/דיינוDayeinu

The one word, besides matsah, most often associated with Pesach and the Seder is dayeinu.

Little known, however, is how Dayeinu entered into our Pesach ritual and celebration.

Scholars contend that the Dayeinu (“It is sufficient for us”) passage made its way into the Haggadah precisely because (of the assertion that) it was “not sufficient for us”. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, spoke the following words in his Easter homily:

“O ungrateful Israel, come here and be judged before Me for your ingratitude…

How high a price did you place on the ten plagues, the crossing of the Re(e)d Sea…

the gift of manna from heaven…the gift of Law…and the Land as an inheritance?”

The Dayeinu passage is a direct counter statement by the Rabbis, as these sample lines demonstrate:

“Had He not brought judgements (plagues) against them, it is sufficient for us.

Had He not split the Red Sea, it is sufficient for us.

Had he not satisfied our needs forty years in the desert and not fed us manna, it is sufficient for us.

Had he not given us the Torah, it is sufficient for us.

Had He not brought us into the Land of Israel, it is sufficient for us.”

Indeed, the Bishop’s opening and closing words, respectively, “O ungrateful Israel” and “all the benefits accrued you” are met with the following opening and closing words of Dayeinu: “How many levels of goodness has God bestowed upon us” and “How much good, doubled and redoubled has God done for us”.

Significantly, Melito’s observations were not unfounded. Throughout the Biblical Exodus narrative, we hear from the complaining Israelites who are not satisfied and are presented as ungrateful by both God and Moses for “all the benefits accrued them”, particularly those cited by this Bishop. And, the Rabbis and any reader of the Bible, Christian or Jew, knows this.

In creating and inserting Dayeinu into our Haggadah, we see our Rabbis, then, as presenting us with a remarkable, radical re-reading of the Exodus narrative. Our tradition teaches that our Seder is to be a re-enactment of the Exodus story by virtue of each of us personally experiencing liberation from the enslavements of our mitsrayim (Egypt). Accordingly, in this Dayeinu passage, our Rabbis are presenting not a revisionist but a redemptive narrative (Haggadah). Let not our ancestors’ enslavement be ours, as well. The fear of unmet needs should never become for us, as it was for the Israelites, a litany of unlimited wants.

Today, the rollicking refrain of Dayeinu is a reminder of the rampant and reckless excess confronting present day society. פרעה, the Hebrew word for Pharaoh includes the root word פרע signifying unbridled and unrestrained desire and behaviour.

In considering our personal lives, our family, community and planet, let us not become ourselves the Pharaoh we seek to escape. At our seder, let us resolve to live the word Dayeinu, “it is sufficient for us” so no one need survive upon the “bread of affliction” and together we can drink from the “cup of redemption”.

הא לחמא עניא, דאכלו אבהתנא בארעא דמצרים, כל דכפין ייתי ויכול, כל דצריך ייתי ויפסח השתא עבדין, לשנה הבאה בני חורין

This is the Bread of Affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry come and eat. Whoever is in need come and share Pesach with us. Now we are enslaved may we work to soon be free.

 ~Haggadah~