Dayenu

WE JEWS HAVE CELEBRATED PASSOVER THIS YEAR probably with a greater joyful spirit than ever before. Passover is known as the Zman Cherusenu, the season of our freedom. And today not only is a season of freedom that we recall from ancient times, but it is the first Passover since our modern deliverance as well. Today the people of Israel have marched forth from oppression and cruelty and to a newly acquired freedom in the Promised Land. And therefore our joy is exceptionally great.
 
But precisely for this very reason, because our joy is so great, and we have modern achievements also to our credit, we must remember now more than ever that the Passover is not merely a festival of great joy but one also of great challenge. To observe the Passover festival as merely one of joy over victories either in ancient or in modern times lays us open to the charge of smugness, and self-glorification. It has not been characteristic of Judaism to gloat over the downfall of its enemies and to celebrate its own victories with unrestrained joy. It has always been the custom for example on the last days of Passover to curtail the Hallel Service, the chanting of joyous psalms because, the rabbis of old told us we must remember also the sorrow of the Egyptians defeated at the Red Sea. It is not the spirit of Jewish tradition to rejoice in victory or self-glorification without an awareness also of the responsibilities of the victory and the challenge that goes with it.
 
The Dayenu[1] section of the Haggadah[2] service, which we chat so merrily, is an excellent illustration of this thought. It begins with the introduction, "How manifold are the favors which the Lord has bestowed upon us…” And then there follows a list of the many favors which the Holy One had bestowed upon His people. After the recital of each one, we all joined the refrain, “Dayenu!” — it would have been sufficient. It would seem offhand that this is nothing but the boastful proclamation of a people glorying in these manifestations of divine favor which had been conferred upon it. Any one of these favors, might be the interpretation, would have been sufficient to show the superiority of Israel over the nations in the eyes of God, and to endow Israel with a deep-seated pride and reason for self-glorification. How much more so when so many favors have been conferred! But we must remember the conclusion of the passage. After the repetition of all the favors bestowed upon Israel comes the greatest of them all. "And he made us a holy people to perfect the world under the kingdom of the Almighty in truth and in righteousness!" Thus the consciousness of Divine favor was not to lead to arrogant pride, but rather carried with it a sense of responsibility and implied consecration to Divine ideals. Not self-glorification, because of the past, but self-consecration to the demands of the future is its result. And this is the emphasis in our Passover celebration. It is a proclamation of future responsibilities which come as a result of God's favor. Each favor of the past is turned into a spiritual challenge, any one of which would in itself be sufficient incentive to high moral responsibility, but how much greater is this moral responsibility when we have been the recipient of all these favors combined.
 
“He brought us out of Egypt,” reads the Haggadah, and to this we chant “Dayenu!” -- it would have been sufficient. In our own personal experience of the bitterness of physical and spiritual bondage, we mean to say, there was sufficient inspiration in the generations that followed for Israel to become the champion of all the enslaved and the oppressed. The exodus from Egypt was a challenge calling forth the noblest and the best in the Jew. And we see, indeed, in many places in the Bible this episode is referred to as the basis of an appeal to Israel to cherish freedom and liberty and to respect the dignity of all men. “Remember ye were slaves in Egypt,” we hear, when we are commanded to rest on the Sabbath[3] and to give rest to our servants and animals. "For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt," we read, when we are enjoined to treat the stranger as the home born and to love him as thyself. And many a time the experience in Egypt is given as the reason for maintaining a spirit of sympathy and helpfulness of the underdog, a spirit of revolt against political tyranny and economic oppression. And today also this memory should be sufficient to make the Jew mindful of the challenging implications of Passover for our own day and our responsibility to speak up at all times whenever the dignity of man and the principles of liberty and freedom are being challenged.
 
But if this were not challenging enough, there were still other experiences of Israel to call forth in him a sense of responsibility. “He divided the Red Sea for us,” continues the Haggadah. Here is the historic example of the power of faith, the miracle of courage in the face of crisis and seeming disaster. The people wanted to turn back when confronted by the sea. "Are there not enough graves in Egypt?[4]" they asked, but they yielded to exhortation and they went forward nevertheless and left us the classic example of courage and endurance, to which our people have measured up so well in the past few years and which Passover has become a symbol. “This would have been sufficient,” we say. “He brought us to Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah," is another Divine favor of which we make mention. And this experience has been interpreted not merely as the gift of a loving father to a favorite child, but as a challenge to make obedience to the moral law the primary influence in Jewish life. And this is what we mean when we speak of the Divine election of Israel, of Israel as the chosen people, not a people chosen for special favor, but a people who has chosen to dedicate itself as a kingdom of priests to the service of God, who has made of the folk memory of the most inspiring event of human history an incentive to ethical conduct and high personal morality. This would too have been sufficient, but he led us into the land of Israel where our national experience showed us the wisdom of righteousness and justice and the folly of despotism, and he gave us prophets of truth who preached the message of universal brotherhood and love. And these favors too would have been sufficient to make us eager to serve in the task of establishing justice among men.
 
To all of these favors and others we have said, “Dayenu,” not in smug pride that we are God's favored people who will be miraculously kept alive forever, but with a consciousness of the moral lessons and obligations which these experiences of our forefathers have bequeathed to us. And our celebration of the Passover today is the reaffirmation of our acceptance of this challenge. Passover speaks to us of human freedom, of faith and courage, of a moral law by which alone man can survive, and its celebration is Israel's assurance that it has dedicated itself to the service of these ideals and looks forward to the great day of the future when the world will be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty in truth and in righteousness.


[1] Dayenu (Hebrew) is a song that is part of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The word "Dayenu" means approximately "it would have been enough for us", "it would have been sufficient."

[2] The Haggadah is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. Reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the Scriptural commandment to each Jew to "tell your son" of the Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt.

[3] Deuteronomy 5:11-14

[4] Exodus 14:11