‘Gam Zu L”Tovah: This Too Is for the Good’

By Aaron Mandel

The phone rang, or the letter came, or the door simply closed — and the life you had been quietly counting on rearranged itself in an instant into something you did not choose and would never have asked for. And then, perhaps, someone said the words to you, kindly, the way they have been said for centuries: gam zu l’tovah, this too is for the good. You heard them, and a part of you flinched. Because from where you are sitting, this does not look good. It looks like loss. If you have come looking for gam zu l’tovah tonight, you are not asking for a slogan to silence the ache. You are asking whether there is any honest way to hold a teaching this large over a wound this raw — whether this too is for the good can be true without being cruel.

What Gam Zu L’Tovah Means

The phrase comes to us through the sages as the lived posture of those who trained themselves, in the face of what looked like misfortune, to say gam zu l’tovah — this too is for the good. It is not a claim that the loss itself is good. It is a claim about the One in whose hands the loss has fallen: that nothing reaches you outside His knowing, and that His knowing is not indifferent. The teaching rests on a single conviction repeated through the Psalms — that the God who governs your story is, at His root, good. “The LORD is good to all; And His tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalms 145:9). Read it slowly. Not good to some. Good to all — and His mercy spread over all His works, which means over this work too, the unfinished and painful one you are standing inside right now.

Gam zu l’tovah is the decision to keep facing that goodness even when the evidence in front of you argues against it. It does not ask you to call the darkness light. It asks you to trust that the One dividing light from darkness has not stopped working. “And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:4). The very first thing Scripture tells you God did was separate, name, and call good — and He has not handed that work to chance since.

What It Does Not Mean

Here you must be told the truth plainly, because a softer version will not survive real pain. Gam zu l’tovah does not mean your grief is mistaken. It does not mean you should feel the good now, or that a faithful woman would already be at peace. It is not a command to be grateful for the thing that broke you, and anyone who uses it to hurry you past your tears has misunderstood it badly.

The teaching is about God’s vantage, not yours. You cannot see the end of the thread; He holds the whole cloth. That gap between what you can see and what He can is exactly where the trust lives — and trust would not be trust if the good were already visible. “For the LORD is good; His mercy endureth for ever; and His faithfulness unto all generations” (Psalms 100:5). Notice that the verse anchors His goodness not in your circumstances but in His faithfulness unto all generations — a steadiness that outlasts this season, and the next, and the ones who will remember you. Gam zu l’tovah does not ask you to pretend the loss is gain. It asks you to lean, in the dark, on a goodness you have not yet been shown.

When You Cannot Feel It

There will be mornings when the words are simply beyond you, when this too is for the good sits in your mouth like a stone. Do not force it. The Psalms themselves do not begin in serenity; they begin, again and again, in trouble, and only reach for goodness afterward. “O consider and see that the LORD is good; Happy is the man that taketh refuge in Him” (Psalms 34:9). Hear what that verse asks of you. Not feel that the LORD is good — consider and see. It is an invitation to look, slowly, deliberately, for the goodness you cannot yet sense, the way you would search a dark room not by feeling but by waiting for your eyes to adjust.

And it names the only response that is honest when you cannot feel the good: taketh refuge. You do not have to understand the loss to take shelter in the One who allowed it. Refuge is not a conclusion you reach. It is a place you run to before the understanding comes — sometimes years before, sometimes without it ever coming at all.

The Good You Cannot Yet See

What gam zu l’tovah finally offers is not an explanation but a promise about withholding — that whatever is being kept from you is not being kept by an indifferent hand. “For the LORD God is a sun and a shield; the LORD giveth grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly” (Psalms 84:12). Sit with the strange comfort of that last line. No good thing. If the thing you are grieving has been withheld, then either it was not, finally, the good thing — or its time is not yet. That is a hard mercy, and the verse does not pretend otherwise. But it does close one terrible door: the door marked He has forgotten you, or He never cared. He withholds nothing good from the one who walks toward Him. The withholding itself is inside His goodness, not outside it.

This is why the tradition pairs trust so often with thanksgiving — not the thanksgiving that lies about pain, but the kind that chooses, even mid-sorrow, to address a good God. “O give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good, For His mercy endureth for ever” (Psalms 107:1). Notice that the reason given for thanks is not because things turned out well. It is for He is good — His goodness, not your circumstances, is the ground you stand on. You can give that thanks through tears. Many have. Gam zu l’tovah lives in exactly that narrow, honest space: a heart that still aches, turned toward a goodness it trusts more than it feels.

Holding the Teaching Gently

So do not ask gam zu l’tovah to do what it was never meant to do. It will not make the loss small, or the grief premature, or your tears a failure of faith. It is not a ruling handed down to correct your sorrow. It is a reflection you return to, slowly, on the days you can — a quiet leaning of your weight onto the conviction that the One who holds your life is good, and that His goodness has not paused for your worst season.

You do not have to arrive at this too is for the good in a single breath, or even this year. You can hold it the way you hold any hard, holy thing — a little at a time, with honesty, letting it ripen. One way to let it ripen is to keep a daily page where the ache and the trust can sit side by side: where you name, without flinching, what looks like loss, and then write one line reaching, however faintly, toward the goodness you have not yet been shown. Consider and see that the LORD is good. That is not a feeling to summon. It is a practice to return to — and a reflective journal kept for these daily returns is one of the gentlest ways to let gam zu l’tovah become, over time, something you can lean on.

Published by Higgayon Press. For questions of halacha, consult a qualified rabbi.