Two years later, those Covid-inspired kabbalos and resolutions are still keeping us going.Eight personal accounts
Esty Heller
We were in a state of shock after our mother’s petirah last July, dazed by the sea of shivah callers swarming around us after months of Covid isolation, when our cousin Faigy Berkowitz shared an idea: Start a nightly shiur l’illui nishmas the nifteres. The subject? Gratitude. Hoda’ah to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for all the blessings in our lives. From our low chairs, we nodded in agreement.
Faigy acted immediately on her word. We’d hardly circled the block on the last day of shivah when a group text was set up. Faigy would read to us from the book Say Thank You and See Miracles by Rabbi Shalom Arush for around ten minutes every night, Sunday through Thursday.
Sweet, was my reaction to those initial lessons about troubled people who thanked Hashem and experienced miracles. If I was a little skeptical — Really, they didn’t have kids for 12 years, they thanked Hashem for their infertility, and they became parents? — I didn’t dwell on it.
We’re all familiar with the mishnah, “Chayav adam l’vareich al hara k’sheim shehu mevareich al hatovah (Berachos 9:1) — a person is obligated to thank Hashem for the bad just as he thanks Him for the good” — but it took a while for me to actually process the message.
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