Q&A: Saying Thank You to God
Saying Thank You to God
Question
In our family it’s often customary—for example at bar mitzvah celebrations or after 25 years of marriage, etc.—to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, in a speech or something like that, saying that without His help we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, and so on… But I was thinking a bit that really, if the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in the world, then thanking Him for our successes—for finding a certain wife and managing to build a good home, etc.—is a little unnecessary, because what exactly are we thanking Him for? So I wanted to ask what the Rabbi’s opinion is on this subject. Thank you!
Answer
I’ve addressed this more than once. We thank Him for the world He created, and for the fact that He gave us the strength to succeed. Our ability—and the ability of everything that exists in the world—to act comes from Him. For that we should thank Him.