This month's conversation:
Dayenu | דַּיֵּנוּ
It would have been enough.
What does it mean to be enough? To have enough?
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Gratitude, Song, and the Small Steps of Redemption
Many years ago, I went to a seder at the home of a beloved teacher. Guests used a variety of Haggadot and shared commentaries as we wove our way through the story. We came to the song “Dayenu,” which outlines the miraculous process of the redemption from Egyptian bondage by listing fifteen separate divine acts of liberation and asserting that any one of them would have been enough. We paused. If God had taken us out of Egypt but not split the sea for us, would it have been enough? If God had led us through the desert but not given us the Torah or Shabbat, would it have been enough? No, we decided; it would not! So, we skipped the song for the sake of integrity and moved on.
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It Wouldn’t Have Been Enough
“Ten fingers. Ten toes. Dayenu.” The synecdoche of pregnancy prayer. Primordial hope resonating in the time of ultrasound. And with the press of a magic wand, an image appears: a miracle with a beating heart, ten fingers and ten toes. Exhale with gratitude and inhale with greed. “Just let it be healthy, dayenu.”
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Self-Audit for Sufficiency
All of us need to do an audit of what we use. Focusing on one area of our lives at a time, we need to ask ourselves whether we are living with excess, or whether we are living efficiently.
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A Case for Parenting Well Enough
Before the birth of our oldest son, Doron, my wife and I had many lengthy conversations about the kind of parents we wanted to be. The topics ran from the amount of screen time we would allow to the types of schooling and the religious environment we would foster. You name it and we had discussed our vision for being the ideal parent.
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NiSh’ma: Dayenu
On this page, we offer three takes on the first line in the Passover song, “Dayenu”. Our commentators discuss the frailty of the Israelites as they left Egypt and how they anticipated and acknowledged God’s miracles.
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Consider and Converse: Dayenu
Sh’ma Now curates conversations on a single theme rooted in Jewish tradition and the contemporary moment. At the heart of this issue of Sh’ma Now is the theme of “Dayenu” — Enough.
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