Learning to count our blessings despite war, COVID, hurricanes, and more - opinion

When I’m worried and I can’t sleep

I count my blessings instead of sheep

And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

When my bankroll is getting small

I think of when I had none at all

And I fall asleep counting my blessings.

I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads

And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds.

So if you’re worried and you can’t sleep

Count your blessings instead of sheep

And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings.

– Irving Berlin

Some of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah are puzzling; many are hard to keep. But one of the last mitzvot toward the end of Deuteronomy poses a special difficulty:“You shall rejoice in all the goodness that the Lord thy God has bestowed upon you” (Deuteronomy, 26:11).

In other words, be grateful. Count your blessings. It is a blessing to count your blessings. We are commanded to do so.This is more than a mitzvah. It is a recipe for sound mental health – one of many that the Torah provides, though written more than 3,000 years ago. And it became a popular song by Irving Berlin, featured in the hit 1954 movie White Christmas.

The inspiration for “Count Your Blessings” came from Irving Berlin’s doctor. Berlin recounted: “…after the worst kind of a sleepless night, my doctor came to see me and after a lot of self-pity, belly-aching and complaining about my insomnia, he looked at me and said, speaking of doing something about your insomnia, ‘Did you ever try counting your blessings?’”

Israel and the world both seem to be in a terrible mess at the moment. Wars, famine, droughts, hurricanes, massacres.

Count our blessings? What blessings?

COVID

Consider this. According to Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the US National Institutes of Health, the COVID pandemic began in the US in February 2020, and a desperate search for an effective vaccine began. Normally, developing such a vaccine takes years. And COVID is an especially sneaky virus, with spikes able to puncture cells, invade them, and enslave them in order to reproduce and spread throughout the body.

Using mRNA (messenger RNA) technology, Pfizer and Moderna developed effective vaccines in only 11 months. Collins recalls telling his staff that the vaccines were 90% – 95% effective in clinical trials – far beyond hopes. By December 2020, injections began. And in 2023, Jewish scientist Drew Weissman shared the Nobel Prize for pioneering the mRNA technology that made the vaccine possible.

Collins estimates that some three million lives were saved in the US by the vaccine – although 1,219,487 Americans died from COVID. Some 50 million Americans declined the vaccine, and Collins claims that some 220,000 people died as a result.

Israel was among the first nations to get the vaccine, in return for supplying extensive data on its impact. Israel had 4,841,722 cases of COVID – more than half the population – and 12,707 deaths. Few Israelis declined to be vaccinated.

As a result, Israel’s death rate from COVID was about one-third that of the US.

Now, is that a big-time show-stopping blessing, or what?

War

Israel has currently been at war for more than a year. Thousands have had to flee their homes on the southern and northern borders. Hostages are still being held by Hamas. Many civilians and soldiers have died. Gratitude? Seriously?

Consider this. Through history, Jews have been attacked, slandered, slaughtered – and were largely defenseless. My own parents fled Bessarabia after the terrible Kishinev pogrom in 1904.

Arrogant, over-confident, and trapped in a fatal misconception, we suffered a terrible blow on October 7. But we fought back fiercely. In the broad sweep of history, will our enemies understand they made an enormous mistake to mess with us? Will they think twice, ten times, before trying anything like that again? I believe so.

Some 2,200 kilometers (1,300 miles) from Tel Aviv, in Darfur, Sudan, an estimated 200,000 ethnic Blacks were slaughtered between 2003 and 2005 by marauding Arab militias.

It is happening again. The Muslim Rapid Support Forces, armed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), are again raping, massacring, and slaughtering defenseless ethnic Blacks, who flee for their lives to neighboring Chad. And, notes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, “the world is distracted and silent…and the violence goes unchecked…it is producing what may become the worst famine in half a century or more.”

“It’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, told me. “It’s catastrophic.”

There, but for the grace of God and the muscle of the IDF, goes Israel.

Aliyah

Figures reported by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and summarized in the Times of Israel reveal that despite October 7, Jews abroad are grateful that Israel exists – and many are making aliyah.

Immigration to Israel reached a high in 2022, with the arrival of 73,000 immigrants, mostly from Ukraine and Russia after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war.

