahat, works ferrying Israelis around the South in his minibus. On October 7, he was called by one of his regular customers to collect him from the Nova festival. Ziadna wound up rescuing 30 Jewish Israelis, all while dodging bullets and veering off-road to get them to safety.
Nor can we forget Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, the 25-year-old security coordinator of Kibbutz Nir Am who, upon hearing unusual noises on the morning of October 7, quickly mobilized the kibbutz’s 12-member security team, distributing weapons and strategically positioning them. Rabin-Lieberman’s actions prevented any casualties within her community
When the government went AWOL on October 7, civil society stepped in, organizing food and supplies for soon-to-be-deployed soldiers. When there was no one left to work the fields near Gaza, Israelis from across all ages and demographics volunteered. This can-do spirit will hopefully constitute a cadre of future Israeli leaders.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the hundreds of soldiers who fell in battle as they hunted down terrorists and searched for our hostages. Or the incredible fortitude of Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, parents of murdered hostage Hersh, who shared a vivid personality with which to identify, humanizing a young man who otherwise would have been a faceless statistic to the rest of the world.
The Mishna’s message goes beyond the heroism of the last year-and-a-half. It suggests that even the most personal of tragedies can and should receive a blessing. The death of a parent, for example, will always be sad, but it also opens up opportunities for change, be that financial freedom or the freedom from enmeshed emotional patterns.
Could I find any positives in my father’s death 15 years ago? To be sure, his suffering from cancer and chemo ended. But it also opened up an opportunity to forge a closer relationship with my mother, who visited Israel for the first time after he had passed away.
Should I be reciting a blessing over my own current cancer status? I don’t think of myself as any kind of hero, but my burdens have certainly made me more rigorous in choosing how and with whom I want to spend my time.
Given the personal and national trauma all around us, wisdom from a 2,000-year-old text, it seems, might be just what we need right now.
I was inspired for this week’s JPost column by a panel discussion held at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies on the launch of a new book on the Mishna by Rabbi Dov Berkowitz. The specific analysis on “blessing even the bad of Oct. 7” comes from Rabbi Avie Walfish. I wrote this before the return of coffins this week, which makes it even harder to find anything to bless. The picture is from the panel discussion at Pardes.
I first wrote about this Mishnaic principle in The Jerusalem Post.
