The Yom Tov of Pesach is past, but the approach of Lag B’Omer reminds us that we are still in the Omer period between Pesach and Shavuot, so the previous holiday is still on my mind. And one part of the Seder still puzzles me: that is the shir, “Dayenu.” I am not a Torah scholar of any kind, so I offer the following thought in earnest humility.
The classical rendition of Dayenu progresses from event to event in Jewish history, each one ending with “Dayenu,” meaning “it would have been sufficient.” The song segues this way into the next seminal event. But when I consider the wording, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. As an example, we sing, “If Hashem had brought us before Mount Sinai and had not given us the Torah, it would have been sufficient,” and so on. A literal reading of these verses seems to leave us with nothing special, just survival rather than a unique future as a chosen people.
However, making a “minor” adjustment, which involves switching the order of two words, changes the whole meaning of the well-known song and, at least for me, it suddenly all makes sense. Thus, if we do not read each verse as a definitive statement—”it would have been sufficient,”—but instead read each one as an unfulfilled longing in a continuing journey, like “would it have been sufficient” (rendering it a rhetorical question), it all becomes much clearer.
And we can proceed in the same manner to each succeeding miracle until we end up in the Beis Hamikdash, where the children of Israel finally see the presence of Hashem in a great cloud of fire and smoke. That would finally be sufficient!