But in October 2023, just 1,163 people moved to Israel, compared to 2,364 people in September, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Given the debacle of October 7, this is understandable. This compared with 6,091 people who moved to Israel in October 2022, a year earlier.

But today, we know that many people have immigrated to Israel since October 7, according to the WZO. After immigration numbers understandably fell off a cliff in the months following the Hamas attack, WZO Chairman Yaakov Hagoel reports that over 29,000 people have moved to Israel under the Law of Return in the 11 months up to August 2024.

It is true that there has been an exodus of Israelis leaving the country after October 7. I wish them well. But having grown up, lived, and worked abroad, I fear they will not find the utopia they seek. Despite the wars, political strife, uncertainty, and the hostile neighborhood, I and my growing family have found fulfillment and meaning in our lives here in our own country. And we are very grateful for all of it.

Mental health

In desperate stressful times, as in the past year, many suffer trauma and depression. Mental health professionals struggle to bring solace to the large numbers who suffer. It is largely left to us to treat ourselves. But how?

Harvard University Dr. Michael Craig Miller explains that “in the field of positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently linked to greater happiness. Expressing gratitude helps people feel positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.”

Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology, tested the impact of different positive psychological interventions on 411 volunteers. The biggest boost in happiness resulted when participants wrote and personally delivered a letter of gratitude to a person they had never properly thanked for his or her kindness. No other intervention led to a larger surge in happiness.

There is evidence that gratitude can change our brains. The brain’s limbic system is responsible for our emotional experiences. Two parts of our limbic system that regulates emotions – memory and bodily functioning – are activated with feelings of gratitude, and expand. Studies at UCLA reveal that “gratitude does change the neural structure in the brain and makes us feel happier and more content.”

Observant Jews say a short prayer upon waking in the morning: “Thank you, living God, for restoring my soul with compassion; Your faith in me is very great.”

I choose to say this prayer in the evening, before falling asleep, while following Irving Berlin’s advice and counting my blessings for that day. That little prayer helps replace worries and troubles with hope and thankfulness. And sleep soon follows.

Moreover, when we are grateful for the beauty and splendor of our world, the perception itself changes reality. We become more proactive in extending to others the beneficence that we ourselves receive – and that in itself is a source of great joy.

Iran, again

At 7:30 p.m. on October 1, Iran fired a volley of 181 ballistic missiles at Israeli towns and cities. Arrow 3 intercepted nearly all of them, with American and Jordanian assistance. Some damage was done to Air Force bases. A phenomenal team of Israeli engineers at Israel Aerospace Industries, led by Technion alum Inbal Kreiss, developed the incredible Arrow system.

Iran’s ballistic missiles carry between half a ton and nearly a ton of explosives. Imagine the damage if all of them, or even half, had landed intact and exploded. Another of our countless blessings.

Israel’s response, albeit limited, came on October 26. Israeli Air Force fighter jets crippled Iran’s ability to produce long-range ballistic missiles and neutralized its Russian-made S-300 air defenses.

The IDF published audio of the radio communications between the commander of the Israeli Air Force, Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar, and Col. Shin, commander of the 201st F-16 fighter jet squadron during the strikes. “The historic action you performed tonight proved that no enemy is too far away,” Bar said.

Best of all worlds?

One of the central debates in philosophy revolves around evil. Darwin showed how organisms adapt beautifully and optimally to their surroundings. Leibniz argued that we have the best of all possible worlds, and built a whole theology on it.

Schopenhauer said, no, our world is the worst of all possible worlds because if it were only a little worse, the world could not continue to exist. And in his epic play Candide, Voltaire mocks the super-optimist Dr. Pangloss, who asserts that this is the best of all possible worlds, even though Candide suffers terribly – and so does Pangloss. So, whom should we believe?

Just as the Torah counsels us to choose life rather than death, we are obliged by the gratitude mitzvah to choose a life of giving thanks. Perhaps this is not the best of all possible worlds, but nonetheless, there are so many wonderful, beautiful, exceptional things we can be thankful for.

Sometimes it takes a bit of searching, and there are times when it is especially hard to be grateful, as in the present. But seek, and you will find.

And on a personal note, my wife and I have four great-grandchildren, with another on the way. Those beautiful infants sleeping peacefully in their beds? To be other than grateful is unthinkable. ■

The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.