21 Jan HIS LAST WORDS

On Oct. 7, Michael
Gottesman was shot
and thought he
didn’t have long to
live. With minutes
left, this is what he

said.
On October 7, as a member of the
community’s volunteer security
team of Shlomit, a community
on the border of Israel, Gaza,
and Egypt, Michael Gottesman
grabbed his weapon, put on his vest
and helmet, and went to defend
his family and his community.
Shlomit wasn’t infiltrated but the
neighboring community of Prigan
was and they desperately needed
reinforcements.
Michael and others answered the
call, the only volunteer security

team that defended a neighboring
community, not only their own.
They encountered a large group
of terrorists that far outnumbered
them and were much better armed.
Tragically, four of those heroic
volunteers fell in that battle.
Michael himself was shot. The
bullet entered from his side, in
the small area not protected by
the ceramic vest. It pierced his
lung, went through his kidney and
spleen, exited his left side and
shredded his upper arm. He fell to
the ground bleeding profusely and
understood there was significant
damage to his internal organs. He
calculated that he didn’t have long
to live and used what he thought
was his last breath to say the
Shema and to declare the unity of

G-d’s existence.
After finishing
the Shema, he
found that he was
still conscious
but thought that
he now had only
moments to live,
enough time to
think or say one
more thing. What should it be?
In a conversation at the Boca
Raton Shul he shared that after
saying the Shema, he looked up to
the Heavens and said, “Thank you
G-d. Thank you for a beautiful
life. Thank you for my amazing
wife, my beautiful children, my
friends and neighbors. Thank you
for all that you gave me. If I go
now, G-d, I just want to say thank
you for everything.”
Instead of saying, “Why me,
G-d? How could you do this,”
while lying on the floor in a
pool of his own blood, Michael
chose to look at his life and to
say thank you.
It took two hours to evacuate
Michael and two more hours
for him to be picked up by
the helicopter and taken to
the hospital. Miraculously, he
survived, though he spent many
months in the hospital healing and
many surgeries to reconstruct his
arm. He continues to need rehab
three times a week. While his
body will G-d-willing heal, he
will forever carry the emotional
and spiritual injuries and trauma
of that day. He lost close friends,
almost lost his life, but never
lost his sense of gratitude.
If he could express gratitude in
that moment, can’t we express

gratitude when everything is
going well, when we have food to
eat, a roof over our head, and air in
our lungs? We don’t need to wait
until we think it is the last moment
of our life to say thank you for
our lives, the big and small, the
ordinary and extraordinary. We
don’t need a raging fire to destroy
everything in order to appreciate
what we have.
When we wake up in the morning,
the very first words a Jew says are
Modeh Ani, which literally means,
“Grateful am I.” Grammatically,
it would be more correct to say
“Ani modeh, I am grateful,” but
the Sages understood that the first
word on our lips cannot be “I.”
Despite its clumsiness, we wake
up and say instead, “Grateful,”
setting the tone for our day, an
attitude of gratitude.