Jews are known for having blessings for every occasion. There’s one for the first time each year you see a fruit tree in bloom, another that’s said only once every 28 years, when the sun is believed to be in the same position as it was when it was first created. One of my favorites thanks God for keeping the openings and closings in our bodies open and closed at the appropriate times.
So it’s no surprise that we say a blessing after making it through a traumatic event. As I absorbed the news of yet another antisemitic attack last week — when a Lebanese American man rammed a truck into a Michigan synagogue after hearing that an Israeli airstrike had killed his family — I wondered how the congregation might engage with this prayer.
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