Birkas Hagomel

[onionsoupmix]

 
A  good friend of mine was in a car accident with her children. I hope to God she is not reading this. 
It was a serious highway accident in which her car rolled over and her kids were injured. Broken bones, cuts and bruises, one needed surgery. They are now fine, thank God, recovering from this ordeal at home.

Her husband was not in the car with

Comments

[antidos]

3. Why do I even care? In her place, why would I want to thank a God for my survival, a God like this one

[onionsoupmix]

http://dynamic.vstore.ca/index.php/cPath/4

That is a better link for your lovely clothing suggestion.
It is very immodest, of course, I rememeber I was present once at such occassion and the mere sound of this lady's voice ( I haven't seen her of course ) made me... oh, blushing here, OMG, so immodest...

Lovely and thanks for sharing. Next time, maybe, they should have her voice electronically altered so she sounds like a man,maybe. Unless men turn you on also...

But seriously, if men can come to her house and she can stand so she is not visible and say gomel, certainly our shul with its bulletproof mechitza would qualify.

[kmelion]

So when women have babies, who says Birkat haGomel?

[antidos]

In Israel, they do.

[kmelion]

Yes, but I meant in regard to the above situation, in her circles, who would say Birkat haGomel after a woman has a baby.

Before I remarried, whenever my girls and I would visit the US, we'd bentch Gomel at my parent's shul (they daven at a Young Israel) and we'd say it again upon returning. Now my husband does it for us when he gets his Aliyah.

I bentched Gomel after I had each of my children.

[kmelion]

Here in Teaneck, which is, (thanks Go-d!) a bastion of MO (unlike the neighboring Monsey,) women say Birkas Ha-Gomel in Shul, in public with the full permission of the Rabbonim. I did not go to the said Mishna Berurah, but I assume that the Hebrew could easily be interprested otherwise!

So you see, even here in the Golus, once you are away of the heavy hands of the Chnyokes, the world seems to be a much better place.

[llennhoff]

There are plenty of shuls where a woman can bench gomel. Don't ask why Hashem this or that, but rather why certain rabbis choose this or that, and why certain communities willingly follow them.

[onionsoupmix]

Okay then. Why do some rabbis consider their male congregants to be so horny that they would find a woman blessing Hashem for her survival to be arousing? Why would these rabbis think that any woman in that congregation would be interested in communicating with such a god as they have painted?

Hagomel. Stringencies have nothing to do with God.

[llennhoff]

In our sefardi shul, when the torah is on the bimah-for reading on the sabbath- , and a woman needs to say hagomel for one reason or another, be it childbirth, returning from a trip to the carribean, as long as she wants to, the gabbai annouces to the baal qoreh to pause between aliyot, the woman stands, visible to all across the mehitza, she blesses hagomel, and all -men and women- answer her : ha-ehl shegemalach kol tuv etc...
I hate to say that, but it seems to me that the one forefather from whom sprang all ashkenazim, must have been Shammai himself (of Beit Shammai fame). So inflexible, to have caused the creation of the schisms of reform, conservative, reconstructionist, and the latest, "secular" judaism, honest, we have here such a congregation.
Eshkol Hakofer

[llennhoff]

I doubt very much that if you asked those rabbis, they would justify this particular custom in terms of hearing the women bench gomel being arousing for the men.

They would probably express it in terms of it simply being wrong for a woman to draw attention by speaking in public, even by saying a blessing. If you pushed them as to why this was, they would probably either cite long standing custom or the verse 'the honor of the princess is within'. Even though in context that verse means something else entirely, that is how it has been interpreted since the rise of feminism.

When my wife and I attended C shuls, she insisted on not getting aliyot since they just didn't feel right to her. When one shul gabbi tried to insist, we made it clear that we would go to another shul rather than put up with this pressuring. They stopped bothering us, but we would have followed through. I don't need for everyone to follow my customs, but I need to daven in a place where this room for me to follow mine.

women saying bircas hagomel

[leoraw]

Here in Central New Jersey, at least in Cong. Etz Ahaim and Cong. Ahavas Achim, women can say bircas hagomel. I remember a friend saying it recently, out loud, with men present.

Gomel and women

[anonymous]

In a Chabad shul, (not 770 , a shteibul) in Crown Heights itself, my female relative who had a baby got up and said gomel in the middle of kriah as at the sefardi shul. This was the practice as a matter of course in this fully Chabad Shteibul. It has been about 2 decades since i saw this,but customs change slowly over time -so what's the big deal?