Birkat HaGomel
Also called the thanksgiving blessing, Gomel.
A short Jewish blessing said in public after surviving danger, illness or a difficult journey.
Birkat HaGomel is a single blessing said by someone who has come through danger: serious illness, surgery, a hard childbirth, a sea or desert crossing, or captivity. It thanks the one who bestows good on the undeserving.
It is said in the presence of a minyan, usually during a Torah reading, and the congregation answers. That public setting is the point of it: the tradition treats surviving as something to say out loud among other people rather than privately.
Who says it, and after which events, varies between communities, and several movements have widened the list well beyond the four classical cases.
Why the words are not here
One short liturgical blessing whose English rendering belongs to a specific prayer book. Singer 1890 carries it, and would be the natural edition once that volume's Hebrew and English are transcribed.
Every text on this site names the edition it came from and was checked against it twice. A prayer nobody can cite an edition for does not get printed here, however well known it is. The verification record lists what was held back and why, and how rights are established explains the test.
What we do hold
When people look for this
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Where it belongs
This page describes a prayer and, where we hold one, prints a named edition of it. It does not tell you whether to say it, or when. That judgment belongs to someone credentialed in the tradition, and nobody has signed anything here.