Blessing the Bad- Blessings and Gratitude

Part of the Global Day of Jewish Learning topic of blessing and gratitude is the topic of “Blessing the Bad.” I had not intended to speak about this at all. I did watch Rav Steinzaltz’s video on the topic. This is available if you sign up for the Global Day of Jewish Learning. Then I stumbled onto Mayim Bialik’s Kveller piece about thanking the firefighters after her car accident. This had to do with gratitude for acts of chesed/kindness. But it reminded me of something from my own experience (perhaps because the same hospital was involved.)

When my father was dying, he was in Cedar-Sinai Hospital Palliative Care. It was a difficult time for all of us, but once thing that stood out was the care that we received there from everyone in the department. We all felt that they really worked with us to help us cope and treated us all with dignity. I won’t go into details due to privacy concerns. But you can imagine that a bad situation can be made much worst with poor care.

I believe I thanked them at the time (I don’t remember all the details of that time.) Certainly as a family we thanked them and gave a gift. We also spoke of their amazing staff to others. I also remember some prayers at the time and informal thoughts in retrospect. These were along the lines of Thank Gd my father had such care and that we were interacting with such good people.

Blessing the Bad with Children

I am not sure we shared this with any of the children who this affected. I think that if I were to teach this concept to children I would want to use something like Pollyanna and her Glad game. For those of you who have never read Pollyanna, I am not going to give away the plot of the book. You should read it.

However, I will explain about the Glad game. This was a game Pollyanna played with her father when something negative happened. They would then search for something to be Glad about. This Glad game is a big part of the story and how Pollyanna affects the entire town she is living in. I think it could be adopted for Tefilla as well.