5 Responses

1. not so sure he would bench goimel. if he was under all that debris and came out alive, THEN he would bentch goimel.
   if reuven crossed the road a second b/4 a drunk driver hit shimon who was walking behind him, revuen would not bentch goimel.
   same if s/1 got of the bus a second b/4 it exploded, he would not bentch goimel, only if he was ON the bus and survived!

2. chilliworker2: You are spot-on 100% correct. I heard that Rav Moshe Bick Zt�l jokingly gave the following analogy:
   If your pants were drying on the clothes line (if any of you remember those!) and a wind blew them off, would you bentch gomel because if you were wearing the pants you could have been hurt?
   One must be very careful before reciting hagomel, shehecheyanu, etc. I�m also sure that sometimes people forget or aren�t aware that they should say berachos like shehecheyanu, Hartov vehameitiv, etc.

3. A mirror almost fell on one of our babies once as I was on my way to shul and my mother in law who was visiting us at the time demanded that I say hagomel. I was ready to lie and say I did for the sake of shalom, but I wanted to avoid lying if I could. Luckily somebody had just flown in from America and was “yotzei” me in his hagomel 🙂

4. assurnet: You did good. Better than I would have done if it were my shvigger.

5. Can someone explain the reason to Hagomel after a flight? Or after a flight from Eretz Yisrael?