She gmalani kol tov (who has bestowed to me all kindness)

Today in the shachrit service, I was honoured with the 7th alyiah (I was called to the 7th part of Torah reading.) This was the first time after I had come back from the States that I took part at an egalitarian minyan. Rabbi Hoffberg encouraged me to recite the Gomel, a blessing that we recite after coming back from a dangerous journey or after surviving a dangerous situation. I have always found it rather strange to thank for surviving a dangerous situation when nothing dangerous actually happened (which was the case of my US trip.) But I said the appropriate blessing and continued to follow the service.

Tonight, after the end of Shabbat, my father came with his car to pick me up in my flat to take me to my parents house, where I planned to spend the Sunday. We drove on a highway. At one point we came closer to a truck. My father started to overtake the truck in the left line. All of a sudden, the driver in the car behind him started to speed up, which is the common way of idiot drivers in my country to tell the other people on the road "how dare you drive so slowly in MY very left line?" My father overtook the truck, went back to the right line and as the mad driver overtook us, my father gave him a quick blink with his lights to say "I don´t aprove of how you behave." At this point we all were driving at a 100 km/h speed. The other driver, at this point cca 20 in front of us, went back to our line and suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the road. I have seen such behavior in movies, but I didn´t know there existed idiots that did things like these in real life. My father stepped on the breaks and so did the truck behind him. Luckily, we managed to stop about a meter behind the car. In what seemed to be ages to me I waited for the hit of the truck from behind. All of a sudden the expected noise came from the right as the truck, obviously unable to stop with its weight and at this speed, decided to overtake our car from the other side and hit our wing mirror.

My father and the truck pulled to the side, got off, looked at each others cars, inspected the broken mirror, calmly said to each other "Oh boy, what an idiot," and went back to the cars. At this point my hands started to shake, but I said "Thanks God nothing serious happened, it could have been much worse." My father nodded in a strangely calm way and said "Yes, you are right. I will have to have the mirror changed." We saw that the driver of the other car stopped 200 meters in front of us and looked in our direction to see what happened. He never came closer to us, he just looked. My father started the engine and slowly moved ahead towards him. In what I now realize was fear, we decided not to stop to talk to him and drove on. As we were passing him, I saw how he hesitantly waived at our car.

Human mind works in a very weir way, we came home and only then fully realized what happened. For an hour we sat in the livingroom realizing that we could have been - God forbid - squashed in our car from both sides. We kept repeating how glad we were not to be dead. In the end we drank a shot of vodka and for the first time in my life I have to admit I felt it helped to release the preasure.

I dont understand why anybody would want to stop in the middle of the road like this. I dont get why anybody would want to put the lives of 3 other people and his own under such a danger. I don´t.

When I sat down to the computer now, I read the text of birkat ha-gomel again. It says: "Blessed are You O Lord our God ruler of the Universe, who bestows kindness on those who are committed, and who has bestowed to me all kindness." Perhaps it makes sense to thank God for His kindness when you are in a situation when something dangerous may happen and it actually doesn´t. It makes sense to say it even if you are not even close to it. It makes sense to thank for the fact that nothing happened. In a situation like the one tonight you realize that "nothing happened" is great and it is worth acknowledging.