Question: I am very appreciative and, if I might add, flattered that you answer and publish many of my questions. Due to your superior knowledge, I am always confident when I send in a question that I will receive a proper response. I wonder if you could address whether one should say Birkat HaGomel after flying even though flying is statistically safer than driving. Also, do women say HaGomel as well or only men?
Menachem
Answer: I am flattered by your compliment. However, it is not entirely my knowledge but rather my good fortune to have at my disposal the great geonim of the day and their responsa from which I can quote.
First let us review the source for HaGomel. The Talmud (Berachot 54b) states that R. Yehuda says in the name of Rav that four people are required to say HaGomel: one who has crossed the sea, one who has traveled through the desert, one who was sick and healed, and one who was incarcerated and then set free. The Talmud bases this ruling on Psalms 107. The Talmud also rules that one should say HaGomel before a minyan.
Tosafot notes that our custom is to say HaGomel after receiving an aliya. Tosafot also remarks that a “sick person” refers to someone who was bedridden, not someone who merely had a headache or a stomachache.
The Mechaber (Orach Chayim 219:9,10) writes that there is a dispute (between the Rivash and Rav Gershon) whether only these four people say HaGomel or others do as well. The Rivash argues that people who find themselves in similar situations also say HaGomel. He concludes that people should say it without saying Hashem’s name.
Both the Taz (sk 7) and Magen Avraham (sk 10) write that common practice today is to say HaGomel in all “similar situations.” Presumably they mean saying it with Hashem’s name.
The question now arises: What constitutes danger? Who is considered to have been delivered from danger? The text of the Mechaber regarding “similar cases” points to cases of unusual danger. Your point is well taken that, statistically, air travel is safer than automobile travel, yet we know that a person who reaches his destination after traveling by car does not say HaGomel since driving is considered a normal activity by today’s standards. Furthermore, driving is not considered unusually dangerous, notwithstanding the fact that there are many careless drivers on the road.
The Mechaber (ibid. 219:7) writes that in Germany and France one did not say HaGomel when going from one city to another, since the blessing is only recited by those who travel in the wilderness where wild animals and robbers roam. However, he adds that HaGomel was said in Spain because all the roads there were considered dangerous.
(To be continued)