Dayenu and Cancel Culture
Tomorrow night, we Jews celebrate the first night of Passover.
Today I made my matzoh ball soup, my charoses, and a potato kugel.
I’m excited that my children are coming.
Passover almost got canceled because one of them was seriously exposed to Covid by her roommate (not on purpose).
But I’m cooking the favorite foods we only eat once a year, and wondering about how we will do a seder this year.
There’s a part of me that’s feeling like the world is just too much of a mess to talk about liberation.
Do we sit around and talk about it—again? And now we have to bring Ukraine into it, in addition to all the kinds of slavery that still exist in the world—not to mention the mass shooting in the subway earlier this week.
There’s a part of the seder meal where we sing “Dayenu: It would have been enough…”
A friend forwarded this to me from The Shalom Center, by Dr. Barbara Breitman:
Enough! Dayenu! For This and Every Year!
We praise God
at Passover
‘Dayenu’!
‘It would have been enough!’
It would have been enough
If You had taken us out of Egypt
but not divided the Reed Sea
If You had divided the Reed Sea
but not brought us to dry land
If You satisfied our needs for 40 years
but did not send us Manna
If You fed us Manna in the desert
But did not bring us to Mt Sinai...
It would have been enough!
We would have been content!
This year I am falling
I cannot say Dayenu!
It is too much!
It is not enough!
I’ve had enough!
Enough racism
Enough war
Enough vicious white men
taunting the brilliant judge
first black woman Supreme Court Justice
taunting her to ignite rage
call her just another
angry black Radical bitch
Enough bodies
dead bodies
strewn on city streets
Enough maimed bodies
Runover by tanks
Enough stockpiles of nuclear weapons
Enough chemical weapons
Enough weapons altogether!
Weapons incinerating the Earth
billowing carbon into the stratosphere
melting glaciers even faster
Enough sadism
Enough hedonism of the Super rich
Enough billionaires riding rockets to outer space
while their workers
cannot feed their children on the earth
Enough Senators
blocking Climate Change legislation
because they own stock in fossil fuel
because they own coal mines
because money and power
are their Gods
Enough plastic bottles and bags
gagging fish in the sea
suffocating birds in the air
Enough floods and fires
Earthquakes and droughts
Enough melting ice caps
Enough dead birds, dead gorillas, dead frogs
Enough extinctions
Enough desert where
there should be rain
Enough rain where
there should be sun
Enough searing
the lungs of the Earth
Enough Climate refugees
dying at borders to be free
Enough torture and tanks
Enough severed limbs
Pregnant women shuddering
in basements, giving birth
hearing bombs fall on their homes
Enough women watching
kneeling husbands shot in the head
Enough atrocities
Enough rape
Enough liars and thieves and autocrats
and oligarchs
Enough!
Enough!
Enough!
Will you shout with me
from rooftops, from mountain tops
from every Capitol and every dome
from every Church, every Mosque, every Temple
every home?
Can we make a roar loud enough
to reach the Heavens
so it will finally be Enough?
Please!
take my hand
Please!
whisper in my ear
that you have had Enough too
Reading this powerful piece threw me into a tailspin; I’m not doing enough.
Of course, none of us can do enough. The job of trying to fix this world is way too great for any one individual.
How do I go into Passover with this awareness?
So heavy, I almost want to “cancel” it.
I was in the park earlier today and someone told me I was the spitting image of Carole King.
I laughed. I guess a little. The curly hair? Maybe the nose?
I could only take it as a complement, as it was meant.
Then I went home and listened with nostalgia to her songs as I continued cooking—Songs of my early teens.
The end of the song, “Beautiful,” gave me a counter-balance to the above poem:
“I have often asked myself the reason for sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby
If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try…
You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart…”
I’m not sure what tears being just a lullaby means. Maybe these words reflected a kinder, gentler time in American history and the world?
Still, showing the world all the love in our hearts is a start to ending the madness.
And we can’t cancel Passover any more than we can cancel the madness in one fell swoop—or individually.
In the meantime, may it be a peaceful one for all, and may we all find liberation soon.
