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Dayeinu
Contributed by Mirel Samuels

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Dayeinu is one of the highlights of Seder experience. The tune is catchy but the words and theme are frankly bizarre. Had you taken us from Egypt but not split the sea, dayeinu, it would have been enough. Really? If you had taken us to Mount Sinai but not given us the Torah, dayeinu, it would have been enough. Really? Don’t we talk about how the Torah is the air that we breathe, indispensable to our lives and to our very existence? Had He given us the Torah but not brought us into Israel it would have been enough. Really? Wasn’t Israel created before the world because it, the Jewish people and Torah and the three pillars upon which the world is built? Understanding what dayeinu is really about requires us to zoom out and look at the poem as a whole. What do the 15 stanzas have in common? Why were these events or experiences chosen? Every stanza corresponds with an incredibly gracious act God did for us and our absolute ungrateful response. Rabbi Nachman Cohen in his Historical Haggada offers a fascinating insight. If you look at the Torah and in Psalms, chapter 106 in particular, you will notice that every stanza of dayeinu corresponds with an incredibly gracious act God did for us and our absolute ungrateful response. Here are a few examples: We say “had God just taken us out of Egypt it would have been enough.” However, if you look in Deuteronomy 1:27 it wasn’t enough. “Because God hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.” Another example: we say, “If you just fed us the manna it would have been enough.” But it wasn’t enough. We said, “our soul loathes this bread.” We say, “If You just brought us into Israel dayeinu, it would have been enough,” but it wasn’t. It says in Numbers, “[Israel is ] the land that eats up its inhabitants.” Explains Rabbi Nachman Cohen, dayeinu is our reflecting on our history and repairing the lack of gratitude we exhibited in the past. Seder night we look back on our national history, we review our story and we identify those moments, those gifts from God that we failed to say thank you for. We rectify and repair our ingratitude and thanklessness through the years by saying dayeinu now. In truth, dayeinu, each of these things was enough to be exceedingly grateful for. Freedom demands gratitude. If you have are set free but fail to acknowledge how you attained that freedom, you in fact remain enslaved to your ego and your selfishness. If you can’t recognize what has been done for you and that you could not have done it yourself, you are not freed from your narrow, self-absorbed way of life. Gratitude is a byproduct of true freedom. The Midrash says that he who has no gratitude is like one who negates the existence of God. If you are so insensitive to those who benefit and sustain you, certainly you will never recognize the blessings which God provides. On the night of Passover, when we relive the experience of becoming a people and celebrate our national birth we repair the fatal flaw of ingratitude with the recognition that we are unworthy and dayeinu, all that God did for us was beyond what we deserved.
haggadah Section: -- Cup #2 & Dayenu
Source: Rabbi Efrem Goldberg - Aish.com

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